Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship in Creating Plays

Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship in Creating Plays

• Contents
• BOOK I
  • PROLOGUE
  • CHAPTER I_ INTRODUCTORY
  • CHAPTER II THE CHOICE OF A THEME
  • CHAPTER III DRAMATIC AND UNDRAMATIC
  • CHAPTER IV THE ROUTINE OF COMPOSITION
  • CHAPTER V DRAMATIS PERSONAE
• BOOK II
  • THE BEGINNING
  • CHAPTER VI_ THE POINT OF ATTACK: SHAKESPEARE AND IBSEN
  • CHAPTER VII EXPOSITION: ITS END AND ITS MEANS
  • CHAPTER VIII THE FIRST ACT
  • CHAPTER IX "CURIOSITY" AND "INTEREST"
  • CHAPTER X_ FORESHADOWING, NOT FORESTALLING
• BOOK III
  • THE MIDDLE
  • CHAPTER XI TENSION AND ITS SUSPENSION
  • CHAPTER XII PREPARATION: THE FINGER-POST
  • CHAPTER XIII THE OBLIGATORY SCENE
  • CHAPTER XIV THE PERIPETY
  • CHAPTER XV PROBABILITY, CHANCE AND COINCIDENCE
  • CHAPTER XVI_ LOGIC
  • CHAPTER XVII KEEPING A SECRET
• BOOK IV
  • THE END
  • CHAPTER XVIII CLIMAX AND ANTICLIMAX
  • CHAPTER XIX CONVERSION
  • CHAPTER XX_ BLIND-ALLEY THEMES--AND OTHERS
  • CHAPTER XXI THE FULL CLOSE
• BOOK V
  • EPILOGUE
  • CHAPTER XXII CHARACTER AND PSYCHOLOGY
  • CHAPTER XXIII DIALOGUE AND DETAILS

Book Excerpts: There are no rules for writing a play. It is easy, indeed, to lay down negative recommendations--to instruct the beginner how not to do it. But most of these "don'ts" are rather obvious; and those which are not obvious are apt to be questionable. It is certain, for instance, that if you want your play to be acted, anywhere else than in China, you must not plan it in sixteen acts of an hour apiece; but where is the tyro who needs a text-book to tell him that? On the other hand, most theorists of to-day would make it an axiom that you must not let your characters narrate their circumstances, or expound their motives, in speeches addressed, either directly to the audience, or ostensibly to their solitary selves. But when we remember that, of all dramatic openings, there is none finer than that which shows Richard Plantagenet limping down the empty stage to say-- "Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried"-- we feel that the axiom requires large qualifications. There are no absolute rules, in fact, except such as are dictated by the plainest common sense. Aristotle himself did not so much dogmatize as analyse, classify, and generalize from, the practices of the Attic dramatists. He said, "you had better" rather than "you must." It was Horace, in an age of deep dramatic decadence, who re-stated the pseudo-Aristotelian formulas of the Alexandrians as though they were unassailable dogmas of art.