A Book About the Theater Part 4

I

It is a significant fact that whenever and wherever the drama has flourished most abundantly and most luxuriantly, we are certain to find a tendency to collaboration, to the partners.h.i.+p of two authors in the composition of one play. In England in the s.p.a.cious days of good Queen Bess, there is not only the famous a.s.sociation of Beaumont and Fletcher, but also a host of other more or less temporary combinations, Fletcher with Shakspere and Ma.s.singer, Dekker with Ben Jonson and with Middleton.

In Spain Lope de Vega joined forces with Montalvan and with others. In France in the seventeenth century Moliere, once at least called to his aid Corneille and Quinault; and in France again in the nineteenth century we find Augier working with Sandeau and with Foussier, Scribe working with Legouve, and with a score of others, while Dumas the elder was encompa.s.sed by a cloud of collaborators, and Dumas the younger was willing on more than one occasion to join various writers in the plays which he included in the separate volumes of his works, called by him the 'Theatre des Autres.' Then also in France there was the long-continued alliance of Meilhac and Halevy, to which we owe 'Froufrou' and the 'Grand d.u.c.h.ess of Gerolstein'; and there was also the almost equally interesting a.s.sociation of MM. Caillavet and de Flers. Sardou had one ally in the composition of 'Divorcons,' and another in the composition of 'Madame Sans Gene.' In Great Britain in recent years we have seen Sir James Barrie and Sir Arthur Pinero unite in writing a book for music; Mr. Bennett and Mr. k.n.o.blauch unite in writing 'Milestones'; Mr. Granville Barker and Mr. Laurence Housman unite in writing 'Prunella.' And in the United States there was a score of years ago the steady collaboration of Mr. Belasco with the late H. C.

De Mille, to which we owe the 'Charity Ball' and the 'Wife'; and more recently Mr. Belasco also has collaborated with Mr. John Luther Long in writing 'Madame b.u.t.terfly,' and the 'Darling of the G.o.ds.' Mr. Augustus Thomas was once the partner of Mr. Clay Greene; Mr. Bronson Howard composed one of his latest plays, 'Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of New Amsterdam,' in a.s.sociation with another American man of letters; and Mr.

Booth Tarkington and Mr. Harry Leon Wilson were the co-authors of the 'Man from Home' and of half a dozen other pieces.

While this prevalence of the practise of collaboration in periods of dramatic productivity is significant, it is equally significant that there is no corresponding prevalence of the practise of collaboration in novel-writing. True it is that there are certain fairly well-known partners.h.i.+ps in the history of prose fiction--that of Erckmann-Chatrain, in French, for instance, and that of Besant and Rice in English. True it is that d.i.c.kens and Wilkie Collins were joint authors of 'No Thorofare,' and that Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner were joint authors of the 'Gilded Age.' True it is also, that novels have been written not only by two partners, but by what can fairly be described as a syndicate of a.s.sociated authors, the 'King's Men' by four, 'Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other' by six, and the 'Whole Family' by twelve (including Mr. Howells and Mr. Henry James, Mrs. Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, and Doctor Henry van d.y.k.e). These freakish conglomerates are sporadic only; they seem to be little better than literary "stunts"; and even the union of two writers in the production of a single novel is far less frequently to be observed than the union of two writers in the production of a single play. The former is unusual, whereas the latter seems to be so common as to excite no comment.

Now, there must be a reason for this difference. If the playwrights find it advantageous to double up, and the novelists do not discover any profit in putting on double harness, there ought to be some evident explanation. When we consider more carefully the essentially different conditions of the art of prose fiction and the art of play-writing, it is not difficult to perceive fairly obvious reasons for the varying procedure of the pract.i.tioners of these rival arts, which may seem so much alike, but which are really so very different in their methods and in their possibilities.

