The Autobiography of a Play | Page 7

very play was successful in Chicago; but, as soon as that part of the public had been exhausted which could weep with pleasure, if I may use the expression, over the tenderness of a mother's love, its success would have been at an end. Furthermore--and here comes in another law of dramatic construction--a play must be, in one way or another, "satisfactory" to the audience. This word has a meaning which varies in different countries, and even in different parts of the same country; but, whatever audience you are writing for, your work must be "satisfactory" to it. In England and America, the death of a pure woman on the stage is not "satisfactory," except when the play rises to the dignity of tragedy. The death, in an ordinary play, of a woman who is not pure, as in the case of 'Frou-Frou,' is perfectly satisfactory, for the reason that it is inevitable. Human nature always bows gracefully to the inevitable. The only griefs in our own lives to which we could never reconcile ourselves are those which might have been averted. The wife who has once taken the step from purity to impurity can never reinstate herself in the world of art on this side of the grave; and so an audience looks with complacent tears on the death of an erring woman. But Lilian had not taken the one fatal step which would have reconciled an audience to her death. She was still pure, and every one left the theatre wishing she had lived. I yielded, therefore, to the sound logic, based on sound dramatic principle, of my New York manager, Mr. A. M. Palmer, and the piece was altered.
I have called the play, as produced in New York and afterward in London, the "same play" as the one produced in Chicago. That one doubt, which age does not conquer--which comes down to us from the remotest antiquity of our own youth, which will still exist in our minds as we listen to the music of the spheres, thru countless ages, when all other doubts are at rest; that never-to-be answered doubt: Whether it was the same jack-knife, or another one, after all its blades and handle had been changed--must ever linger in my own mind as to the identity of this play. But a dramatic author stops worrying himself about doubts of this kind very early in his career. The play which finally takes its place on the stage usually bears very little resemblance to the play which first suggested itself to his mind. In some cases the public has abundant reason to congratulate itself on this fact, and especially on the way plays are often built up, so to speak, by the authors, with advice and assistance from other intelligent people interested in their success. The most magnificent figure in the English drama of this century was a mere faint outline, merely a fatherly old man, until the suggestive mind of Macready stimulated the genius of Bulwer Lytton, and the great author, eagerly acknowledging the assistance rendered him, made Cardinal Richelieu the colossal central figure of a play that was written as a pretty love-story. Bulwer Lytton had an eye single, as every dramatist ought to have--as every successful dramatist must have--to the final artistic result; he kept before him the one object of making the play of 'Richelieu' as good a play as he possibly could make it. The first duty of a dramatist is to put upon the stage the very best work he can, in the light of whatever advice and assistance may come to him. Fair acknowledgment afterward is a matter of mere ordinary personal honesty. It is not a question of dramatic art.
So Lilian is to live, and not die, in the last act. The first question for us to decide--I say "us"--the New York manager, the literary attaché of the theatre, and myself--the first practical question before us was: As Lilian is to live, which of the two men who love her is to die? There are axioms among the laws of dramatic construction, as in mathematics. One of them is this--three hearts cannot beat as one. The world is not large enough, from an artistic point of view, for three good human hearts to continue to exist, if two of them love the third. If one of the two hearts is a bad one, art assigns it to the hell on earth of disappointed love; but if it is good and tender and gentle, art is merciful to it, and puts it out of its misery by death. Routledge was wounded in a duel. Strebelow was supposed to be lost in the wreck of a steamer. It was easy enough to kill either of them, but which? We argued