WRITING A POPULAR PLAY.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10270, 13 February 1899, Page 2

WRITING A POPULAR PLAY.

■-»_- A CnAT With Mr. Sroxer Gru.?dv. The two things which Mr Sydney Grundy dislikes most in this world are witnessing the performance of his own plays and talking about them. But I tracked him in the dog-days (writes a representative), and it being too warm to repel the attack, he made a graceful concession and allowed mc to cross-question him for the space of an hour.

As everybody knows, Mr Grundy has been responsible for some of the most delightful theatrical productions of the century. "I see that you have perpetrated fortyseven plays, Mr Grundy," I observed. "Where on earth do you get your ideas?" "From pipes." "Pipes?" "Yes, when I want an idea for a play I smoke pipes." My host took up one of seven ferociouslooking bull-dog briars and set it going. "It's easy enough to find an idea," he continued, "but precious hard to find one that will make a popular play. When you hit on one of the latter, take my-advice and thank Providence. The ideas I like, best nobody cares for, and the consequence is I rarely write what pleases mc most. Of course, I occasionally do so. The Greatest of These was a pet notion of mine. I simply took out a sheet of paper, and after spending an hour or so selecting names for the characters, rattled through the piece without a stop. But what was the result? Mr and Mrs Kendal, for whom I wrote it, considered it my best play, but the public—they won't have it. Nearly all the ideas I use now occurred to mc during my youth. Sowing the Wind — possibly my most successful effort —I had had in my mind for years." "How do you make a play?" Mr Grundy suddenly assumed an air of profound solemnity. "What do you want to know that for?" he asked. "Is it not a fact that nine persons out of ten are under the impression that a play has no author and the dialogue is manufactured by the actors and actresses as they go along? There is no subject on which there is such widespread ignorance as that of play-writing. "To speak of myself, although my pen is fairly prolific I suffer from the disease of laziness. I experience the greatest difficulty in interesting myself in my task; but when I once start I go right 'ahead, working morning, noon and night. Then, when I've finished, I hope to goodness I shall never have to write another piecs as long as I live. "Briefly,my method is as follows. When I have decidad on my idea I plan out a very, very slight scenario. This done, 1 proceed I to write with only a general conception of I the people I purpose to deal with. I never become really intimate with my characters until I put pen to paper, Dut as the play shapes itself I get to know them better ana better, and by the time the first act is finished I am on perfectly good terms with them. Sometimes a character will turn out quite a different individual from what I intended him to be, for a mere line of dialogue often suggests a change. "When I have a play in hand, my brain is saturated with it to the exclusion of everything else. I have to keep tne stage in view just as if it were a chessboard. The characters with their movements and exits—most important matters—are incessantly before mc. My model tb.ea.tre is in my head, and I get no mental rest until I have done the thing. I read the other day that the majority of successful dramas are half written on the stage. Well, I can only say that my pieces are evolved in this room and that they are performed substantially as they are written. A slight alteration may be made here and there, but nothing more. For instance, I was once requested to expunge a phrase because the actor who had to speak it couldn't pronounce it! "Contrary to the general supposition, ii is at rehearsals that the playwright has t.-> perform some of his most arduous work. He has a good deal to say in everything, and where ladies are concerned this becomes a delicate matter, because, for some inscrutable reason. no woman knows how, when, and in what costume she looks best, and she fancies that's just what she does know. But actresses are charming at rehearsal. I have met only one who was not an angel." "How do you gauge the length of a play?" "By always writing on the same kind of paper. By counting mc pages I can tell to a minute the time a piece will take to perform, if it is performed properly." "Are you ever dissatisfied with your work?" "Always. I have several pieces which have never been submitted to anybody. I never write one twice. Some authors re-write and re-write, but such patience would be beyond mc. I get too utterly tired of a drama to rewrite it, and when* I cease to care for a subject I abandon it. A very safe general rule for the dramatist is. that what is tedious and irksome to an author is tedious and irksome to an audience. I write ray plays straight away and seldom add*anytrfing, but I am a tremendous cutter. I write meaning to cut. I think this is a more satisfactory process than penning a play exactly as you mean it to be spoken. If you do the latter your work becomes jerky and bald—too much of a skeleton, in fact." "Do you ever put living people bodily on to the stage?" "Several of my acquaintances have accused mc of transplanting them to the footlights, bat they have been invariably mistaken. I take my characters from life, but I so treat them that when they are fully developed they are not photographs of actual living persons. Take Gregory Goldfinch in A Pair cf Spectacles, for example. He is a dozen Yorkshiremen rolled into one. His prototype in Labiche's play is essentially a Ftenchiuun. "By the way, here's something . rather funny about A Pair of Spectacles. You may"recollect that the man from Sheffield turns not a bad sort, and in the end forgives his son. Well, during the run of the play I received a letter, bearing the Sheffield postmark, from a man who complimented mc on

the truth of the character of Gregory Goldfinch in every detail except one. 'That detail,' said my. correspondent, 'is that in the end he f<_-gaVe his son. A Sheffielder never foroive*!' "Talking about A Pair of Spectacles, which was an adaptation." Mr Grundy continued, "many people imagine that an adaptation is a trivial thing to do. I can assure you bhat. when once you have your idea, an original play is as easy to writeas any adaptation you choose to name. In an original effort you are not hampered by someone who has gone before you ; whereas when you are building up an adaptation, you have, of course, to keep the author perpetually in view, in order to note how far yon are departing from his work, and also to see that you don't miss anything of importance." "How do you select the names of your characters?" "Like most authors, I suppose. I keep a book of names. If I meet with a name in private life, or in a newspaper, or over a shop window, that isli__lly to prove useful, I jot it down. Names are most characteristic of an author. I like simple, straightforward names—not out-of-the-way monstrosities which sound as if the author had racked his brains to find them. Affectation in the nomenclature of characters is one of the absurdities of the modern stage. "Strangely enough, objection is frequently taken to the names I use. Sometimes men will write protesting that I am holding them up to ridicule, but most of these nersons are of a retiring disposition and dislike seeing their names paraded in public. Occasionally I get a suggestion that for a small pecuniary- consideration the complainant might be induced to forego his objection." Before I left, Mr Grundy conducted mc on tip-toe to a bureau which was stocked with beautiful melodramas carefully written out in penny washing-h/opks. "These plays," whispered mv host when he had satisfied himself that *no one was within eao-shot, "were written by mc when I wore knickerbockers."