Part 2 (1/2)
As soon as my plan is complete, I go over it and ask concerning each scene its purpose, whether it prepares for or develops a character or situation, and then whether it advances the action. A play is a thousand-legged creature which must keep on going. If it slows up, the public yawns; if it stops, the public hisses.
To write a sprightly play you must have a good digestion. Sprightliness resides in the stomach.
Eugene Lab.i.+.c.he.
VII.
From Ernest Legouve.
You ask me how a play is made.
By beginning at the end.
A novel is quite a different matter.
Walter Scott, the great Walter Scott, sat down of a morning at his study-table, took six sheets of paper and wrote 'Chapter One,' without knowing anything else about his story than the first chapter. He set forth his characters, he indicated the situation; then situation and characters got out of the affair as best they could. They were left to create themselves by the logic of events.
Eugene Sue often told me that it was impossible for him to draw up a plan. It benumbed him. His imagination needed the shock of the unforeseen; to surprize the public he had to be surprized himself. More than once at the end of an instalment of one of his serial stories he left his characters in an inextricable situation of which he himself did not know the outcome.
George Sand frequently started a novel on the strength of a phrase, a thought, a page, a landscape. It was not she who guided her pen, but her pen which guided her. She started out with the intention of writing one volume and she wrote ten. She might intend to write ten and she wrote only one. She dreamed of a happy ending, and then she concluded with a suicide.
But never have Scribe, or Dumas _pere_, or Dumas _fils_, or Augier, or Lab.i.+.c.he, or Sardou, written ”Scene One” without knowing what they were going to put into the last scene. A point of departure was for them nothing but an interrogation point. ”Where are you going to lead me?”
they would ask it; and they would accept it only if it led them to a final point, or to the central point which determined all the stages of the route, including the first.
The novel is a journey in a carriage. You make stops, you spend a night at the inn, you get out to look at the country, you turn aside to take breakfast in some charming spot. What difference does it make to you as a traveler? You are in no hurry. Your object is not to arrive anywhere, but to find amus.e.m.e.nt while on the road. Your true goal is the trip itself.
A play is a railway journey by an express train--forty miles an hour, and from time to time ten minutes stop for the intermissions; and if the locomotive ceases rus.h.i.+ng and hissing you hiss.
All this does not mean that there are no dramatic masterpieces which do not run so fast or that there was not an author of great talent, Moliere, who often brought about his ending by the grace of G.o.d. Only, let me add that to secure absolution for the last act of 'Tartuffe' you must have written the first four.
Ernest Legouve.
VIII.
From edouard Pailleron.
You ask me how a play is made, my dear Dreyfus. I may well astonish you, perhaps, but on my soul and honor, before G.o.d and man, I a.s.sure to you that I know nothing about it, that you know nothing, that n.o.body knows anything, and that the author of a play knows less about it than any one else.
You don't believe me?
Let us see.
Here is a capable gentleman, a man of the theater, a dramatist acclaimed a score of times, at the height of his powers, in full success. He has written a comedy. He has bestowed upon it all his care, all his time, all his ability. He has left nothing to chance.
He has just finisht it, and is content. According to the consecrated expression, it is ”certain to go.” But as he is cautious, he does not rely entirely upon his own opinion. He consults his friends--fellow-workers, skillful as he, successful as he. He reads to them his piece. I will not say that they are satisfied--another word is needed--but at any rate, with more reason than ever, it is ”certain to go.”