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PLAY-MAKING
A Manual of Craftsmanship
by William Archer
With a New Introduction to the Dover Edition
by John Gassner
Sterling Professor of Playwriting and Dramatic Literature, Yale University
PREFATORY NOTE
This book is, to all intents and purposes, entirely new. No considerable portion of it has already appeared,
although here and there short passages and phrases from articles of bygone years are
embedded--indistinguishably, I hope--in the text. I have tried, wherever it was possible, to select my examples
from published plays, which the student may read for himself, and so check my observations. One reason,
among others, which led me to go to Shakespeare and Ibsen for so many of my illustrations, was that they are
the most generally accessible of playwrights.
If the reader should feel that I have been over lavish in the use of footnotes, I have two excuses to allege. The
first is that more than half of the following chapters were written on shipboard and in places where I had
scarcely any books to refer to; so that a great deal had to be left to subsequent enquiry and revision. The
second is that several of my friends, dramatists and others, have been kind enough to read my manuscript, and
to suggest valuable afterthoughts.
LONDON
January, 1912
To
Brander Matthews
Guide Philosopher and Friend
PLAY-MAKING
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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 Project Gutenberg eBook of A Manual of Craftsmanship
PREFATORY NOTE
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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 I
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
There are no rules for writing a play. It is easy, indeed, to lay down negative recommendations--to instruct the beginner hownot 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
The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Manual of Craftsmanship
CONTENTS
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