How to Write a Play | Page 7

he says that he has done
exactly what he tried to do. That's the truth. In reality an author knows

sometimes what he has tried to do, rarely what he has done;--and as to
knowing how he did it, I defy him!
Then if it is good, let him try again! I cannot recede from this view.
In our craft, you see, there is an element of unrebeginnable which
makes it an art, something of genius which ennobles it, something of
the fatally uncertain which renders it both charming and redoubtable.
To try to pick the masterpiece to pieces, to unscrew the ideal, to pluck
the heart out of the mystery, after the fashion of the baby who looks for
the little insect in the watch, is to attempt a vain and puerile thing.
Ah! if I had the time--but I haven't the time. So it's just as well, or
better, that I stop. To talk too much about art is not a good sign in an
artist. It is like a lover's talking too much about love; if I were a woman
I should have my doubts.
Well, do you wish me to disengage the philosophy of this garrulity? It
is found whole and entire in an apolog of my son--he too a philosopher
without knowing it. He was then seven. As a result of learning fables
he was seized with the ambition of writing one, which he brought to me
one fine day. It is called the 'Donkey and the Canary.' The verses are
perhaps a trifle long, but there are only two. That's the compensation.
Here they are.
The canary once sang; and the ass askt him how he could learn this to
do?
"I open my bill," said the bird; "and I say you, you, you!"
Well, the ass, that's you--don't get angry. The canary, that's I. When I
sing I open my bill and I say, "you, you, you!"
That's all that I can tell you.
Édouard Pailleron.
* * * * *

IX.
From Victorien Sardou.
My dear friend:
It's not so easy to answer you as you think. ...There is no one necessary
way of writing a play for the theater. Everyone has his own, according
to his temperament, his type of intellect, and his habits of work. If you
ask me for mine, I should tell you that it is not so easy to formulate as
the recipe for duck à la rouennaise or spring chicken au gros sel. Not
fifty lines are needed, but two or three hundred, and even then I should
have told you only my way of working, which has no general
significance and makes no pretense to being the best. It's natural with
me, that's all. Besides, you will find it indicated in part in the preface to
'La Haine' and in a letter which I wrote to La Pommeraye about
'Fédora.'
In brief, my dear friend, tho there are rules, and rules that are invariable,
precise, and eternal for the dramatic art, rules which only the impotent,
the ignorant, blockheads, and fools misunderstand, and from which
only they wish to be freed, yet there is only one true method for the
conception and parturition of a play--which is, to know quite exactly
where you are going and to take the best road that leads there. However,
some walk, others ride in a carriage, some go by train, X hobbles along,
Hugo sails in a balloon. Some drop behind on the way, others run past
the goal. This one rolls in the ditch, that one wanders along a
cross-road.
In short, that one goes straight to the mark who has the most common
sense. It is the gift which I wish for you--and myself also.
Victorien Sardou.
* * * * *

X.
From Émile Zola.
My dear Comrade:
You ask how I write my plays. Alas! I should rather tell you how I do
not write them.
Have you noticed the small number of new writers who take their
chances in the theater? The explanation is that in reality, for our
generation of free artists, the theater is repugnant, with its cookery, its
hobbles, its demand for immediate and brutal success, its army of
collaborators, to which one must submit, from the imposing leading
man down to the prompter. How much more independent are we in the
novel! And that's why, when the glamor of the footlights makes the
blood dance, we prefer to exercise it by keeping aloof and to remain the
absolute masters of our works. In the theater we are asked to submit to
too much.
Let me add that in my own case I have harnessed myself to a group of
novels which will take twenty-five years of my life. The theater is a
dissipation