negative. The first act puts us
in possession of the current version of the Bernick-Tцnnesen family
history, but it gives us no clear indication that this version is an
elaborate tissue of falsehoods. It is true that Bernick's evident
uneasiness and embarrassment at the mere idea of the reappearance of
Lona and Johan may lead us to suspect that all is not as it seems; but
simple annoyance at the inopportune arrival of the black sheep of the
family might be sufficient to account for this. To all intents and
purposes, we are completely in the dark as to the course the drama is
about to take; and when, at the end of the first act, Lona Hessel
marches in and flutters the social dovecote, we do not know in what
light to regard her, or why we are supposed to sympathize with her. The
fact that she is eccentric, and that she talks of "letting in fresh
air," combines with our previous knowledge of the author's idiosyncrasy
to assure us that she is his heroine; but so far as the evidence
actually before us goes, we have no means of forming even the vaguest
provisional judgment as to her true character. This is almost certainly
a mistake in art. It is useless to urge that sympathy and antipathy are
primitive emotions, and that we ought to be able to regard a character
objectively, rating it as true or false, not as attractive or repellent.
The answer to this is twofold. Firstly, the theatre has never been, and
never will be, a moral dissecting room, nor has the theatrical audience
anything in common with a class of students dispassionately following a
professor's demonstration of cold scientific facts. Secondly, in the
particular case in point, the dramatist makes a manifest appeal to our
sympathies. There can be no doubt that we are intended to take Lona's
part, as against the representatives of propriety and convention
assembled at the sewing-bee; but we have been vouchsafed no rational
reason for so doing. In other words, the author has not taken us far
enough into his action to enable us to grasp the true import and
significance of the situation. He relies for his effect either on the
general principle that an eccentric character must be sympathetic, or on
the knowledge possessed by those who have already seen or read the rest
of the play. Either form of reliance is clearly inartistic. The former
appeals to irrational prejudice; the latter ignores what we shall
presently find to be a fundamental principle of the playwright's
art--namely, that, with certain doubtful exceptions in the case of
historical themes, he must never assume previous knowledge either of
plot or character on the part of his public, but must always have in his
mind's eye a first-night audience, which knows nothing but what he
chooses to tell it.

My criticism of the first act of _Pillars of Society_ may be summed up
in saying that the author has omitted to place in it the _erregende
Moment_. The issue is not joined, the true substance of the drama is not
clear to us, until, in the second act, Bernick makes sure there are no
listeners, and then holds out both hands to Johan, saying: "Johan, now
we are alone; now you must give me leave to thank you," and so forth.
Why should not this scene have occurred in the first act? Materially,
there is no reason whatever. It would need only the change of a few
words to lift the scene bodily out of the second act and transfer it to
the first. Why did Ibsen not do so? His reason is not hard to divine; he
wished to concentrate into two great scenes, with scarcely a moment's
interval between them, the revelation of Bernick's treachery, first to
Johan, second to Lona. He gained his point: the sledge-hammer effect of
these two scenes is undeniable. But it remains a question whether he did
not make a disproportionate sacrifice; whether he did not empty his
first act in order to overfill his second. I do not say he did: I merely
propound the question for the student's consideration. One thing we must
recognize in dramatic art as in all other human affairs; namely, that
perfection, if not unattainable, is extremely rare. We have often to
make a deliberate sacrifice at one point in order to gain some greater
advantage at another; to incur imperfection here that we may achieve
perfection there. It is no disparagement to the great masters to admit
that they frequently show us rather what to avoid than what to do.
Negative instruction, indeed, is in its essence more desirable than
positive. The latter tends to make us mere imitators, whereas the
former, in saving us from dangers, leaves our originality unimpaired.

It is curious to note that, in another play, Ibsen did actually transfer
the _erregende Moment_, the joining of issue, from the second act to the
first. In his early draft of _Rosmersholm_, the great scene in which
Rosmer confesses to Kroll his change of views did not occur until the
second act. There can be no doubt that the balance and proportion of the
play gained enormously by the transference.

After all, however, the essential question is not how much or how little
is conveyed to us in the first act, but whether our interest is
thoroughly aroused, and, what is of equal importance, skilfully carried
forward. Before going more at large into this very important detail of
the playwright's craft, it may be well to say something of the nature of
dramatic interest in general.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: There are several cases in Greek drama in which a hero
leaves the stage to fight a battle and returns victorious in a few
minutes. See, for example, the _Supplices_ of Euripides.]

[Footnote 2: So far was Shakespeare from ignoring the act-division that
it is a question whether his art did not sometimes suffer from the
supposed necessity of letting a fourth act intervene between the
culmination in the third act and the catastrophe in the fifth.]

[Footnote 3: I think it may be said that the majority of modern serious
plays are in four acts. It is a favourite number with Sir Arthur Pinero,
Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, Mr. Clyde Fitch, and Mr. Alfred Sutro.]

