The Art and Craft of Playwriting

by Jeffery Hatcher

  Suspense/tension: What will Hedda do?

  It looks like Lovborg has put Hedda—the woman he loves, the woman he has been hurt by, the woman he both hates and desires—in her place.

  And then Hedda mentions “the punch.”

  The characters—and the audience—know Lovborg is a former drinker. Thea has helped reform him. It is one of her points of pride.

  Then Hedda suggests Lovborg have a glass of punch. Lovborg and Thea are shocked. Of course, he wouldn't dream of drinking anything with alcohol. But Hedda uses Lovborg's weakness, his fear of not being thought of as courageous, to make him drink. She says Brack and George were mocking him earlier when he twice refused a drink. Didn't he notice? Surely someone who doesn't need liquor can show his independence by having one drink?

  Conflict/Tension/Suspense

  Against his better judgment and against Thea's protestations, Lovborg takes one drink (acts)—to prove himself in front of Hedda. He has shown Hedda that he has both courage and self-control. (But has one drink been one too many?) Lovborg decides to join George and Brack at the party. Thea will stay with Hedda, and Lovborg will return at ten to take Thea back to her rooms. The men leave, Lovborg carrying his manuscript. Hedda comments to Thea that they will sit together until Lovborg's return.

  HEDDA: “He shall return with vine leaves in his hair.” (A phrase that sounds like an old shared reference.) “On fire with life.”

  Hedda also says she'd like, for once in her life, to have power over another human being.

  Hedda and Thea go into the dining room.

  End of Act Two

  Summary: The development of the plot is furthered in this act, the first half of the Great Middle. So is character. So are themes. What has Ibsen used in the first act that he now uses in the second act? Phrases, memories, lines, images, actions and ideas. And what has he inserted into the second act that he may use in Act Three and Act Four? What details seem minor but may have importance later? Remember: A good play uses its details as it moves along. They come back. They transform. They are used again. It is in this act that the full story of the inciting incident—Hedda and Lovborg's past affair and the subsequent writing of his manuscript—is explained to the audience. The second act is firmly part of the middle of the play. Hedda has been moving toward her goal—exercising power over Lovborg. She has met with opposition: Lovborg's abstinence and his unwillingness to compete with George, Thea's presence, the presence of Brack and George, her own fears. She has acted: The challenge to Lovborg is a key action; so is keeping Thea with her. And Act Two ends on a note of rising action and suspense: What will Lovborg, George and Brack do at their party? When will they return? What will Hedda do? It is after Act Two that most directors place their “official” intermission.

  ACT THREE

  Dawn. Seven hours past ten. Hedda and Thea sleep on the settee. Lovborg has not returned. Neither has George.

  Suspense—what is keeping them? What has happened?

  The maid has stirred the fire again. She delivers a letter for George in Aunt Julie's handwriting (remember the importance of Aunt Rina's physical condition?). It is left unopened. (A mystery.) Thea leaves the room to sleep in Hedda's bedroom. Then George returns, dishevelled.

  He tells Hedda:

  • that Lovborg read him the book. It's incredible.

  • that Lovborg got drunk and out of control. It's believable.

  • that Lovborg led them into the street, toasting “the woman” who inspired the great work. It must be Thea, says George. (We doubt that.)

  • and … that Lovborg dropped the manuscript in the street, and George found it. (Surprise/complication.)

  George carries the manuscript with him. No one knows he has it. George says it must be returned to Lovborg soon. Hedda argues that they should keep it in the house.

  George finds the letter. Aunt Rina is indeed dying (not dead, this is a key distinction). If he hurries, he may see her one last time. (If she's dead, no hurry, right? Sly Ibsen.)

  George leaves. Hedda will take care of the manuscript. She hides it.

  Brack arrives. He has news about Lovborg. It seems his late night travels took him to “Mademoiselle Diana”—the “singer.” All was well until Lovborg started accusing Diana of stealing something. (What could it be?) The police took Lovborg away.

  HEDDA: “Were there vine leaves in his hair?” (That phrase again!)

  How does Brack know all this? A man in his position has powerful friends and good contacts, he says. Brack tells Hedda that Lovborg has now so embarrassed himself “that every respectable door must now be closed to him.” (Scandal.)

