What is a Good Play?

Radio Record, Volume II, Issue 32, 22 February 1929, Page 3

What is a Good Play?

Considerations of a Leading English Dramatist

N view of the fact that the R.B.C. are making an appeal for plays, this article, from the pen of Mr, James Agate, dramatic critic of the B.B.C., should set the efforts of many who have taken interest in the appeal moving in the right direction.

NLY last week I received from u Midu.esbrough listener the YoUowing postcard: "When you go to the theatre have you wu standard play at the back of your mind by which to meusure and judge? If so, how many acts has it? How many scenes? Is the action ‘consecutive’? Is it a ‘one-man’ play? liag, it) a happy ending?’ The aLUS§ er is that 1 always have anu lded play og the buck of my mind, only this play isn't a rigid, unalterable thing like the standard yard, pound, or pint. It isn’t shaped like a foot-rule, and 1 measure by it in my own way. ]D1CKENS ‘used his absurd figure of Mr. Curdle to poke fun at the silly professors who know ‘nothing about the drama, but all about its rules. Now, how. are the rules ‘of any art arrived at Well, I don’t think anybody would want to establish a chair of poetry before there were any poets, or make rules about playwriting before there were any playwrights. The horse comes first, and then the cart, ,I imagine therefore that a principle is created as soon as you find a number of artists putting it into practice. . Take the elementary rule:about not ce a secret from your audience. fe) im Som not to be supposed ‘that Aristotle Ww up one morning, got into _ his bath, seized the soap and shouted: "Wureka! No dramatist must ke- > a secret from his audience!" What Aristotle did}; or what later professors did after him, was to discover that the gr *+ »ractising dramatists made so little use of the quality of surprise that it was obvious that thev didn’t think it a- good quality. Sonhocles in’the play of ‘Ovclipus Tyrannus" Jets ‘s cat out of the bag at once. We in the audience know almost immediately that the dreadful propliecy has come true and that Oedipus has killed his. father and married his ewn mother. But the French dramatist, Corneille, when he treated the same theme in "Oedipe Roi," kept the fulfilment of the prophecy equally from the audience’ as from Oedipus himself and filled in with three acts of piffle so as,to spring his fourth-act surprise on both sides of the curtain at onee. The result is that the French a tm aes as the Greek play’ braces the spirit of mun for ever by showing how much agony.a noble mind may endure. And, of course, you can’t go on repeating a surprise, ..- In Peacock’s "Headlong Hall"--from which Mr. Shaw took the idea of "Heartbreak Tlouse"’--there is ua Mr. Gall who distinguishes between the. picturesque and the beautiful, and adds to these qualities, in the laying-out of gardens and pleasure-grounds, "a third and distinct character which he calls urjexpectedness." "Pray,. sir," retorts a Wr. Milestone, "by what name do you distinguish this character when a person walks round the grounds for the second time?" It is because the quality of surprise has been found to cheapen drama that a rule against it has been made.

It is the same with the things you must do as with the things you musn’t: in each ease it is experience which lays down the law. The . tragedies of Shakespeare. Racine, and Corneille have fine ucts because though the Greek play had only one act the emotion of that act went though five distinct stages. There was first the beginning of the story, second its growth and application, third a state of suspension or gathering of clouds before the storm. erp

ee ee) 1 Oe et Se ee A 8) 0 0 fourth the climax or thunder-clash, and fifth the clearing-up, which included the time necessary for the audience to become calm again and leave for home in a state of equanimity corresponding to that in which it entered the theatre. A certain similarity might be deduced between the principles of the drama and the Turkish bath. More seriously, it’ follows that it doesn’t matter how many acts rou have provided you have emotional progression with a climax in the proper place N the question of the number of seenes, again it hardly matters whether like the Greeks you have one, or whether like Shakespeare in ‘"Antony and Cleopatro" you take ‘wen’: Rut perhaps you had better he a Shakespeare before you decide on so many, as even the very great play T have mentioned undoubtedly suffers from the constant chopping and changing of scene. I admit that each time when, in a modern play. the curtain goes up and discloses the same scene as before, I suffer a slight disappointment. It would seem that the eye needs a change as much as ear or brain.

The scenario for my ideal modern comedy reads as follows :- Act I. The drawing-room in Lady de Courcy Marshmallow’s House jn Park Lane. Afternoon. Act Il. The morning-room in Mr. Austruther’s House in Curzon Street. The same evening. Act Ill. The Hon. Repton Marlborough’s chambers in the Albany. Midnight. TIP OTEDOETEY THe

Is the action consecutive?-asks my friend. This brings us back to Mr. Curdle’s unities. In Greek drama the unities were those of’ action, time, and place. In other words, there had to be one main plot; the time taken must not exceed twenty-four hours: and the place of action must remain the same throughout the piece. Yet I seem to remember a play by Mr. Bernard Shaw which began in the Garden of Wden and ended in the year of Our Lord, thirty-one thousand nine hundred and twenty. And, sinee "Back to Methuselah" is a masterpiece, one would say that the unities can safely be broken. But there is this to be said for them: that deference to them entails much beauty of craftsmanship which otherwise would go by the board. "Limitations proclaim the ma ter," said Goethe. Is my ideal play a one-man play? It isn’t, if that means a 6ne-leading-man's play. But I think that any good piece should have a central theme which may be typified in a central character. Has my ideal play a happy ending? Yes, if it calls for one, but not if the audience is deemed so weak-

minded that it cannot endure a sad one. If the soldier-hero in "Caste" did not return to Esther’s arms and baby, "Caste" would be a bad play, because the feelings of the spectator would be lacerated by an entirely unnecessary tragedy. There is no reason why George D’Alroy should -not come safely through his war. But "King Lear" would be a bad play if the old man made it up with Regan and Goneril. and Cordelia came to life again and married Edgar. "King Lear" was meant to end unhappily. It ended unhappily before the very first word was written. The golden rule about playwriting: is that there is no golden rule, except that a play must be consistent with itself. My ideal play is any play which has been devised by a fine mind. . If the play is tragic its issue shall. be nobly conducted and debated; if it is sentimental the sugar in it must come from the same shop whish sold the Dormouse (or : whoever it was in "Alice in Wonderland"), the best butter. And again, I mean by a fine mind a mind which is good of its sort. "The Private Secretary" and "Charley’s Aunt" are ideal farces, because they proceed from first-class farcical minds and are faultless. Or you might eall "Hamlet" an ideal tragedy in spite of its faults. Why, for example, didn’t Horatio tell Hamlet when he met him at the railway station. on his return from England that Ophelia was dead? The real point is that the

people who can write plays do not need to know any of the rules, and if a man can’t write a play not all the handbooks that have ever been written will teach him, The born dramatist is one who doesn’t know how it is" done, but can do it. Sir James Barrie, when he was asked to write an intre duction to the plays of Harold Cha pin, confessed that he bought a book about how to write plays. But the book was so tearned and the author knew so much and the subject grew so difficult, that Sir James abandoneil it in despair. And we may reflect upon how great would have been the loss to the English stage if Barrie had ever learned how to write for it.