SNAP SHOTS
Middleton, George
Snap Shots By GEORGE MIDDLETON IN THE WORDS of the popular song, "Everybody's Doing It." Stop almost anybody on the street, ask him how his play is getting on and you will find him admit he is...
...It would be impossible to give here a complete digest of Mr...
...I am not speaking of the genius who makes his own laws, but the ordinary mortal who is weaving scenes he hopes to see acted...
...The church has never taken any stand on the matter of extending the franchise to women...
...Yet there is no form of literary expression, with the possible exception of poetry, which is so difficult of mastery...
...The drama may be called the art of crises, as fiction is the art of gradual developments...
...Stop almost anybody on the street, ask him how his play is getting on and you will find him admit he is writing one...
...The intricacies of exposition are presented and the importance of starting the play so that a suspensive story is projected is duly emphasized...
...and to both judge and enjoy...
...In fact, throughout this very interesting volume, the author buttresses all his observations and deductions from the masters of the art, so that any one who wishes may see the rule or manner in relation to the context...
...to judge and not to enjoy...
...Archer dissects the various plays of Shakespeare and Ibsen and others...
...It does the church a grave injustice to circulate the report that Catholic members of the legislature are being influenced to vote against suffrage on the ground that the church is opposed to it...
...First he asks, what is dramatic...
...The chapters on "character and psychology," "the peripety" and "logic" are especially important...
...At any rate he can be helped and William Archer's Play-Making (Small, Maynard & Co., Boston) is the best manual of the craft that has yet been written...
...Considerable time is given to a discussion of the necessary omniscience of the audience and Mr...
...Here and there one finds a manuscript which has distinct merit but still shows the need of further stage sense, for, as a rule, no one who has not come into contact either with the stage direct or through the printed literature of the drama can be expected to know much about the making of plays...
...It is not strange to see the fascination that the play form of expression exerts over nearly all those who are in any way drawn to their pens...
...There is no reason whatever why any person in the church should not advocate votes for women...
...Then follows a detailed examination of the successive acts illustrating the theme, twisting in curls of curiosity and surprise to a supreme complication and denouement...
...But the dramatist demands a production, actors and an audience which may be temporarily under the influence of a bad liver or a lost bank account and so effect their reaction to his efforts...
...Goethe said, in one of his many penetrating phrases: "There are three ways of reading a book: to enjoy and not to judge...
...I feel quite confident that this book, in spite of its inevitable limitations, will be a stimulus to any aspiring playwright, and further, if the general theatre-goer reads it with comprehension his own interest in the drama will be increased by some more fundamental understanding of the technic of the art...
...A play is a more or less rapidly-developing crisis in destiny or circumstance, and a dramatic scene is a crisis within a crisis, clearly furthering the ultimate event...
...Archer reiterates the well-known law that while there must be constant surprise in the manner of working out the developments, yet it is vital that the audience know more than the people on the stage...
...and the same may be said of all the hooks upon which any theory of an art hangs...
...Can those thousands scattered all over the land hope to learn the game...
...Playwrights thus need the collaboration of all three, besides being peculiarly limited by the mechanism of the stage...
...WHEN THE LONG account is made up, it will not be the number of our square miles, or the amount of our steel production, of the piled-up wealth of our millionaires, that will determine whether American Government has been a success or a failure...
...That question will turn upon the fibre of our citizenship, upon the standards of our public life, upon the kind of men the people shall have accepted as their fitting leaders.—Baltimore News...
...The same may be applied to any art and a book which helps to some greater grasp of its technic has a value all its own aside from any ethics or standards it mav present...
...It is no wonder, then, that any dramatist of experience suffers over the bad and inadequate plays he is asked to read and criticize...
...There are, of course, exceptions to any law but as a general principle this holds true...
...There is, for instance, the value of approach and point of attack: it depends so much on where and how you begin—and here Mr...
...At the outset he admits the presumption of any book to claim authority: yet he feels that the structural side, at least, may be analyzed, and thus something vital be made revealatory and suggestive...
...The reputed large rewards accruing to the successful playwright, also, the odd and unusual pleasure in the thought that those whose words you write will be heard by others speaking them are among the magnets that lead one on...
...Archer's volume but perhaps enough has been said to indicate its outlines and intentions...
...even the poet, like all other writers, merely needs the printed page...
...Archer proceeds to a discussion of every phase of the dramatist's art the uninitiated reader must be struck with its complexities...
...As Mr...
...Vicar General's Opinion "The catholic church is not opposed to woman suffrage," declares Vicar General Joseph F. Mooney, who is in charge of the archdiocese of New York in the absence of Cardinal Farley...
Vol. 4 • July 1912 • No. 28
