HOW PLAYS ARE MADE. CAREFUL estimate of the number of plays annually written in this country shows that it exceeds three thousand. When there were in New York four or five resident stock companies, the manager of each received, on an average, ten plays a week. Many of these, of course, made the rounds of all the theatres, though probably fully half the writers were discouraged by the first refusal. Very frequently aspiring authors who receive letters requesting them to call and remove their rejected work fail to respond; and the cupboards of several New York managers are consequently crowded with plays which have lain there for years. In many instances no record is attached of the name and address of the author. About four years ago Mr. Wallack produced a comedy which had by some accident been disinterred from the manuscript-catacombs; no name was on it, and no claimant for the honor of authorship appeared. The plays sent to metropolitan managers represent, however, probably less than half of those written. Pieces for "stars," "specialty people," libretti for comic operas, and ground-works for acrobatic and musical comedies of the "Brass-Monkey" order, form the majority. Then, too, nearly every city or town that boasts a theatre has one or more local writers, whose pieces seldom get further than the resident manager, or are handed to some "star" when he or she arrives in town, and by whom the writing is rarely even casually examined. Of this army of would-be dramatists the names of possibly twenty are known to the well-informed theatre-goer. Perhaps one hundred more are fairly equipped for the task they attempt; but the finished work of the great residue shows that they are almost hopelessly ignorant of the necessities and limitations of the stage and of the simplest elementary principles of dramatic composition. The attractions which lead so many on this will-o'-the-wisp chase after theatrical fame are the reports of the almost fabulous sums that have been made by the authors and managers of a few very successful plays. The aspirant witnesses one of these performances, and straightway says to himself, "That is a very simple story: the dialogue doesn't amount to much,-just plain, every-day, natural talk; and it is easy enough to put together some situations quite as thrilling as anything he's got. Why shouldn't I try?" He does try, and produces something hopeless and impracticable, for the sufficient reason that he is endeavoring to create effects while he has no practical knowledge of the tools with which he must work. He is apt to regard a play as so much literature, whereas, in the styles of play that have of late years proved acceptable, literary merit is the least important factor in their construction. As well might a painter who can make the outside of a house attractive attempt to build it entirely of paint, as a writer hope to make a play succeed on literary merit alone. To the making of a drama these ingredients are necessary,―plot, situations, characters, dialogue; and their relative importance in the present day is shown in the order in which they are given. This rule applies to both comedies and dramas. How much it may be modified in tragedies is scarcely worth considering here. Very few are now attempting to write tragedies, a form of entertainment that is not particularly popular even in the instances hallowed by long acceptance. The man who writes a really good tragedy must be a poet, if not in the actual form of his work, at least in his feeling; he will not be bound by rule when the fever of composition is on him. It is best that he should write as he feels, and have his work shaped for the stage by another hand. The ordinary dramatist gives, or should give, more attention to the mechanics of his play than to its literary qualities. What is known as "good construction" is the great desideratum. "Construction" includes the exposition, progress, and unravelling of the plot; the development of those successive stages by the means of situations placed in the best positions and most effective sequence; the exits and entrances of characters; the forming of them into groups and the dispersing thereof; and the gradual helping forward of the story by the use of hints in the dialogue and the employment of bits of action known in stage-parlance as "business." A well-constructed play may be fitly compared to a Roman mosaic. It is composed of hundreds or thousands of minute pieces, each one of which has its value in creating the general effect, while the absence of any one would leave an ugly gap. In seeing a play we are in the same relative position as if we were watching a workman put together his mosaic. At first the importance and value of each sentence or action are as difficult to distinguish as in the case of each additional little square of stone; but after a time the apparently detached and disconnected morsels grow into a complete and systematic design. The artistically-made play has not in it a word or a deed which does not help on the action. Nor is anything omitted needed to make the situation clear and the development reasonably logical. If such omission were made, we should feel that the workman had left out one of his cubes and seriously injured the value of the work. Experience has taught the practical dramatist that the only way in which he can hope to secure good construction is by determining definitely, before beginning to write at all, what is to be the end of his play and how that end is to be attained. One of the Paris journals sent, a couple of years ago, a letter to each of the principal dramatists asking information about his method of working. The answers varied greatly in detail, but upon one point there was absolute unanimity, viz., that each constructed his last act in every detail before beginning to write; while one or two declared that they actually wrote the dialogue of the last act before writing a line of the first. In order to have a clear working-plan, the practical dramatist makes what he calls a "scenario" of his play; and the novice cannot do better than imitate him. The best "scenario" is made by following the French plan of calling each successive dialogue a "scene" until it is broken up or added to by the addition or departure of one or more members. As an instance, let us suppose a dramatist is commencing his play: he makes out some such memorandum as this: ACT I. SCENE. Here description of scene. SCENE I. A and B seated, discussing affairs of C. SCENE II. B and D plot to spread further scandal about C. SCENE III. Entry of C with his daughter, F. B talks to C. D attempts to make love to E, and is repulsed. Mem.