The French critic Joubert once a.s.serted that "to make in advance an exact and detailed plan is to deprive one's intellect of all the pleasures of novelty and chance meeting during its execution; it is to make this execution insipid, and in consequence impossible, in works calling for enthusiasm and imagination." This is an overstatement--but it is not a misstatement--of a principle of composition which is fundamentally sound in the writing of prose fiction, but which is fundamentally unsound in the writing of plays. The drama demands a well-built story, artfully put together, while a novel need not have a coherent and compact plot. Some great novels, Fielding's 'Tom Jones' for one, and Turgenef's 'Smoke' for another, have each of them a beautifully articulated structure, and so has Mr. Howells's 'Rise of Silas Lapham,'

to take a later example. But other great novels are frankly more or less haphazard in their movement, the 'Pickwick Papers,' for instance, and 'Tartarin on the Alps,' and 'Huckleberry Finn.' And it is not too much to say that only a very few novels attain to the severity of structure, the regularity of action, the straightforward, unswerving movement which we discover in the dramas of a corresponding rank, and which can be achieved only by making in advance the exact and detailed plan that Joubert held to be fatal in works calling for enthusiasm and imagination.

Of course, the drama can utilize enthusiasm and imagination quite as often and quite as abundantly as can prose fiction, but it must use these precious gifts with a discretion which is not imposed upon its rival. In a novel enthusiastic imagination may lure the story-teller into a host of by-paths not foreseen by him when he set out on his journey; and while he is adventuring himself in these by-paths, he may chance to encounter characters of a diverting or an appealing personality, whom it may amuse him to delineate, and whom the readers of his book will be glad to welcome. But in a drama the story-teller is debarred from these wanderings from the straight and narrow road, and he must, perforce, control his enthusiastic imagination, compelling it to do its work within the rigid limits of the artfully devised framework of the plot.

In other words, character is all-important in prose fiction, and the ultimate fame of the novelist depends upon his power of endowing his creatures with life, and upon his ability to let them obey the laws of their being before our eyes. This must the playwright also achieve; but he has the added duty of relating his characters intimately to the main action of his drama. Now, the novelist is under no obligation of this sort; he appeals not to a crowd seated before a stage, but to the solitary reader in the study; and experience shows that solitary readers do not insist upon the solidity of structure in a novel which the same individuals desire and demand when they betake themselves to the theater. The novel-reader may be satisfied by characters who do not know their own minds, and who are merely exhibited and put through their paces, without having any vital relation to the story, even if there is anything which can fairly be called a story--and in some novels of high repute, in Sterne's 'Sentimental Journey,' for example, and in Anatole France's 'Histoire Contemporaine,' each of them extending over several volumes, there is little or no story, no main thread, no pretense of a plot.

II

Here, then, is the fatal difference between a novel and a play; a novel may have a plot, but a plot is not necessary, and it can get along with a minimum of story; whereas a play must have a plot, skilfully articulated, even if the skeleton is beautifully covered; it must have a story peopled by persons knowing their own minds, a story set in action by a dominating will, which determines the successive episodes of the action. As the making of a plot, as the putting together of a supporting skeleton of action, calls for dexterity of workmans.h.i.+p, for ingenuity of resource, for adroitness of construction, for the most careful consideration of the means whereby the end is to be obtained, two heads are often better than one, because the partners have to talk the thing out to its uttermost details before they decide upon the straight line which is the shortest distance between two points. The technic of play-making is more exacting than the technic of novel-writing, and it requires imperatively the exact and detailed plan which Joubert held to be hampering to enthusiasm and imagination. Scott, for example, as he tells us himself, began more than one of his novels not knowing what he was going to put into it, and not knowing from day to day, as he was writing, what his ultimate goal would be. But no playwright, however happy-go-lucky in his tendencies, has ever dared to begin a play before he knew with absolute certainty how he intended to end it. In the drama we insist upon a straightforward and unswerving action; the end is implied in the beginning, and the beginning is only what that end makes necessary.

As the technic of the drama is exacting, it needs to be acquired by a period of apprentices.h.i.+p; and here is another of the indisputable advantages of collaboration. The more inexperienced of the two collaborators is taken into the studio, so to speak, of the more expert, and he thereby learns the secrets of stage-craft in the best possible way, by applying them under the direction, or at the suggestion and by the advice, of an older pract.i.tioner, to whom they have become so familiar that they are a second nature, as it were.