  Hedda understands what the judge is implying: He wants Hedda's door to be closed to Lovborg. Brack wants Hedda for himself. Hedda and Brack discuss his advances toward her. She knows what he wants. But she's ahead of him. The judge may have power, she says, but he has no power over her.

  Brack accepts this uneasy draw. He leaves.

  Lovborg arrives. (Ibsen is always the efficient traffic cop, even though the rapidity and felicity of his characters' arrivals and departures remind us of the melodramatic roots of this beautifully constructed play.) He bursts in. He's a mess.

  And Thea enters. She wants Lovborg, cares for him, needs him.

  (Hedda is watchful.)

  Lovborg has come to break it off with Thea. He has news for her: He has destroyed their “child”—the manuscript. He says he has torn it into a thousand pieces the night before (lie/complication). Hedda is baffled by this lie, but she's smart, and she keeps her mouth shut.

  Thea is distraught. She leaves, in tears.

  Lovborg tells Hedda the truth. He got drunk and lost the manuscript. He looked for it everywhere. It's gone. He couldn't admit “carelessness” to Thea about “their child.” That seems to Lovborg worse than intentionally destroying it. That's why he lied. Far better to say he had acted, than to admit to such pathetic, inadvertent failure. He doesn't have the willpower he thought he had. Thea had helped him, but now he's a lost man.

  HEDDA: “Thea had such power over a human life?” (Hedda seems obsessed by this notion of power.)

  Lovborg starts to leave. Without Thea, without his great work—and, by implication, without Hedda—his life is over. Lovborg will kill himself.

  Hedda doesn't try to stop him. Hedda doesn't reveal her possession of his lost manuscript.

  Instead Hedda gives Lovborg General Gabler's pistol. (Remember how Ibsen has used this gun?) Hedda has finally achieved her goal: to have power over another human being.

  HEDDA: “Do it beautifully.”

  LOVBORG: (Smiling ruefully) With “vine leaves in my hair”?

  We realize we were right. That line is a shared reference between the two of them.

  Lovborg exits with the gun.

  And then, in one of the great curtain moments in all drama, Hedda retrieves Lovborg's manuscript and burns it in the fire grate (the fire that has been going all during the play), saying: “I'm burning your child, Thea.”

  Burning, fire, children, power.

  It all comes together.

  The curtain falls as the firelight plays over Hedda's smiling face.

  End of Act Three

  Summary: Act Three is the second half of the Great Middle. It depicts the rising action (or acceleration of actions) of the play. If we compare the actions of the first two acts with those of this third act, it's easy to see that the rapidity of the actions, as well as their number, has tripled. The first two acts paved the way for conflict. Act Three has conflict and action in full flower: George and Hedda battle over the discovered manuscript; Brack propositions Hedda; Hedda rejects Brack; Lovborg lies to Thea and rejects her; Hedda rejects Lovborg again; Hedda provokes Lovborg to suicide; and Hedda destroys the manuscript. Where was the second turning point of the play? The Crisis? The end of the middle?

  Was it George's revelation about his finding the manuscript? Brack's pass at Hedda? Lovborg's rejection of Thea?

  No.
As we saw in the chapter on Great Middles, the crisis/turning point comes late in the play, two-thirds or three-fourths of the way through. It is the moment to which all other previous actions and events have been pointed. It is the moment that leads inevitably, irrevocably, toward the end. It is when Hedda hands Lovborg the pistol and then burns the manuscript. Nothing can be the same after these actions. In Hedda Gabler, the crisis/turning point comes at the close of the act, sixty seconds from the curtain coming down. Masterful. The climax and conclusion, full of incident, will come when the curtain rises again.

  ACT FOUR

  That evening. Darkness. Hedda, dressed in black (mourning?), paces. Julie enters to tell Hedda that Rina is dead. George enters after a day of making funeral arrangements. George suggests that perhaps Aunt Julie should now come to live with them. Hedda reacts negatively, but keeps quiet.

  Aunt Julie leaves.

