The Autobiography of a Play | Page 3

the experimental application of these laws to a particular play that I ask
your attention. The learned professors of Harvard University know
much more about them than I do, so far as a study of dramatic literature,
from the outside, can give them that knowledge; and the great modern
authorities on the subject--Hallam, Lessing, Schlegel and many
others--are open to the students of Harvard in her library; or, rather,
shall I say, they lie closed on its shelves. But I invite you today to step
into a little dramatic workshop, instead of a scientific library; and to see
an humble workman in the craft, trying, with repeated experiments--not
to elucidate the laws of dramatic construction, but to obey them,
exactly as an inventor (deficient, it may be, in all scientific knowledge)
tries to apply the general laws of mechanics to the immediate
necessities of the machine he is working out in his mind. The moment a
professor of chemistry has expressed a scientific truth, he must
illustrate it at once by an experiment, or the truth will evaporate. An
immense amount of scientific truth is constantly evaporating, for want
of practical application; the air above every university in the world is
charged with it. But what are the laws of dramatic construction? No one
man knows much about them. As I have already reminded you, they

bear about the same relation to human character and human sympathies
as the laws of nature bear to the material universe. When all the
mysteries of humanity have been solved, the laws of dramatic
construction can be codified and clearly explained; not until then. But
every scientific man can tell you a little about nature, and every
dramatist can tell you a little about dramatic truth. A few general
principles have been discovered by experiment and discussion. These
few principles can be brought to your attention. But after you have
learned all that has yet been learned by others, the field of humanity
will still lie before you, as the field of nature lies before the scientist,
with millions of times more to be discovered, by you or by some one
else, than has ever yet been known. All I purpose to-night is to show
you how certain laws of dramatic construction asserted themselves
from time to time as we were making the changes in this play; how
they thrust themselves upon our notice; how we could not possibly
ignore them. And you will see how a man comes to understand any
particular law, after he has been forced to obey it, altho, perhaps, he has
never heard of it or dreamed of it before.
And let me say here, to the students of Harvard--I do not presume to
address words of advice to the faculty--it is to you and to others who
enjoy the high privileges of liberal education that the American stage
ought to look for honest and good dramatic work in the future. Let me
say to you, then: Submit yourselves truly and unconditionally to the
laws of dramatic truth, so far as you can discover them by honest
mental exertion and observation. Do not mistake any mere defiance of
these laws for originality. You might as well show your originality by
defying the law of gravitation. Keep in mind the historical case of
Stephenson. When a member of the British Parliament asked him,
concerning his newfangled invention, the railroad, whether it would not
be very awkward if a cow were on the track when a train came along,
he answered: "Very ark'ard, indeed--for the cow." When you find
yourself standing in the way of dramatic truth, my young friends--clear
the track! If you don't, the truth can stand it; you can't. Even if you feel
sometimes that your genius--that's always the word in the secret
vocabulary of our own minds--even if your genius seems to be
hampered by these dramatic laws, resign yourself to them at once, with

that simple form of Christian resignation so beautifully illustrated by
the poor German woman on her deathbed. Her husband being asked,
afterward, if she were resigned to her death, responded with that
touching and earnest recognition of eternal law: "Mein Gott, she had to
be!"
The story of the play, as first produced in Chicago, may be told as
follows:
Act first--Scene, New York. A young girl and a young man are in love,
and engaged to be married. The striking originality of this idea will
startle any one who has never heard of such a thing before. Lilian
Westbrook and Harold Routledge have a lover's quarrel. Never mind
what the cause of it. To quote a passage from the play itself: "A woman
never quarrels with a man she doesn't love"--that is one of the minor
laws of dramatic construction--"and she is never