Collaboration is the best conceivable school for young playwrights. It is impossible to overestimate the influence of Scribe's multiplied collaborations upon the drama of France in the mid-years of the nineteenth century; and almost as potent, because almost as wide-spread, was the influence of the many collaborations of the elder Dumas. Most of those who were the temporary partners of Scribe and Dumas were subdued to their more powerful a.s.sociate, and contributed little or nothing beyond their fundamental suggestions for the several plays, and their incidental suggestions as to details of the working-out. That is to say, most of the plays signed by Scribe and Dumas in partners.h.i.+p with others have a close similarity to the plays they signed alone. But from this generalization we may except 'Adrienne Lecouvreur' and 'Bataille de Dames,' in which Scribe had Legouve for a partner, and in which we find a greater richness of character delineation than in any of the pieces that Scribe composed alone, as we find also a greater dexterity of construction than in any of the pieces that Legouve composed alone.

To the fact that 'Milestones' was written by Mr. Arnold Bennett and Mr.

Edward k.n.o.blauch in conjunction, and to the friendly discussion due to their working together, we may credit the superior stage-effectiveness of this play over the 'Kismet,' which Mr. k.n.o.blauch wrote alone, and over the 'Great Adventure,' for which Mr. Bennett was solely responsible. To the composition of 'Milestones' each of these two authors, the American and the Englishman, brought his special qualifications, each of them not only stimulating but supplementing the other. So we find the most famous French comedy of the nineteenth century, the 'Gendre de M. Poirier,' a better piece of work, more equably balanced than any play written alone by either Augier or Sandeau.

It is scarcely necessary to say that there is little profit in a partners.h.i.+p for play-making when both of the a.s.sociates are equally inexpert, or when they were both possessed of wrong notions about the art of the drama. In the former case we have the blind leading the blind, and the most lamentable example of this is the long forgotten 'Ah Sin,' which Bret Harte and Mark Twain combined to compose that C. T.

Parsloe could impersonate the Heathen Chinee. In the latter case we have not only the blind leading the blind, but a perverseness in going the wrong way, intensified by the complete sympathy between the two a.s.sociates; and the most lamentable example of this is the 'Deacon Brodie' of Robert Louis Stevenson and William Ernest Henley, who not only were ignorant of the modern technic of the drama, but who ignored it of set purpose, deliberately going up a blind alley despite the plain sign that there was no thorofare.

III

Yet Stevenson, at least, perceived clearly enough what ought to be the more evident advantages of collaboration, that it focused "two minds together on the stuff," thus producing "an extraordinarily greater richness of purview, consideration, and invention." Collaboration will probably always produce a greater richness of invention, since each of the partners is likely to stimulate the other, their two minds striking sparks like flint and steel. But it can produce a greater richness of consideration only when each is willing both to yield and to oppose.

Neither must yield too easily; each of them must stand out for his own suggestions; and each of them must insist on weighing and measuring the suggestions of his ally. If they are too sympathetic, if their two hearts beat as one, then the advantage of their having two heads is diminished. If the two partners always think alike, then there will be no greater richness of purview.

When a play composed by two of his friends failed to find the success on the stage which had been antic.i.p.ated for it, Mr. Augustus Thomas made the shrewd remark that the two authors had probably been "too polite to each other"--that is to say, that they had not insisted upon criticising the successive suggestions made by each in turn. On the other hand, the collaborators must be broad-minded enough not to resent this necessary criticism. Like any other partners.h.i.+p, collaboration is a ticklish experiment, and it can be profitable only when the two partners are willing to give and take. They need more than usual self-control; they must be able, each of them, to preserve his own self-respect while full of regard for the self-respect of the other. It is not surprising that the long collaborations of Erckmann-Chatrain and of Meilhac and Halevy finally came to a sudden end because of an abrupt quarrel. That disagreement is likely to arise out of the discussions inherent in any profitable literary partners.h.i.+p is evidenced by a retort credited to the younger Dumas, who was a rather authoritative partner, and who did not always succeed in keeping on good terms with those whose plays he had bettered. A friend once suggested a theme for a play, and invited the collaboration of Dumas. "But why should I wish to quarrel with you?" was answer of the witty dramatist.