  George is worried about Lovborg. Hedda tells George she has burned the manuscript. George is horrified. Hedda says she did it for George's sake, to help him, to erase any future competition from Lovborg. George thinks Hedda loves him and has done this to make him happy. Hedda also reveals, in veiled terms, that she is pregnant. Now George is delighted. Hedda's “crime” will be kept hidden. No one must know the truth, says Hedda—especially Judge Brack.

  Thea enters with a large suitcase. She has heard rumors about Lovborg, something about “the hospital.” (Suspense—what has happened?)

  Brack enters. Always the man with powerful friends and powerful information, Brack tells the others that Lovborg has shot himself, that he's dying. It was a shot to the heart. (Hedda had hoped for a bullet in the head, but the heart will do.) As is his wont, Brack reveals this information bit by bit, piece by piece, never the whole story in one gulp.

  George bemoans the loss of Lovborg, and he mourns the loss of the manuscript which, as Thea says, was “torn into a thousand pieces.” George and Hedda can feel safe. (But they are now co-conspirators. They have a secret.) Lovborg's masterpiece won't be able to hurt them.

  But just then Thea holds up the suitcase. Thea has Lovborg's original notes. The book could be pieced back together, (surprise/reversal/complication). And since that's what George does best—research other people's work—he can help Thea rebuild the text. George decides to dedicate his life to re-creating Lovborg's book. He'll work with Thea. They'll start that very evening (reversal).

  They exit to the study.

  Hedda is shocked. Still, Lovborg has killed himself, performed a “courageous” act, done it “beautifully.” Hedda has exhibited her power over a human life. So she must have achieved her primary goal. Right? The central dramatic question must have been answered. Right? Is this the end of the play?

  No. Judge Brack is still in the room.

  Alone, Brack tells Hedda that the real story is not quite the one he told a few moments before.

  Lovborg is already dead. Lovborg didn't return to his rooms and commit suicide. Lovborg went back to Diana's, caused a ruckus again, went into Diana's bedroom … (Hedda looks sick)… said he wanted his “lost child” … (Hedda sinks into a chair)… and shot himself by accident. A gun was in his pocket, it went off, it hit him—not in the head, not in the heart, but in the groin.

  Hedda's goal has been frustrated, by accident, fate and human nature.

  There's something else, says Brack: “The gun.”

  Just then—for the sake of suspense—George reenters to get something from his desk.

  The tension is killing us.

  George exits.

  “The gun.” Brack has recognized it. After all, it was pointed at him playfully just the evening before. It's Hedda's.

  BRACK: “Lovborg must have stolen it.”

  Hedda, desperate, plays along. Yes. Stolen. When she wasn't looking.

  Who has the gun? The police. Will they try to trace it? Of course.

  HEDDA: “Do you think they will succeed?”

  BRACK: “No, Hedda Gabler. Not as long as I keep quiet. If they do trace it, though, you can always say the pistol was stolen.” (Implication: No one will believe that, Hedda.)

  HEDDA: “I would rather die.”

  BRACK: (Smiles) “People say such things. They never do them.” (We've heard a variation of that line before.)

  If the pistol is traced to Hedda, and the police show it wasn't stolen, says Brack, “… well, then, Hedda, there would be scandal.” A trial. Hedda on the witness stand. The same witness stand as the “singer,” Diana.

  Scandal! What Hedda fears most. Her Achilles' heel. The second part of her tragic flaw. She exhibited the first part of it when she gave Lovborg the gun (her desire for passion and danger). Now the other half (fear of scandal) has returned to finish her off.

  But Brack assures her. He'll keep quiet.

  HEDDA: (Looking up at him) “So I'm in your power, Judge.” (The line about power comes back to haunt her.)

  The judge has achieved his goal. Hedda seems to have failed at hers. The protagonist destroyed by herself (self-antagonism), actions she cannot control (Lovborg's botched escapade—fate), and another character (Brack as adversary-antagonist). In some plays, this would be the end. But Ibsen is moving toward something larger, something greater. Ibsen is moving toward the classic conception of tragedy. The hero must fall even further. What follows the judge's revelations is a fairly long (two minutes) scene that seems to suggest the future Hedda sees for herself:

  “A Domestic Setting”

  • George and Thea (a “partnership”) at work on Lovborg's posthumous masterpiece (the “child” Hedda thought she had “burned”)

  • the prospect of living with Aunt Julie (that “dull, dull boredom”)

  • Brack seated next to Hedda (“power over another human being”)

  It is Hedda's nightmare come true.

