it was just a hundred. The manager appeared to think that a hundred plays per annum was a lot, and he was astonished when I told him that in a similar period a first-class firm of publishers (with not a tenth of a theatre’s notoriety) will receive upwards of a thousand manuscripts.
The aspirant who sends a manuscript to a good West End theatre may be sure that it will be considered, and that if it contains even the germ only of a possible play, he will be treated with courtesy and consideration. He may have some difficulty in recovering possession of his manuscript, owing to the unbusiness-like habits which prevail in some theatres; but pertinacity will triumph over negligence. In some other theatres he will find an official precision which equals the precision of a City merchant. The somewhat morbid conditions of stage-life have a tendency to make certain histrionic lights rather difficult to deal with; in one or two cases the difficulty is extreme and acute. But on the whole the conduct of negotiations and the transaction of business generally in the theatrical world are rendered pleasant by long traditions of courtesy and good fellowship. The very best theatres are most willing to receive the advances of a stranger.
Writing a Marketable Play.
In conceiving a play, the dramatic aspirant should consider, at the very beginning, what theatre it is likely to suit best, and he should arrange the characters so as to suit the principal regular actors and actresses at that theatre. The casting of a piece is a difficult, delicate, and extremely important business, and many a play has been refused, or has been “hung up” for years, because of the impossibility of satisfactorily casting it He must also remember that actor-managers and leading ladies nearly always insist on “sympathetic” parts. One actor-manager declines to make love on the stage. Another declines to appear without making love. One leading lady likes to play pretty widows. Another insists on being either a pure English maiden or a newly-wed wife. These persons know what they can do with the greatest effect; they know what secures the loudest “call”; and they naturally insist on doing just that thing and no other— especially as they happen to live and flourish at a time when the drama is regarded by the public as secondary in importance to the individualities of the interpreters. To-day, the play must adapt itself to the company, and not the company to the play. Artistically, this system is entirely vicious, but there it is; and there it will be until a few dramatists of first-rate importance supervene and alter it.
The dramatic aspirant must also bear in mind that the following points are essential in a marketable play:—
(1) Plenty of contrasting action and business, and at least one big “situation” in each act.
(2) Effective “curtains” to each act.
(3) Plenty of comic relief.
(4) A luxurious environment.
(5) At least one character of great wealth, and a few tided characters if possible.
(6) Sentimentality in the love scenes, and generally throughout
(7) A certain amount of epigram in the dialogue.
(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