Perhaps the most remarkable instance of self-control in all the long history of collaboration is that of Theodore Barriere, the author of the once-famous play called the 'Marble Heart,' one of the latest of whose pieces (adapted by Augustin Daly as 'Alixe') was composed in collaboration with his mother-in-law!

Sometimes the breach between the two partners is postponed until after the play is completed and produced. Charles Reade and Tom Taylor joined forces in the composition of the long-popular comedy called 'Masks and Faces,' and after it had established itself upon the stage, Charles Reade took its plot and its characters and utilized them in his charming novel, 'Peg Woffington,' and as he had taken the liberty of thus making a private profit out of the property of the partners.h.i.+p, it is not to be wondered at that Tom Taylor was distinctly displeased. But Charles Reade, altho he collaborated with Tom Taylor, with Paul Merritt, and with Dion Boucicault, was more or less deficient in the courtesy and consideration that a man ought to possess to fit him for partners.h.i.+p.

When he allied himself with Dion Boucicault in the writing of the novel of 'Foul Play,' the collaborators quarreled so violently that they felt themselves justified in preparing rival dramatizations of the story they had written in conjunction, so that London playgoers had the opportunity of choosing between two different theatrical adaptations of the same tale.

When the two partners are courteous to each other but not too yielding, when they are sympathetic but not too much alike in their characteristics and qualifications, when each of them supplements the weaker points of the other, then collaboration ought to result in plays of more variety of invention, and of more ingenuity of construction than is likely to be possessed by the average play due to a single mind. This much must be admitted; and it is the final justification for collaboration. But altho these partners.h.i.+ps in play-making spread abroad a knowledge of the principles of the art, and altho they raise the probable value of the average play, it must be admitted also, and with equal frankness, that the possibilities of collaboration are sharply limited.

No single one of the mightiest masterpieces of dramatic literature, ancient and modern, is to be credited to collaboration; and the only possible exception to this sweeping statement would be urged by the critics who hold that the 'Gendre de M. Poirier' of Augier and Sandeau is the masterpiece of French comedy in the nineteenth century. Those who have climbed to the loftiest height of dramatic art have always done so alone, sustained by enthusiasm and supported by imagination. In spite of the greater "richness of purview, consideration, and invention" that collaboration undoubtedly bestows, the man of surpa.s.sing genius, the great master of the drama, Sophocles or Shakspere or Moliere, works best alone. It is true that he may now and again take to himself an ally, as Shakspere condescended to the a.s.sistance of Fletcher in 'Henry VIII,'

and as Moliere invoked the aid of Corneille in 'Psyche,' but it is true also that these plays, written in collaboration by Shakspere and by Moliere, are not the plays which establish and confirm their fame.

Indeed, these plays are not even among the more important pieces of Shakspere and Moliere, and the reputation of the authors would be no lower if these plays had never come into existence.

It is by the comedies and tragedies which Shakspere wrote alone that the Elizabethan stage is made glorious, and not by the dramatic romances that go under the joint names of Beaumont and Fletcher. It is by the lyrical melodramas of which Victor Hugo was sole author that we recall the Romanticist revolt in the French theater in 1830, and immediately thereafter, and not by the perfervidly pa.s.sionate pieces that the elder Dumas put together in partners.h.i.+p with a group of now-forgotten auxiliaries. It is by the comedies that Augier and the younger Dumas wrote, each of them expressing himself in his own fas.h.i.+on, that the drama of France is illumined a score or more years later, and not by the comedies in the composition of which Scribe had the aid of an army of allies.

In any period of abundant fertility we can observe growing together at the same time from the soil, a fairly large number of trees rising above the underbrush, and we can also perceive here and there a tree of conspicuous eminence towering above these clumps of average height. In the luxuriant forest of the drama many of the trees of average height may be ticketed with two names, but the monarchs of the wood, those whose tops lift themselves high above their neighbors--these will be found to bear only single signature.

(1914.)

