by A. A. Milne
For one who insists on full value a play is the thing. So strongly do I feel this that, when I write a play, I write all the dialogue first, without a single stage direction, and then reluctantly turn novelist. There is a certain amount of fun to be got from the description of the characters, from the hints at their emotions which a dramatist must give; but it is dreary work to record the position of a window or a fireplace, and the number of telephones on a desk. With the opening scene of Act II bubbling over in one’s mind one cannot impede oneself with upholstery. ‘Stepping into the first apartment which I find open,’ I plunge into dialogue. I see the room as I write . . . and if I must, I will tell you about it afterwards.
I said just now that dialogue in a novel had to suit the occasion, the character of the speaker, and the state of the person addressed. In playwriting it offers an additional stimulus to the author: it has also to suit the audience. Stage-craft, of which we hear so much, is merely the art of making things easy for the audience. Realistic dialogue makes things difficult for an audience, for the reason that it is both boring and allusive. Here is a slice of life.
Husband: Well, what do you think?
Wife: I don’t know. (Thinks for a minute.)
Husband: It’s for you to say.
Wife: I know. (After a long pause.) There’s Jane.
(Colonel in third row of stalls strikes match to see who Jane is. She isn’t in the programme. Who the devil is Jane? He never knows.)
Husband: You mean the Ipswich business?
Wife: Yes. (Telephone bell rings.) That’s probably Arthur. (Clergyman in fifth row of stalls strikes match to see who Arthur is. He’s not in the programme either.)
Husband: Friday. Much more likely to be Anne.
Wife: Not now.
Husband: Well, you anyway.
Wife: Oh, all right. (Exit for ten minutes while Husband reads paper.)
Husband (as she comes back): Anne?
Wife: (in a voice): ‘Give my love to the dear boy.’
Husband: ‘No, darling, not like chickens.’
Wife: Of course. What are you doing on Friday?
Husband: Trevors. Why? (He sneezes.) Damn, I haven’t got a handkerchief. (He gets up. At the door he says): Oh, by the way, I’d better ring Morrison. (Exit. Wife writes a letter and then picks up paper. Husband returns.)
Wife: (from paper): Myrtle’s engaged! Fancy!
Husband: Yes, I meant to have told you. I saw John at the club.
(Two old gentlemen strike matches.)
Wife: Who is he?
Husband: Bar, I think. Listen, darling, we must decide.
Wife: It’s difficult. (After a long pause.) Oh, well, let’s—
(Enter Maid.)
Maid: There’s a policeman downstairs, sir, wants to see you.
Husband: Oh Lord! (He goes out for five minutes while the audience waits breathlessly. Now the drama is moving. . . . He returns.)
Wife: Car?
Husband: Some fool turned the lights off. Let’s see, what were we talking about? Damn, I left my pipe downstairs.
(He goes out.)
(And if the audience goes out too, who’s shall blame it?)
That is how real life is lived. It is clear that natural behaviour, natural dialogue, must be dressed up before it can recommend itself to an audience. The only truth which is demanded from the dramatist is truth to character. Subject to this truth he is required to present in the refracting mirror of the stage such distortion of real life as will best reflect his meaning. Remembering that the playgoer, unlike the reader, can never turn back, one sees that play-writing becomes an exciting sort of game, in which one has to defeat the apathy, the preconceptions and the defective memory of one’s antagonist. It may interest my reader in the upper circle if I illustrate with a play of my own some of the fun and the dangers of this game.
3
A play can be based upon Theme, Story or Character. If you base it upon a theme, then you must invent a story which will illustrate the theme; if you base it upon a character, then you must invent a story which will exhibit the character. The story is necessary in any case, and will be the main interest for many of the audience, but it will not necessarily be the main interest for the author.
