Part 2

That last observation leads me naturally to pass on to the literary vehicle in which dialogue is in its glory――in which it is the sovereign instrument, in which it reaches its highest level of independence, in which it leans its lightest on any other aid than that inherent in its own capacity. This is the drama――and the drama written for the actual stage. I do not think that what are called ‘plays for the study’ need detain us. It is really only a question of degree in each case. They either approximate closely to the true stage-play or, on the other hand, they are really books in which, by artifice and often by an effort which is rather too visible, those parts that would naturally assume a narrative form, are presented in the guise of dialogue――or rather not so much of dialogue as we are now discussing it, but, as I should say, of speeches which are, in essence, either narrative, or argumentative, or reflective, or hortative in character.

We may come then to the theatre itself――but before I attempt to say anything on the relations between stage dialogue and book dialogue, I should like to remind you again that even this greater independence of stage dialogue is very far indeed from being absolute. We have already referred to the stage-directions. These are amplified by the actor, of his own motion or in pursuit of the instructions he receives at rehearsal. The result is his ‘business’――everything he does on the stage except what he does with his tongue. The ‘business’ counts for much, but what counts for even more is that the words are spoken there on the stage by living man to living man. I think it is hard to exaggerate the effect of this――the immense help it gives to the words. It is not merely a question of vividness, though that is important enough. It is equally, or even more, a question of appropriateness, of the words matching the personality from which they proceed. The novelist can make his words match the personality which he has created in his own mind. Where he is at a disadvantage compared with the playwright is that it is infinitely harder for him, in spite of all _his_ stage-directions, and his descriptions, and his analysis, to set that personality as completely before his reader as the corporeal presence of the actor sets it before the audience in the theatre. Hence the match――the harmony――between the words and the personality――though it may exist, is apt not to be nearly so effective in the book as on the stage, and a line that misses its mark as written in the one may triumph in the other, thanks to the man who speaks it――to his skill, to his emotional power, not seldom, and especially in comedy, even to his personal appearance. In a word the independence of dialogue on the stage is qualified by its dependence on the actor. He has to do what the novelist does by descriptions and comments. He has to clothe the skeleton; and if it has been one’s fortune to see two or three great or accomplished actors play the same part, especially, say, in a classic play, where they are not guided――or trammelled――by too many stage-directions, and are not instructed――perhaps sometimes over-instructed――by the author, one will not, I think, doubt that the clothes they put on the skeleton may very considerably affect the appearance of its anatomy, sometimes seeming to alter the very shape of the bones.

Still, all allowances made, it remains true that the stage offers the fullest, the fairest, and the most independent opportunity for pure dialogue――and it is necessary to ask the question――however hard the answer may be――what effect the medium of the theatre has upon dialogue. I admit at once that I think the question is very hard to answer. We are in presence of the indisputable fact that dialogue which is highly moving or amusing in a book may fall quite flat on the stage――while on the other hand dialogue which is very effective on the stage may sound either obvious or bald in a book. This is not to say, of course, that some dialogue will not be found good for both. Practical experiments are constantly being tried, owing to the habit of dramatizing novels which have achieved a popular success. The temptation is to carry over into the play as much of the dialogue of the novel as you can contrive to use; the object is to preserve as far as possible both the literary flavour and the commercial goodwill of the original. The result is interesting. The novelist, whether he acts as his own dramatist or not, will almost always notice, I think, that passages of dialogue which are most effective in the book are least effective on the stage――often that they need complete remodelling before they can be used at all. On the other hand, passages which he has little esteemed in the book――regarded perhaps almost as mere machinery, part of the necessary traffic of the story――make an immediate hit with audiences in the theatre.