VI

THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS

THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS

I

In Professor Bliss Perry's admirably suggestive 'Study of Prose Fiction,' he devotes one chapter to a careful consideration of the essential distinctions between prose fiction and the drama, in which he makes it plain that "the novel and the play are not merely two different modes of communicating the same fact or truth," because "the different modes of presentation really result in the communication of a different fact." Professor Perry declares that the field of the dramatist is marked off from that of the novelist "by the nature of the artistic medium which each man employs," and he a.s.serts that the choice of a medium for presenting his story and projecting his characters "depends wholly upon the personality and training of the artist and the nature of the fact or truth that he wishes to convey to the public". And he sums up by insisting that "a novel is typically as far removed from a play as a bird is from a fish, and that any attempt to transform one into the other is apt to result in a sort of flying-fish, a betwixt-and-between thing--capable, indeed, of both swimming and flying, but good at neither." In other words, a dramatized novel or a novelized play is an attempt to breed an amphibious creature which, as the Irishman once defined it, "can't live on the land, and dies in the water."

The difference between the novel and the play is due to the inexorable fact that one is intended to be read alone in the study, and that the other is intended to be seen on the stage by a crowd; it ought to be obvious to all who care to consider the question, and yet there are many who fail to grasp the distinction, deceived by the illusive but superficial similarities between the two forms, each of which contains a story carried on by characters who take part in dialogs. And as a result of this failure to apprehend the vital differences between the two types of story-telling, the narrative to be perused and the action to be witnessed, our theaters have long been invaded by dramatized novels, and our book-stores are now being besieged by novelized plays. In many cases, if not in most of them, the motive for the transformation is simply commercial; and in view of the immediate gain to be garnered, the artistic disadvantages of the procedure are overlooked. If hundreds of thousands of readers have found pleasure in following the footsteps of a fascinating heroine thru the pages of a prose fiction, it is possible always that hundreds of thousands of spectators may be lured to behold her adventures when they are set forth anew in a stage-play. And if a compelling plot has drawn audiences night after night into the theater, it is possible again that this plot may attract book-buyers in equal numbers when it is retold in a narrative for the benefit of those remote from the playhouse, or reluctant to risk themselves within its portals. Managers are ready to tempt the novelist with the hope of a second crop of fame and fortune, and publishers dangle the same golden bait before the eyes of the dramatist.

Altho this effort to kill two birds with one stone is more frequent of late than it used to be, it is not at all new--indeed it existed before the rise of prose fiction. The dramatic poets of Greece borrowed episodes from the earliest epic poets. Centuries later Shakspere laid violent hands on Italian tales and on English romances. On the other hand, while it must be admitted that the dramatizing of novels has been far more prevalent in the past than the novelizing of plays, this latter practise, suddenly popular in the twentieth century, was not unknown in the centuries that preceded ours. For example, Le Sage levied upon the Spanish playwrights for many of the characters and the situations he needed, for his rambling, picaresque novels, 'Gil Blas' and its sister stories. Another ill.u.s.tration can be found in England earlier than any in France; and before the play of 'Pericles,' which Shakspere seems to have edited and improved, was printed and perhaps even before it was performed, it was novelized by an obscure writer named Wilkins, who was very probably the author of the original version of the straggling piece that Shakspere revised. Thru the long years prose fiction and the drama have struggled with each other for the favor of the public, and each of them has always been willing to borrow from its rival whenever it found material fitted for its own special purpose.

II

But altho the dramatizing of novels was less uncommon a century or two ago than the novelizing of plays, neither was frequent and neither of them was in any way prohibited by law. That is to say, the novel and the play were held to be so different that the novelist could not prevent the dramatist from borrowing his stories, and the playwright could not forbid the writer of prose fiction from taking over his plots. Even the dramatizing of novels was so uncommon that the earlier story-tellers were not moved to protest when they saw their fictions employed by the playwrights; in fact, they were often inclined to accept this as a compliment to their original invention. Marmontel, for instance, in the preface to a late edition of his 'Moral Tales,' pointed with pride to the fact that one of these prose narratives had been turned into a play, and suggested complacently that there were other stories in his collection worthy of the same fate. Tennyson borrowed the story of his 'Dora' from Miss Mitford; and Charles Reade had no scruple in making a play out of Tennyson's poem. It must be admitted that Reade's att.i.tude was rather inconsistent, for he writhed in pain when one of his own novels was cut into dialog and put on the stage without his permission, and yet he himself made plays out of novels by Anthony Trollope and by Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett without asking their leave, and without heed to their subsequent protests against his high-handed proceeding.