-Try conversation in strophe and antistrophe. C with E. SCENE IV. Exit B and D. Pathetic revelation of impending ruin. Interrupted by arrival of F, hero. The number of such scenes or subdivisions generally runs about fifteen to each act. By the employment of this method each entrance and exit and the reason for the making of the same are arranged. The gist of each conversation is settled, and the author is able to see how long characters will be kept upon the stage, and thus avoid the danger of making parts too long or too short. It is very desirable that an entire act should take place in one scene or "set," as the shifting of scenery before the eyes of an audience always destroys something of the illusion. But in the present fashion of melodrama several changes of scene occur in many of the acts. The inexperienced writer should bear in mind that between each "set" or scene requiring considerable depth of stage, a front scene must be interposed to give the carpenters time to change to the second "set ;" and if that is elaborate, from seven to ten minutes will be required. A "set" can rarely be "struck" and another substituted in less than ten minutes, and therefore the dramatist must make his front scene interesting for that length of time at least. Now, as the painting cannot be very attractive, and as the limited space left between the front scene and the foot-lights does not admit of much action, the dialogue here must be as good as the writer can make it. And yet it must not wander from the development of the subject in search of verbal pyrotechnics. Mr. Boucicault once pointed out that in his most successful Irish plays he had put his own best "bits" and dialogue in the front scenes. "The 'sets,' "" said he, "will carry themselves by scenic beauty and the vigorous action that passes, but I must keep my best things to prevent the front scenes from dragging." The young writer should try to get his play into as few scenes as possible, for the manager in considering the advisability of accepting a piece will be greatly influenced by the cost, and each additional scene adds largely thereto. It is not advisable to have, at the most, more than three scenes to an act, the first and last of which can be " sets," while the middle one must be a front scene. It is true that recent improvements in stage-carpentering have made it possible, by means of what are termed "mechanical changes," to have one "full stage set" immediately succeeded by another; but the expense of doing this is very great, and managers are little likely to risk the outlay except on foreign successes or the work of an established dramatist. The necessity of the alternation of "set" and front scene would appear to be extremely evident, yet plays are constantly being received by managers in which the authors ask for four or five "sets" in an act and make no provision for front scenes. Even in the hands of the best dramatists a front scene is objectionable; and the best French writers, who are certainly the most able and advanced in the art of construction, never use it. Where their plays imperatively demand a great number of scenes, they divide them by dropping a tableau-curtain. It is far preferable to have a play in seven or eight tableaux than in three or four acts with frequent changes of scene. In comedies each act should invariably take place in one scene. The length of a play is something which very few novices in dramatic writing sufficiently consider. It will be found that plays long enough to "fill an evening" will contain from sixteen thousand to twenty thousand words of dialogue. These should be divided between the acts as equally as the exigencies of the scenes and action will permit. Thus, a five-act play of twenty thousand words should have four thousand words to the act, while the three-act comedy of eighteen thousand words would give six thousand words to each act. As a rule, dialogue is rarely spoken on the stage at a greater speed than one hundred and twenty-five words to the minute. A fairly good guide to the writer is to reckon that if he uses legal cap paper-the best for manuscript-and gives a line to the name of each character who speaks, each page will play but very little short of a minute. The division into acts need not be exact; but it is very bad to have one act play only fifteen minutes and the next forty-five. The last act is in most of the best plays the shortest, and frequently the first is the longest. Not more than one act should be devoted to the exposition of the story, and this need not develop much action; but after the first act the story must move rapidly and continuously. The greatest care must be taken to make the actions and situations seem to be the logical outcome of the natures and desires of the characters of the drama. they come on the stage and seem to do and say things only because the writer wants to lead to situations, they become mere puppets, and cease to hold or fail to win the interest of the audience. If The growth of interest in a play should be gradual and climactic, and may be expressed, when best handled, by a long crescendo mark, thus: One of the greatest difficulties to be overcome is the necessity of long explanations after the last strong situation is reached. The audience becomes wearied, and the interest has travelled in a way like this:. The explanation is foreseen, the progress of it is tedious; and instead of the audience being dismissed directly after a great effect, and while there is still strong tension on their nerves, they are allowed to become tired and restless and anxious to secure overcoats and wraps. Another danger lies in having long intervals supposed to elapse between acts, and the consequent necessity of explaining what has taken place. Instead, therefore, of carrying on the audience from the state of enthusiasm to which a previous act or situation may have roused them, they are let down and tried to be pulled up in this manner, the breaks being the intervals between the acts:<<<<<>. But the rock on which inexperience most frequently splits is the making of a strong first act which leads to nothing, or at best to something so feeble that the middle and end are completely overshadowed by the beginning. Nothing is easier than to get characters into involved and interesting complications; the extrication is the difficulty. Alexandre Dumas fils points this out very clearly in one of his famous prefaces. He says, in effect, "I offer dramatists the use of such and such situations which are in themselves immensely strong; but there is no way, at least no theatrically effective way, out of them.” The number of characters in a play of three or more acts must vary in number according to the requirements of the story; but it should not be fewer than eight, and almost any plot should be capable of unfolding by sixteen. Certain English melodramas of the "Lights o' London" and "Hoodman Blind" order contain about thirty speaking parts; but this great number is put in only to satisfy the manager who desires to advertise an 66 enormous" or "unparalleled" cast. The reason why fewer than eight people should not be employed is that the parts of each would then have to be made so unduly long as to run the risk of becoming wearisome. As a general rule, from ten to fourteen characters will be found ample. The nature of these will be determined by the plot; but the author should bear in mind the necessity for strong contrasts. He should also remember the usual members of a company, and write his parts so as to be within their reach; for any manager who may accept his play will not be very willing to engage extra people. A company is generally thus composed : Leading woman, who plays heroines. Juvenile woman, 66 66 ingénues. Comedy-woman, Heavy woman, Old woman, Utility women, adventuresses and female villains. play any small parts. Leading man, plays heroes. Juvenile man, 66 lovers. Comedian, Heavy man, 66 villains. Old man, Character actor, Utility men, In determining the construction of a play, a strenuous effort should be made to avoid the telling of stories by any of the characters. The awakening of interest should be effected by dialogue: monologues, so |