It is a commonplace in the theatrical world that there is no telling what ‘they’ will like――‘they’ means the public――not even what plays they will or will not like, much less what particular scenes or passages――and nobody with even the least practical experience would care to back his opinion save at very favourable odds. If then it is impossible to tell what they will or won’t like, it seems still more hopeless to inquire why they will or won’t like it; but that is, in reality, not quite the case. It is not, I think, so much that the playwright does not know what he has to do to please them, as that it happens to be rather difficult to do it, and quite as difficult to know when you have done it. Happily, however, we are to-night not on the hard highroad of practice, but in the easy pastures of criticism, and may therefore be bold to try to suggest what are the main features of good theatrical dialogue――features which, though they may be found in and may assist novel dialogue, yet are not indispensable to it, but which must characterize theatrical dialogue and are indispensable to success on the stage. These indispensable qualities may in the end be reduced to two――practicality and universality.

By practicality――not a happy term, I confess, and one which I use only because I cannot think of any other single word――I mean the quality of helping the play forward, either by getting on with the evolution of the situations, or by exhibiting the drama which is the result of the situations (I must add, parenthetically, that by situations I do not mean merely external happenings――the term properly includes both characters and events, and their reciprocal action on one another). A play is a very short thing; a very solid four-act play――I am talking of the modern theatre now――will not cover more than 140 to 150 ordinary type-written sheets; a novel of the ordinary length will cover from three to four hundred. The obvious result is that the author has not, to put it colloquially, much time to play about. He may allow himself a little of what is technically termed ‘relief’. A good line pays for its place. But broadly speaking, all the dialogue has to work――each line has its task of advancing action or exhibiting character. Now only so many lines being possible between the rise and the fall of the curtain, it is clear that there is no room for digression or for rambling――things that are often most delightful in a book, where space and time are practically unlimited. More than this. Not only is there no space for rambling and irrelevant talk, but the necessary talk――the talk that is helpful and pertinent――must at the same time carefully consult the limits of space. There are a lot of points to be made in every act――aye, in every scene. The playwright cannot afford too much space to any one point. And the point must not only be made with all possible brevity――it must be made with all possible certainty, so that there may be no need of going back to it, no need of repetition; it should be stuck straight into the audience’s mind, as one sticks a pin into a chart. Hence there is need of directness――a certain quality of unmistakableness――one might almost say bluntness, when one compares theatrical dialogue with some of the minutely wrought novel dialogue to which I have referred to-night. But what then――I’m afraid you will be beginning to ask――what then, if you are right, is to become not only of the literary graces of style, but also of the intellectual quality of your work――of its profundity, of its subtlety, of its delicacy? Well, I can make only one answer――and being to-night, as I say, in the happy pastures of theory――I can give it light-heartedly. You must keep all those, and manage to harmonize them with your brevity and your certainty. That is one of the reasons――not the only one――why it is distinctly difficult to write good plays, not very easy to write even what are often contemptuously referred to as commercially successful plays――and not absolutely easy to write anything that can be called in any serious sense a play at all. There is a great deal of difference between just being a bad play and not being a play at all. The real playwright sometimes writes a bad play――but it is a play that he writes. Yes, your beauty, your profundity, your subtlety, your delicacy, must submit to drill――they must toe the line――they must accept the strait conditions of this most exacting medium. Conciseness and certainty――a quality of clean-cut outline――is demanded by stage conditions. The writer must know with accuracy where he is going at every minute and just how far. He ought to do the same in a book, you’ll say, and I admit it. But in the latter it is an ideal, and many a successful and even many a delightful book has been written without the ideal being reached――or perhaps even aimed at. On the stage the ideal is also the indispensable――for there a writer in the least of a mist wraps his audience in the densest fog.