Apparently, when he was the aggressor he thought that he was doing a service to his victims.

When Reade was guilty of this offense against the developing literary morals of the nineteenth century, he was probably within his legal rights, since the British law had not then advanced to the point of recognizing the author's complete owners.h.i.+p of the fiction he had created. This defect has been remedied at last, and in the existing copyright and stage-right legislation of Great Britain and the United States authors are a.s.sumed to reserve to themselves every privilege which they do not specifically deprive themselves of; and they need no longer announce that they desire to retain all rights for their own profit. Both in the British code and in the American the novelist has now the sole privilege of making a play out of his story, and the dramatist has the sole privilege of making a novel out of his play.

_Dramatization_ is a word of respectable antiquity, and the corresponding word, _novelization_, has now been legally recognized as a distinctive term. The authors had felt a wrong when others could legally make money out of a plot they had invented; and they a.s.serted a moral right to control their own works whatever might be the form of presentation. The progress of legal reform was slow, as it usually is, but it was also certain. The moral right has now become a legal right of which the original author may avail himself or not, as he pleases. He may, if he chooses, dramatize his own novel and novelize his own play; or, if he prefers, he can sell the permission to rehandle his material to a professional playwright or to a professional storyteller.

III

There is one peculiar distinction between the novel and the play which Professor Bliss Perry did not emphasize. A novel may please long, and please many when it is only a study of character, like the 'Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard' of M. Anatole France, or when it is only the record of a series of adventures and misadventures pa.s.sing before the eyes of the chief personage, like the 'Huckleberry Finn' of Mark Twain. A play, on the other hand, is likely to fail to please audiences in the theater unless it sets before the spectators a clearly defined struggle, a conflict of desires, a stark a.s.sertion of the human will. That is to say, the drama must deal with a struggle, and the novel need not. The drama must be dynamic and the novel may be static--if these scientific terms may be employed without pedantry. Therefore, while any play may be novelized, with more or less chance of pleasing its new public, if the task is skilfully accomplished, only those novels can be successfully dramatized which happen to present an essential struggle and to display the collision of contending volitions. Any dramatization of the 'Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard' or of 'Huckleberry Finn,' of 'Gil Blas' or of the 'Pickwick Papers,' is foredoomed to failure, for these prose fictions do not contain the stuff out of which a vital play could be made. But 'Jane Eyre,' for example, and the 'Tale of Two Cities,' and 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' do possess this necessary dramatic element, and they can be made into plays with a prospect of pleasing audiences in the theater.

Even when the novel chances to have the essential struggle which the drama demands, the task of adapting it to the stage is not so easy as the non-expert supposes. At first sight it may seem as if there ought to be very little difficulty in turning a novel into a play. There is a story ready-made, situations in abundance, and characters endowed with the breath of life. Yet as a matter of fact, it is harder to make a play out of a novel than it is to write an original play. The immediate danger before the theatrical adapter is that he may be tempted to serve up the story merely as a panorama of successive episodes instead of casting out resolutely everything, however good in itself, which does not bear directly upon the fundamental conflict. This is one reason why the novelist had better leave the work of dramatization to an experienced playwright, who will ruthlessly omit many an episode that the story-teller could not bring himself to discard. In fact, it is hard even for the expert adapter to disentangle the special situations of a novel which alone are available in a play, and he is often tempted to retain much that he had better leave out.

