(8) No genuine realism, unless it is immediately made palatable by subsequent sentimentality.
(9) A happy ending. Or at any rate a decent ending—such as the suicide of a naughty heroine.
In regard to composition, the remarks which I made about fiction apply with almost equal force to the drama. “Accurate construction” is the first and most important step in the process. The first act is seldom difficult to construct, the last act is always difficult; it is easier to propound a problem than to solve it In playwriting the plot is everything— or nearly so. Once the plot is soundly done, the dialogue—as a dramatist phrased it to me —is “as easy as falling off a log.” The aspirant must never lose sight of the fact that a play is nothing but a story told through the mouths of the people in the story. Let him insist on that truth to his unconscious self: A play is a story. A play should only contain matter which helps to tell the story, and when the aspirant ceases to tell the story in order to be funny, or to draw tears, or to convey a moral or immoral lesson, he is sinning against the canons of playwriting whether commercial or artistic.
What the public wants, and therefore what the managers want, is amusing plays, digestive plays. A moderately clever amusing play has a better chance than a very clever serious play. In this connection I will point out that the only class of modern play in which it is possible to be both quite artistic and quite marketable, is the farce.
The Curtain-Raiser.
It will be well for the aspirant to begin with a simple one-act play of three or four characters. It should “play” from twenty minutes to half an hour (between three and four thousand words of actual dialogue). It should be mildly amusing and mildly sentimental, and quite pure, because it has to appeal to the pit and gallery as distinguished from the stalls and dress-circle. The demand for curtain-raisers is not immense, but it is appreciable. When a new three or four act piece is produced at 8.30 on the first night, the probability is that after a few weeks it will be timed to begin at 8.45 or 9, and a curtain-raiser put in front of it to “strengthen the bill.” Sometimes, when the success of the main piece trembles in the balance, a curtain-raiser with a star-part for the star-actor is put on and disaster averted.
One-act pieces are not strikingly remunerative, but, on the other hand, the veriest dullard could not spend more than a week in writing one. Some managers prefer to buy them outright for sums ranging from £25 to £50, and sometimes more. On the royalty system the author’s fee varies from 10s. to £ 1 per performance. The author should always reserve the amateur rights of a curtain-raiser, and when it has been successfully produced at a West End theatre he should invite the managing director of Messrs. French, Limited (theatrical publishers, Strand), to witness it. If Messrs. French, Limited, are pleased with it, they will print it and put it in their lists for amateur dramatic societies, and collect a fee for the author of a guinea per performance (less commission). Many one-act pieces have in this manner yielded a regular annual income for considerable periods.
Curtain-raisers do not usually run as long as three or four act pieces.
Longer Plays.
When writing a full-sized play the aspirant should do a full description of the plot (“scenario”) and write the first act, and should then submit this to a manager or to several managers. The manager will have before him quite sufficient material to enable him to judge whether he is likely to approve of the completed play. What managers think of first is the “idea” of the play. They do not, customarily, regard a play as an organic whole consisting of many equally important parts, but as a sort of nut with a kernel in it; that kernel is the “idea”—the salient situation. They are fascinated, not byplays, but by “ideas” for plays, by single situations, by ingenious groupings. If there is an attractive “idea” in your first act or scenario, the manager may encourage you vocally to proceed. (It is advisable to see managers the moment they evince the slightest interest in your achievements. They can almost always be seen without undue formalities, and they can always be seen by the diplomatist who is determined to see them.) If there is an exceptionally attractive idea in your first act or scenario, the manager may probably be induced to encourage you to proceed by something more valuable than words. A not unusual course is for the manager to pay £ 100 down on the playwright undertaking to finish the play by an agreed date, and to give the manager the option of buying die dramatic rights on agreed terms. If the manager refuses the play on its completion, he loses the £ 100 which he has already paid, and the playwright is £100 in pocket, with a play to sell. If the manager accepts the play on its completion, he usually pays a second £ 100 to seal the bargain, and the dramatic rights become his on condition that he produces the piece within an agreed period—say two years.
No manager will enter into an absolute contract to produce a play (with possible exceptions in the case of the work of supereminent playwrights). A manager will only enter into a contract either to produce within an agreed period, or, in default, to forfeit all his rights and all sums already paid. If he produces, all sums already paid are reckoned as on account of royalties. It is important that the aspirant should remember this. A contract for production does not infallibly mean production. And in fact all managers enter into contracts about plays which they never produce. Forfeit money on non-produced plays is a regular item of managerial expenditure.
The usual royalties on a three or four act piece are as follows;—Taking the West End gross weekly receipts, week by week, the author is paid 5 per cent, on the first £750, 71/2 per cent, on the next £250, and 10 percent on everything over £1000. Provincial rights are specially arranged for. Foreign rights are either specially arranged for or are reserved by the author. A West End theatre of average spaciousness will hold £250 per night when it is full. At the rate of six nights and one matinee per week this means a grand weekly total of possible receipts of £1750. On £1750 the author’s fees would be £131, 5s. In practice, however, a theatre is seldom or never full for a week together. Some West End theatres can be run on £500 a week, or perhaps less. The author’s fees on £500 would only be £25. But even at their least brilliant the profits of successful playwriting are very large in comparison with the profits of successful fiction. Sums of five, ten, and twenty thousand pounds are made from a single play in London alone. And a London success often means an American success, and an American success means profits to the English author not much less than the London profits.
In conclusion I would say that, although the supply of marketable plays is not equal to the demand, although successful managers are ready to buy plays from outsiders, although successful managers actually do buy plays from outsiders, the chances of a beginner getting a long play produced for a run in a first-rate West End theatre are extremely small.
The Reasonable Life
Expressing One’s Individuality
Mental Efficiency