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Some Platitudes Concerning Drama - John Galsworthy (5 elements to make a…
Some Platitudes Concerning Drama - John Galsworthy
Moral of Contemporary plays
"...the business of the dramatist is so to pose the group as to bring that moral poignantly to the light of day."
3 courses to dramatists in terms of moral
2nd course
"set before the public those views and codes of life by which the dramatist himself lives"
3rd course
"set before the public no cut-and-dried codes, but the phenomena of life and character, selected and combined,..., by the dramatist’s outlook..."
1st course
"set before the public ... the views and codes of life by which the public lives and in which it believes"
The Impartial Artist
"The playwright who supplies to the public the facts of life distorted by the moral which it expects, does so that ... what he considers an immediate good ..."
"...so that they draw for us the moral of their natural actions, may also possibly be of benefit to the community."
"...the making of good drama ... there must be brought ... a desire to make the truest, fairest, best thing in one’s power"
"'the true seer he who sees not only joy but sorrow, the true painter of human life one who blinks nothing."
5 elements to make a good play
Dialogue
"Good dialogue again is character, marshalled so as continually to stimulate interest or excitement"
Characters
"He may take what character or group of characters he chooses ....Take care of character; action and dialogue will take care of themselves"
Action
"The dramatist who hangs his characters to his plot, instead of hanging his plot to his characters, is guilty of cardinal sin."
Flavour
"Flavour, in fine, is the spirit of the dramatist projected into his work in a state of volatility, so that no one can exactly lay hands on it"
Plot
"good plots ...they come by original sin, sure conception, and instinctive after-power of selecting what benefits the germ"
"A bad plot, ...is simply a row of stakes, with a character impaled on each"
No point in comparing one form of drama to another
"It is not unfashionable to pit one form of drama against another — holding up the naturalistic to the disadvantage of the epic; the epic to the belittlement of the fantastic.... Little purpose is thus served"
2 trends of English plays in coming years
Naturalism
"...naturalism,..., but faithful to the seething and multiple life around us"
. "The aim of the dramatist employing it is obviously to create such an illusion of actual life passing on the stage..."
Lyricsim
"be a twisting and delicious stream, which will bear on its breast new barques of poetry, shaped, it may be, like prose, but a prose incarnating through its fantasy and symbolism all the deeper aspirations..."
Conclusion
"We want no more bastard drama;... Let us have starlight, moonlight, sunlight, and the light of our own self-respects."