Perhaps it is not too daring a paradox to suggest that a prose fiction is most likely to be made into a good play when the playwright has not read the book he is dramatizing, but has only been told the story, so that he is free to handle the situations afresh in accord with the conditions of dramatic art, and free to discard the special developments chosen by the novelist in accord with the very different conditions of narrative art. The best version of Mrs. Henry Wood's 'East Lynne' is the French play, 'Miss Multon,' by Adolphe Belot and Eugene Nus; and neither of the French collaborators knew any more about the English novel than its bare story, which was told to one of them by a French actress, who could read English. Now and again a clever playwright, even when he has the disadvantage of complete familiarity with the novel, can break loose from it and yet preserve its full flavor; and this is what Mr. George M.

Cohan was able to do in the play wherein he presented the leading characters of Mr. George Randolph Chester's 'Get-Rich-Quick-Wallingford'

in a set of situations very different from those in the original story.

Thus we see that only a few novels are really fit to be dramatized, and that even these are often dramatized ineffectively because the playwright has followed the story-teller too closely instead of putting the plot back into solution, so to speak, and letting it recrystallize in dramatic form. The novelizer has a larger liberty since every play contains a story and characters capable of being transferred to prose fiction. But his task has its equivalent danger, and the writer of the narrative may be content merely to tread in the footsteps of the dramatist, and to do no more than write out more amply the dialog and the stage business, instead of reconceiving the plot afresh to tell it more in accord with the divergent principles of the art of prose fiction. The limitations of time to "the two hours' traffic of the stage" compel the dramatist to extreme compression; his dialogs must be far compacter and more pregnant than is becoming in the more leisurely novel, where the author can take all the time there is. Moreover, the playwright often does no more than allude to episodes which it would profit the novelist to present in detail to his readers; and the adroit novelizer will be quick to seize upon hints of this sort to amplify into chapters containing interesting material for which the original play supplied only the most summary suggestion.

IV

The novelizing of plays is frequent and profitable in America in these early years of the twentieth century; and it had been attempted infrequently even in the seventeenth century. Yet only one of these novelized plays has succeeded in winning an honorable place for itself in prose fiction. This is the charming tale of theatrical life in the eighteenth century, 'Peg Woffington,' which Charles Reade made out of the comedy of 'Masks and Faces,' written by him in collaboration with Tom Taylor. Reade took the liberty of novelizing this comedy without asking Taylor's permission, and even without consulting his collaborator; and all the comment that need be made is that the procedure was truly characteristic of Reade's lordly att.i.tude toward others--an att.i.tude taken by him on many other occasions. But whatever injustice he did to his fellow worker, he did none to the joint product of their invention; he trans.m.u.ted a play into a novel with due appreciation of the demands of the other art, and he produced a fascinating tale with a fascinating heroine, which has been read by thousands who have had no suspicion that Peg Woffington had originally figured in a comedy.

Charles Reade was able to accomplish this feat because he was more skilful as a novelist than as a dramatist, altho he fancied himself rather as a maker of plays than as a writer of stories. More than once did he attempt to repeat this early success in winning two prizes with the same horse. He took the 'Pauvres de Paris' of Brisebarre and Nus--the same play which Dion Boucicault had adapted as the 'Streets of New York'--and made a version which he called 'Gold,' under which name it had a few performances. He had materially modified the French plot in his English play; and he got still further away from Brisebarre and Nus, when he novelized 'Gold,' and called it 'Hard Cash,' a matter-of-fact romance. Later he dramatized this novel of his, and the resulting play did not bear any close resemblance to the 'Pauvres de Paris.'

Reade also collaborated a few years later with Henry Pett.i.tt in a piece called 'Singleheart and Doubleface,' which he promptly proceeded to novelize--again without consulting his partner. For this indelicacy, swift vengeance followed, as the British novel, being then unprotected by copyright in the United States, was immediately dramatized by Messrs.

George H. Jessop and William Gill. It may be noted here casually that another of Reade's romances, 'White Lies,' afterward dramatized by him, had been originally novelized from a French play called the 'Chateau de Grantier,' written by Auguste Maquet (the ally of Dumas in the 'Three Guardsmen' and 'Monte Cristo'). It is not a little surprising that a man like Reade, who prided himself on his originality, and who even went so far as to accuse George Eliot of stealing his thunder, should have been willing to call so frequently on the aid of collaborators, and to derive so much of his material from foreign sources.