The second quality which I suggest as pre-eminently required by stage dialogue and which I have called universality really goes deeper and affects more than the mere dialogue, though strictly speaking we are this evening concerned with its effect in that sphere only. Consider for a moment the different aim which a writer of novels and a writer of plays respectively may set before himself. Of course the novelist may set out to please the whole British public――and the American and Continental too, if you like, though for simplicity’s sake we may confine ourselves to these islands. A certain number no doubt start with that aim. A few may have succeeded――very few. But such an ambitious task is in no way incumbent on the novelist. Whether he looks to his pride or his pocket, to fame or to a sufficient circulation, it is quite enough for him to please a section of the public. He may be a famous literary man and enjoy a large income, as fame and incomes go in authorship, without three-quarters of the adult population――let alone the boys and girls――knowing or caring one jot about him. And he may be quite content to have it so――content deliberately and voluntarily, and not merely perforce, to limit the extent of his appeal, finding compensation in the intenser, though narrower, appeal he makes to his chosen audience, and in the increased liberty to indulge and to develop his own bent――to go his own way, in short, happy in the knowledge that he has a select but sufficient body of devoted followers. For example, I don’t suppose that Mr. Meredith expected or tried to please the boys who worshipped Mr. Henty, or that Mr. Henty, in his turn, had any idea of poaching on the preserves of Mr. Pett Ridge. In a word, a novelist can, if he likes or if he must (often the latter is the case), specialize in his audience just as he can in his subject or his treatment. If he pleases the class he tries to please, all is well with him; he can let the others go, with just as much regret and just as much politeness as his circumstances and his temperament may dictate.

Now, of course, this is true to some degree of the theatre also――at any rate in the great centres of population like London, where there are many neighbourhoods and many theatres. You would not expect to fill a popular ‘low price’ house with the same bill that might succeed at the St. James’s or, in recent days, at the Court Theatre. Nevertheless, it is immensely less true of the theatre than it is of the novel. Take the average West End theatre――it has to cater for all of us. The fashionable folk go, you and I go, our growing boys and girls go, our relations from the country go, our servants go, our butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers go, the girls from the A.B.C. shops, and the young gentlemen from Marshall & Snelgrove’s go――we have all to be catered for――we have all to be pleased with the same dinner! Across the footlights lies a miniature world, in which wellnigh every variety that exists in the great world outside has paid its money and sits in its seat. Is this to say that the theatre must rely on the commonplace and obvious? Not at all――but it is to say that it must in the main rely on the universal――on that which appeals to all the varieties in virtue of the common humanity that underlies the variations. It must find, so to say, the least common denominator, and work through and appeal to that. The things that will do it differ profoundly――

‘To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!’

That does it. Or Congreve’s ‘Though Marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves them still two fools!’――That does it, though obviously in quite a different way――or ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’――again in a different way. Or again something quite elementary――even schoolboyish if one may dare to use the word of Shakespeare――may win its way by its absolute naturalness, as when Jacques says to Orlando――of Rosalind, ‘I do not like her name’――‘There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened’――an unanswerable retort to an impertinent observation which I have never known to fail in pleasing the house. The thing may or may not be simple, it may or may not be profound, it may or may not be witty, but it must have a wide appeal――it must touch a common chord. I imagine that very few plays――though I think I have known a few――get produced and then please nobody――absolutely nobody in the house. I have known some failures that have pleased very highly people whom any author should be proud to please. But they haven’t pleased enough people――not merely not enough to succeed, but not enough to establish them as good plays, however much good literary stuff and good literary form there might be contained and exhibited in them.