[Footnote 4: This must not be taken to mean that in no case is a change
of scene within the act advisable. The point to be considered is whether
the author does or does not want to give the audience time for
reflection--time to return to the real world--between two episodes. If
it is of great importance that they should not do so, then a rapid
change of scene may be the less of two evils. In this case the lights
should be kept lowered in order to show that no interact is intended;
but the fashion of changing the scene on a pitch-dark stage, without
dropping the curtain, is much to be deprecated. If the revolving stage
should ever become a common institution in English-speaking countries,
dramatists would doubtless be more tempted than they are at present to
change their scenes within the act; but I doubt whether the tendency
would be wholly advantageous. No absolute rule, however, can be laid
down, and it may well be maintained that a true dramatic artist could
only profit by the greater flexibility of his medium.]

[Footnote 5: He was, in the first draft; and Lona Hessel was only a
distant relative of Bernick's.]

[Footnote 6: The Greeks, who knew most things, knew the value of
manageable dimensions and simple structure in a work of art, and had a
word to express that combination of qualities--the word _eusynopton_.]




_CHAPTER IX_

"CURIOSITY" AND "INTEREST"


The paradox of dramatic theory is this: while our aim is, of course, to
write plays which shall achieve immortality, or shall at any rate become
highly popular, and consequently familiar in advance to a considerable
proportion of any given audience, we are all the time studying how to
awaken and to sustain that interest, or, more precisely, that curiosity,
which can be felt only by those who see the play for the first time,
without any previous knowledge of its action. Under modern conditions
especially, the spectators who come to the theatre with their minds an
absolute blank as to what is awaiting them, are comparatively few; for
newspaper criticism and society gossip very soon bruit abroad a general
idea of the plot of any play which attains a reasonable measure of
success. Why, then, should we assume, in the ideal spectator to whom we
address ourselves, a state of mind which, we hope and trust, will not be
the state of mind of the majority of actual spectators?

To this question there are several answers. The first and most obvious
is that to one audience, at any rate, every play must be absolutely new,
and that it is this first-night audience which in great measure
determines its success or failure. Many plays have survived a
first-night failure, and still more have gone off in a rapid decline
after a first-night success. But these caprices of fortune are not to be
counted on. The only prudent course is for the dramatist to direct all
his thought and care towards conciliating or dominating an audience to
which his theme is entirely unknown,[1] and so coming triumphant through
his first-night ordeal. This principle is subject to a certain
qualification in the case of historic and legendary themes. In treating
such subjects, the dramatist is not relieved of the necessity of
developing his story clearly and interestingly, but has, on the
contrary, an additional charge imposed upon him--that of not flagrantly
defying or disappointing popular knowledge or prejudice. Charles I must
not die in a green old age, Oliver Cromwell must not display the manners
and graces of Sir Charles Grandison, Charles II must not be represented
as a model of domestic virtue. Historians may indict a hero or whitewash
a villain at their leisure; but to the dramatist a hero must be (more or
less) a hero, a villain (more or less) a villain, if accepted tradition
so decrees it.[2] Thus popular knowledge can scarcely be said to lighten
a dramatist's task, but rather to impose a new limitation upon him. In
some cases, however, he can rely on a general knowledge of the historic
background of a given period, which may save him some exposition. An
English audience, for instance, does not require to be told what was the
difference between Cavaliers and Roundheads; nor does any audience, I
imagine, look for a historical disquisition on the Reign of Terror. The
dramatist has only to bring on some ruffianly characters in Phrygian
caps, who address each other as "Citizen" and "Citizeness," and at once
the imagination of the audience will supply the roll of the tumbrels and
the silhouette of the guillotine in the background.

To return to the general question: not only must the dramatist reckon
with one all-important audience which is totally ignorant of the story
he has to tell; he must also bear in mind that it is very easy to
exaggerate the proportion of any given audience which will know his plot
in advance, even when his play has been performed a thousand times.
There are inexhaustible possibilities of ignorance in the theatrical
public. A story is told, on pretty good authority, of a late eminent
statesman who visited the Lyceum one night when Sir Henry Irving was
appearing as Hamlet. After the third act he went to the actor's
dressing-room, expressed great regret that duty called him back to
Westminster, and begged Sir Henry to tell him how the play ended, as it
had interested him greatly.[3] One of our most eminent novelists has
assured me that he never saw or read _Macbeth_ until he was present at
(I think) Mr. Forbes Robertson's revival of the play, he being then
nearer fifty than forty. These, no doubt, are "freak" instances; but in
any given audience, even at the most hackneyed classical plays, there
will be a certain percentage of children (who contribute as much as
their elders to the general temper of an audience), and also a
percentage of adult ignoramuses. And if this be so in the case of plays
which have held the stage for generations, are studied in schools, and
are every day cited as matters of common knowledge, how much more
certain may we be that even the most popular modern play will have to
appeal night after night to a considerable number of people who have no
previous acquaintance with either its story or its characters! The
playwright may absolutely count on having to make such an appeal; but he
must remember at the same time that he can by no means count on keeping
any individual effect, more especially any notable trick or device, a
secret from the generality of his audience. Mr. J.M. Barrie (to take a
recent instance) sedulously concealed, throughout the greater part of
_Little Mary_, what was meant by that ever-recurring expression, and
probably relied to some extent on an effect of amused surprise when the
disclosure was