The Truth About Blayds was based upon a theme It was not a Story of Literary Life, nor a Study of a Literary Fraud. My interest in it was the interest which I took in this problem: What happens in a religious community when its god is discovered to be a false god? To work out this problem I could choose any community, any god, convenient to me. A tribal god on an island, a national hero among his countrymen, a churchwarden in a chapel–if the devastating truth were known, who would still be faithful, who unfaithful? And faithful to what? The Truth or the God? I decided to illustrate the theme with the story of a great poet; showing the reactions of his family to a death-bed confession that he had lived on the work of a long-dead contemporary, in his lifetime unknown, unpublished.
I made the family as representative of a religious community as I could. The High Priest, secretary, son-in-law and official biographer to Blayds: his wife, taking her beliefs at secondhand from the priest: her sister, the true believer who had sacrificed everything for the Faith: the detached critic, old suitor of the sister’s, who accepted intellectually rather than spiritually: the grandchildren, dragged reluctantly to church, scoffing, unbelieving. One knew them all, and it was interesting to watch their characters come out in the fierce light which beat upon the dead Blayds, the self-confessed fraud to whom willingly or unwillingly they had given their lives. It was interesting, that is, to me; but it could only be interesting to the audience if it believed as completely as I did in the Blayds legend. It would never do if the audience were saying to itself all through the discussion: ‘But how could anyone have been taken in? Who could have thought for a moment that he was a great poet?’
Blayds, then, must be seen and believed in: authentically a Great Man.
Now nothing is so difficult to put on the stage as a Great Man; and of all great men the most difficult to project across the footlights is the literary genius. For it is obvious that a character in a play can never be wiser or wittier than the author of the play. The author may tell himself that in real life no genius is uniformly wise or witty: that the great writers whom he himself has met have shown nothing of their peculiar quality in conversation. This may be so. Barrie told me of an occasion when he was present at a gathering of young authors all very busy talking about style. An older man sitting aloof in a corner, but listening intently, was asked to contribute to the discussion. He confessed uncomfortably that he had never thought about the subject: he would rather listen and learn what he could: he really would have nothing to say of any value: they all knew much more than he did. Fearing to be drawn more deeply into the argument, he added that he had to go now, and slipped out. ‘Who was that?’ Barrie was asked. Barrie, who had brought him there, explained that it was Thomas Hardy. But not a Thomas Hardy who could have made the crossing of the footlights. For stage life, as I have said, can never hope to be real life, but only life which seems real in the unreal conditions of the theatre.
The genius, in fact, must carry immediate conviction of his genius to the audience. Taciturnity is not enough. But if the author be not himself a genius, how is he to create one?
The usual way, the obvious way, what seems at first the only way, is to let the audience get the measure of the hero’s greatness through the eyes and by the tongue of the hero-worshippers. Only so, within the limits of the stage, can one be assured that he climbed Everest, swam Niagara, or won the battle of Waterloo. But having been as critic to all those plays in which, for the opening ten minutes, the minor characters acclaim the heroic deeds of the next character on the programme . . . and then in comes to a burst of applause dear old George Alexander, or Tree, or Arthur Bourchier . . . looking just the
same, now that they are the Great Chemist, as they did last week when they were the Great Financier . . . I realized how difficult it was to establish genius by this means. It is an instinct with all of us to resent unbridled enthusiasm for the unknown. True, my genius was an old man of ninety, whose hoary locks would disguise his Green Room origins and lend him that aura of immortality which surrounds almost any writer on his ninetieth birthday; I had nothing to fear from the actor if I could give him the entrance to make, the words to say. But how could I?
Well, I began with Royce, the critic, come to present an address of congratulation to the Great Man. All is set for the usual opening; now we shall hear what a Great Man he is. But Royce is received by Oliver, the sceptical grandson, for whom Old Blayds is merely a nuisance. They are joined by Septima, the granddaughter, and between them, to Royce’s great embarrassment, the young people make the whole Blayds theology ridiculous. The audience, inclined at first to sympathize with them, begins to resent their intolerance. From feeling that a genius might well be a nuisance to his grandchildren, it wonders if the grandchildren might not well be a nuisance to him. Marion, their mother, comes in. For her, Blayds is God indeed. Now the audience sees the other side of the picture: the slavish, meaningless hero-worship. Might that not be even more of a nuisance for the genius? If the grandchildren’s attitude is wrong-headed, isn’t their mother’s attitude even more wrong-headed? Which is the more intolerable to Blayds?