  Hedda plays an annoying ditty on the piano for a moment. George enters and remonstrates her. He and Thea need quiet. Hedda looks around at all of them. This is her future?

  Hedda will act.

  She walks into the other room and closes the curtain.

  A shot rings out.

  Hedda has shot herself in the head with her father's second pistol. She has “done it beautifully.”

  George and Brack rush in and discover the body. Hedda has eluded Brack's power—at the cost of her life.

  BRACK: “People don't do such things.”

  Curtain. End of Play.

  Summary: This Great Ending, with its resounding climax and resolution, is one of the most famous, shocking conclusions in theater history. The entire act is a marvel. In a sense, Ibsen heaps crisis upon crisis, reversal upon reversal, but never so many as to make the play's action appear ridiculous. What's most important is that the character asserts her power at the play's end. In one sense, she is defeated. In another, she has exerted a victorious and violent control over her own life.

  Does Hedda Gabler fulfill the expectations of a well-constructed play? Read the play again. Look at the sources of Ibsen's ideas for the script and how he combined and energized them in the text. Look at his use of drama and theater. Look at his use of the six elements. Look at space, time and causality. Look at the three-part structure. Look at his use of dialogue. Look at character, conflict, action and ideas. Look at goals and obstacles. Look at tension and suspense. Look at secrets. Look at sex. Look at money. Look at power. Look at crime. Look at theatricality, the world of gunshots, onstage fires, and the compressed excitement of two secret lovers talking about passion while looking at honeymoon pictures.

  Then see the play. Stage the play.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Three Interviews

  Lee Blessing

  Marsha Norman

  José Rivera

  For this section of the book, I talked to three well-known playwrights who have a great deal of experience in the contemporary theater: Lee Blessing, Marsha Norman and José Rivera. Each has had many plays produced by hundreds of theaters in the United States an
d abroad. Lee is the author of A Walk in the Woods, among other plays, screenplays and television scripts. Marsha wrote the Pulitzer-Prize winning 'Night, Mother and won a Tony for her book and lyrics for the musical The Secret Garden. And José is a playwright whose work moves easily from the world of television and film to the theater of magic realism, including his FDG/CBS award-winning play The House of Ramon Iglesia, which was later filmed for PBS.

  In these interviews, we discuss craft issues; inspiration; theatricality; personal passions; what is learned from adaptation; what is learned from other writers, directors, actors and designers; rules and rule-breaking; getting ideas; structuring and outlining; first drafts; rewriting; play development; production; rehearsal; and the joys and frustrations of collaboration. I tried to ask each writer the kinds of questions I thought you, the reader, might ask.

  Lee Blessing

  Lee Blessing was born in Minnesota and started writing plays in the late 1970s. He studied poetry and drama at the University of Iowa, and his earliest works were performed at such theaters as Actors Theatre of Louisville, Brass Tacks and the Cricket Theater. He is best known for his two-character play about U.S. and Soviet arms negotiators, A Walk in the Woods. A Walk in the Woods was produced by Yale Rep and La Jolla Playhouse prior to its Broadway premiere in 1988. It was nominated for both a Tony Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Since then the play has been produced dozens of times, including stagings in London (with Alec Guiness in the lead) and Moscow. It was filmed for American Playhouse with the New York cast, Robert Prosky and Sam Waterston. His other plays include Two Rooms, about a U.S. hostage held in Beirut; Cobb, about the controversial baseball star; Riches, about a battling couple; Fortinbras, a comic “sequel” to Shakespeare's Hamlet; and Patient A, based on the story of Kimberly Bergalis, the woman who died of AIDS after contracting the disease from her dentist. Blessing has won numerous grants, fellowships and awards, including an NEA, a Bush Fellowship and a McKnight Fellowship. He has been a member of both New Dramatists in New York City and The Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. He has written the screenplay for the film Steal Little, Steal Big and teleplays for such series as Picket Fences. Blessing and his wife, the director Jeanne Blake, live in Los Angeles.