Now this need for universality――for the thing with a wide appeal not limited to this or that class or character of intellect――has its effect, I think, on the actual form of the dialogue, though I freely admit that is an effect extremely hard to measure and define with any approach to accuracy. It in no way excludes individuality or even whimsicality, whether in situation or dialogue. The writer who is probably the most successful living British dramatist to-day is also probably the most individual and the most whimsical. It in no way demands undue concession to the commonplace――but it does, I think, require that the dialogue shall be in some sense in the vulgar tongue――that it shall be understanded of the people. The thing need not be seen or put as the audience would see or put it, but it must be seen and put as the audience can understand that character seeing and putting it. It must not be perverse, or too mannered, or too obscure. It may not be allowed so much licence in this respect as book-dialogue, if only for the reason that its effect has to be much more immediate――there can be no such thing as reading the speech over again the better to grasp its meaning――a necessity not unknown in novel reading. Its appeal is immediate, or it is nothing at all. It must also be, above all things, natural――and this again is on the stage even more pre-eminently requisite than in the written page――if only for the reason that the speaker is more vividly realized on the stage, and the author less vividly remembered――so that any discrepancy between the speaker as he lives before you and the particular thing he says is more glaringly apparent. And, as a corollary to this necessity for naturalness, follows the need for full and distinct differentiation of character. The dialogue must clearly attach to each character in the play his point of view and must consistently maintain it. On the whole therefore we may say that the universality of appeal which the stage demands operates on the form of the dialogue by way of imposing upon it certain obligations of straightforwardness of effect, of lucidity and immediateness in appeal, and of naturalness and exact appropriateness to the speaker――obligations which exist for book-dialogue also, but are less stringent and less peremptory there than in the theatre.

This question of naturalness, which is germane to the whole subject of dialogue and not merely to stage dialogue, is one of the most difficult things to lay down any rule about. It is not easy even to get any working formula which is helpful. On the one side there seems to lie the obvious rule――that all dialogue ought to be natural, appropriate to the person in whose mouth it is put――not merely what in substance he would say, but also said in the way he would say it. On the other side is the obvious fact that no two writers of any considerable merit do, as a fact, write dialogue in the same way, even when they are presenting the same sort of characters. Comparatively impersonal as the dialogue form is, when set beside the narrative, yet the writer’s idiosyncrasy will have its way, and in greater or less degree the author’s accent is heard from the lips of his imaginary interlocutors――and of each and all of them, however widely different they may be supposed to be, and really are, from one another. This appears to land us in an _impasse_; the obvious fact seems to conflict with the obvious rule. If it be so, I suppose the rule must go to the wall, for all its obviousness. But I fancy that some approach to a solution may be found in the suggestion that no two authors of creative power do, in fact, ever create characters of quite the same sort, and that we got into a seeming _impasse_ by being guilty of a fallacy. When an author sits down at his desk to contemplate, criticize, and reproduce the world about him, it is natural at the first thought to regard the author as subject contemplating and reproducing the world as object――pure subject as against pure object. Here is the fallacy as I conceive. The author as subject does not and cannot contemplate the world as pure object. What he sees is object-subject――that is to say, he consciously sets himself to contemplate and describe a world which is already modified for him by the unconscious projection of his own personality into it――or, in more homely language, he always looks through his own spectacles. It follows that when two creative minds――say Dickens and Thackeray――both set out to describe a duke or a costermonger, it is never the same duke or costermonger――it is not the abstract idea of duke or costermonger, laid up in heaven――but it is a duke-Dickens or a duke-Thackeray――a costermonger-Dickens or a costermonger-Thackeray. Consequently again it is not in the end natural――and, therefore, as the Admirable Crichton would remind us, it is not in the end right――that these two dukes or these two costermongers should speak in exactly the same way――though no doubt both of the pairs ought still to speak as dukes and costermongers of some sort――be it Dickensian or Thackerayan as the case may be. Of course, if an author’s idiosyncrasy is so peculiar that the subjective infusion of himself which he pours into the objective costermonger is so powerful as to cause the human race at large to object that no costermonger of any kind whatsoever ever did or could speak in that way――well, then the world will say that the picture of the costermonger is untrue and the language of the costermonger is inappropriate and unnatural――a conclusion summed up by saying that the author can’t draw a costermonger. His personality won’t blend with costermongers――perhaps it will with dukes――he had better confine himself to the latter. The author may take comfort in the thought that there are sure to be a few persons enamoured of singularity, and perhaps liking to be wiser than their neighbours, who will declare that his costermongers are of a superior brand to all others, and are indeed the only complete and veritable revelation of the quiddity of the costermonger ever set before the world since that planet began its journey round the sun.