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Updated: May 14, 2025
Was Sarcey right in assuming such a compulsion to be a constant and dominant factor in the playwright's craft? I think we shall see reason to believe him right in holding that it frequently arises, but wrong if he went the length of maintaining that there can be no good play without a definite scène
The principle is pretty plain, I think, that it ought to be the artist's, as it is the man's, last resort. We know that, in most civilized countries, suicide is greatly on the increase. It cannot be called an infrequent incident in daily life. It is certain, too, that the motives impelling to it are apt to be of a dramatic nature, and therefore suited to the playwright's purposes.
Miss Ellsling and a youth of the company took their places near the front of the stage and began the rehearsal of the second act with a dialogue that led up to the entrance of the star with the "ingenue," both of whom still remained out of the playwright's range of vision. As the moment for their appearance drew near, Canby became, to his own rage, almost uncontrollably agitated.
I'm very, very doubtful about it." He peered over Tinker's head, squinting his eyes, and seemed for the first time to be aware of the playwright's presence. "Oh, are you there, Mr. Canby? When did you come in?" "I've been here all the time," said the dishevelled Canby, coming forward. "I supposed it was my business to be here, but-"
How to bring home to the audience a decisive change of heart is one of the ever-recurring problems of the playwright's craft. In The Lady from the Sea, Ibsen failed to solve it: in Rosmersholm he solved it by heroic measures.
At the theatre a critic sits unmoved; dispassionately he looks upon the personages of the drama, as they advance, retreat, and countermarch, little by little yielding up their secret, disclosing all the subtle interplay of human motives. From the heights of his knowledge the critic surveys the spectacle; with an insight born of his learning, he penetrates the mysteries of the playwright's craft.
He had thought at first that he might attend the theatre, but he realized now that the stage puppets were but faint reflections of the stirring drama all about him the playwright's plot less gripping than that in which he himself was the central figure. To pass through those doors would be more like stepping out of a theatre into the leaden reality of life as he had seen it before yesterday.
When a whole theme involving conflict, or even a single scene of the nature described as a "passage-at-arms," comes naturally in the playwright's way, by all means let him seize the opportunity. But do not let him reject a theme or scene as undramatic merely because it has no room for a clash of warring wills.
The critic must not only make clear the playwright's present actual accomplishment, but must also estimate his promise. An author's first or second play is important mainly to use Whitman's phrase as "an encloser of things to be." The question is not so much what the author has already done as what he is likely to do if he is given further hearings.
"I will do it because I believe in its method and because I think it worthy of my highest powers." The blood rushed to the playwright's throat and a smarting heat dimmed his eyes. He spoke with difficulty. "I thank you," he said, hoarsely. "It is more than I expected; and now that you have promised to do it, I feel you ought not to take the risk."
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