To Blayds the genius? Already without realizing it, the audience is beginning to accept the fact that he is a genius. For I have even dared to give a sample of his genius. The fact that Tennyson wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade and Wordsworth wrote The Idiot Boy lent me confidence, but an audience would not be sharing my recollection of such lesser masterpieces. They would want the genuine thing. Very well, they shall think that they are getting it.
Septima, seventh dark daughter,
I saw her once where the black pines troop to the water—
A rock-set river that broke into bottomless pools. . . .
Unconsciously Royce quotes the hackneyed words in response to the girl’s name: they have a swing to them: for a moment they sound like poetry; but before the audience can give its critical attention to them, Septima says casually to Oliver, ‘Noll, I’ll trouble you,’ and holds out her hand for the shilling which passes with the reaction of each new visitor to the introduction. ‘Damn it, Royce,’ says Oliver, feeling in his pockets, ‘I did think you would be able to control yourself.’ The audience chuckles, in sympathy with any daughter of Tennyson’s called Maud, any son of Byron’s called Harold, and any granddaughter of Blayds’ called Septima.
Now comes the High Priest, the fussy little son-in-law, dictating answers to the letters of congratulation; choosing a select list of callers for the Press: ‘three Society, three Artistic and Literary, and two Naval, Military and Political.’ The ‘health’–where shall they drink the health? In here? The letter from Queen Victoria–shall Royce be allowed to hold it in his hands? Yes, perhaps just for a moment. If this is not the household of a Great Poet, what is it?
Lastly comes Isobel, who sent her lover away twenty years ago, in order to keep alive the spark of the Great Man’s genius. For twenty years she has tended him: was it worth it for the great poetry he had written?—was it worth it for the life she has lost? She wonders to Royce, who was her lover all those years ago. The audience wonders too, accepting Isobel’s judgement of her father. He was indeed a great poet, and she was right; he was indeed a great poet, but she was wrong.
And so to Blayds. For half-an-hour we have been assuming that he is the last of the Great Victorians: here he comes, magnificently to the eye the last and greatest of the great Victorians. What are to be his opening words? What can they be which will do justice to his godhead? If Shakespeare and Aeschylus collaborated to find a speech for him, the audience would think it unworthy. What, then, will they say to a speech of mine? ‘We believed in him until you made him speak to us; we should have remembered that no character can be greater than the author.’ Still, he has to say something. . . .
He says it . . . and immediately the High Priest whips out a pencil and makes a note of it on his cuff. The audience breaks into laughter, telling itself how infuriating it must be for genius to have its simplest remark recorded. From now on he is free to speak at my own level, and still be a genius.
The health is drunk, the address of welcome is presented, Blayds talks a little of the friends he loved; Tennyson, Whistler, Swinburne, Meredith. Now he is alone with Isobel; the excitement of the occasion has died, and old age rushes in on him. He has something to confess—now! now!—before it is too late. ‘Listen, Isobel,’ and, as he begins, the curtain comes down. . . .
The curtain goes up; now my play begins. ‘What happens in a religious community when its god is discovered to be a false god?’ We have established him as a god; now he is to be revealed as a false god; now we shall know. We have got the necessary, but unsignificant, First Act out of the way, now we can command the audience’s interest for the development of our theme. . . . But it was not so. I discovered, when it was too late, that I was fighting a losing battle against that First Act. I had taken too much care over it. I had established the Great Man so firmly that for most of the audience Blayds, the living Blayds, was now the play. The audience had seen him, had believed in him, and wanted to go on seeing him. As consolation, the critics told me that it was the best First Act ever written, but there, for most of them, the play ended. It might be the best First Act ever written, but there, for me, the play began. For me the play was based upon Theme, for the audience upon Character; and the result seemed to be just a Story which had petered out.
