United States or Haiti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Tom Taylor, journalist and playwriter, was born 1817 in Sunderland. For two years he was Professor of the English language and literature at University College. He was called to the Bar of Inner Temple in 1845. He acted as Secretary to the Board of Health and Local Government Act Office. After the year 1846 he devoted himself chiefly to playwriting, and in 1874 was editing Punch.
I believe that, had he taken to playwriting nearly half-a-century earlier, and studied the root principles of craftsmanship, instead of blindly accepting the Elizabethan conventions, he might have done work as fine in the mass as are the best moments of Queen Mary and Harold.
The intellectual power required to criticise one's own experience with a formative result will of course vary considerably in different occupations. Technical mastery of the occupation of playwriting, criticism, or statesmanship, will require more specifically intellectual qualities than will be demanded by the competent musician or painter.
"I didn't know I had so many friends in the world. Two minutes ago I was so scared my teeth chattered. Now I am entirely at my ease you notice that." The little ripple of laughter which followed this remark really gave him time to think gave him courage. "I feel that I am at last face to face with an audience that knows my work that is ready to support a serious attempt at playwriting.
He turned swiftly to Hardiman with a boyish light upon his face. "Oh, I am not in doubt of what to-night means to me! Not for a moment. If it's failure, it means that I begin again to-morrow on something else; and again after that, and again after that, until success does come. Playwriting is my profession, and failures are a necessary part of it just as much a part as the successes.
My book on playwriting divides plays into Introduction, Development, Crisis, Denouement and Catastrofe. And so one may devide life. In my case the Cinder proved the Introduction, as there was none other. I consider that the Suitcase was the Development, my showing it to Jane Raleigh was the Crisis, and the Denouement or Catastrofe occured later on. Let us then procede to the Catastrofe.
But the literary characteristic of the present age the one which is most likely to differentiate it from its predecessor, is the revival of the drama. When we left it before the Commonwealth the great English literary school of playwriting the romantic drama was already dead. It has had since no second birth.
He got a North Pole reception. In fact, M. de Martignac said that it was his busy day, and that playwriting was foolish business anyway; but if a man were bound to write, he should write to amuse, not to instruct. And young Hugo was bowed out. When he found himself well outside the door he was furious. He would see the King himself. And he did see the King.
It is not merely a want of the knack of playwriting a vulgar, useful term that kept Browning or Tennyson from success on the stage. No one ever had such a prodigious "knack" as Ibsen, and Rosmersholm is the most amazing tour de force of craftmanship.
Word Of The Day