4
Writers are often asked if they force themselves to write every day or if they ‘wait for inspiration.’ It is not suggested (as far as I know) that they say to their wives at breakfast: ‘If I am not inspired by eleven o’clock, dear, I shall want the car’; nor that, being in the middle of a novel, they sit with closed eyes at their desks, waiting for assistance before they start the fifth chapter. It is in the details of conception that the layman is interested, not in the pangs of labour, nor the nourishment of the child when born. In short, is the baby ever accidental?
For myself I have now no faith in miraculous conception. I have given it every chance. I have spent many mornings at Lord’s hoping that inspiration would come, many days on golf courses; I have even gone to sleep in the afternoon, in case inspiration cared to take me completely by surprise. In vain. The only way in which I can get an ‘idea’ is to sit at my desk and dredge for it. This is the real labour of authorship, with which no other labour in the world is comparable.
My process of conception is something as follows. After hours, days, weeks of labour (the metaphor is standing on its head, but no matter)—after weeks of anguish, during which I am nobody’s friend, the germ of an idea comes into my mind. It is considered and rejected as old, foolish or inadequate. I go on thinking . . . more weeks pass . . . it seems as if I shall never write again. A pity that that idea which I had three weeks ago wasn’t any good . . . or wasn’t it? No. Hopeless. I go on thinking for another week. . . . What about that idea which I had four weeks ago? . . . N-no, not really good. I go on thinking. . . . Damn it, what about that idea which I had five weeks ago? Is it any good or isn’t it? And if it isn’t, why does it keep coming into my head, pushing out all the much better stories which are knocking for admittance. How can I possibly think, if I’m always thinking of this silly idea about a dead man? And then I throw my hand in. There is only one thing to do: get this impossible nonsense out of the system. It may not be a play at all; good, then I shan’t have to bother about it any more. Anyhow, let’s begin to write. Hooray, I’m writing again . . . and somehow the idea develops itself.
How do ideas first show their heads? In various strange ways.
Plot I. It would be rather e
xciting if a man had died on one suddenly; and the police want to know all about him, and the one thing which can’t be given away is the reason why he had come to the house. So Husband and Wife have to make up a story. But they can’t. Their brains won’t work. And the minutes are going by, and Authority is on its way, and they stand there desperately trying to think against time. Mightn’t that be dramatic?
That became Michael and Mary.
Plot 2. It’s no good. I shall never write again. A pity, because Dennis Eadie has asked for a play, and Harrison wants a play for the Haymarket, and if only I could think of an idea, then I could write a play and Harrison would put it on, and then we should all be at the Haymarket on the first night, waiting for the curtain to go up, and wondering what it was going to be about. . . . Terribly exciting, waiting for the curtain to go up and wondering—an empty stage, a big hall, and then a knocking at the door. Who is it, who is it? A butler—rather a mysterious butler, isn’t he?—walks solemnly across the stage and draws the bolts. I always think that that’s the most exciting way of beginning a play. Strangers, wayfarers, coming into a strange house. It is rather a strange house: is it an hotel? Well, of course, that’s what they’d naturally ask, the people at the door. ‘Is this an hotel?’ And what does the mysterious butler say? Suppose he said, ‘A sort of hotel, my lord’? . . .
That became The Dover Road.
Plot 3. God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform, he plants his footsteps on the sea and rides upon the storm. Grand hymn that, why did it suddenly come into my head? And why did I never see before what an absurd non-sequitur it is? I mean the first two lines are all right by themselves, and so are the second two, but they don’t mix. In effect he begins by saying that great events from little causes spring, or whatever the line is, and then . . . It’s ironic the way things do happen like that. Or the other way about. Little events from great causes. What’s the Latin? Parturiunt montes nascetur ridiculus mus. Is that right, or shouldn’t it be a pentameter? The little gods must have fun, deciding what mountains are to be in labour in order that our ridiculous little wishes shall be gratified. Here’s a woman wants to hang a pair of curtains in her house, but her husband won’t let her, and the little gods say, ‘All right, darling, you shall hang your curtains,’ and then they get into a corner and chuckle together, and arrange the most frightful shocks for both of them . . . and up go the curtains.