6/6 
 
 Hawkins 
 Dialogue
 
 '»"'*—•»—' 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE ENGLISH ASSOCIATION 
 
 Dialogue 
 
 By 
 
 Anthony Hope Hawkins, M.A. 
 
 Sometime Scholar of Balliol College, Oxford 
 
 (Privately Printed) 
 November, 1901)
 
 As this leaflet is privately printed by special permission of 
 the Author, no additional copies can be sold.
 
 DIALOGUE^ 
 
 Although it is pit)bable tliat the subject I liave cliosen to speak 
 about tliis evening is rather outside the ordinary scope of your pro- 
 ceedings, I have thought it better to take that risk than to attempt 
 to address yoii on some topic which I, as a working novehst and one 
 who has made experiments in the dramatic line also, have had less 
 occasion to study, and therefore should be less likely to be able to say 
 anything deserving of your attention — not that I am at all confident 
 of doing that even as matters stand. Yet perhaps it is not altogether 
 alien to the spirit of this Association to consider sometimes a more 
 or less technical aspect of literature itself, even though its main object 
 may be to promote the study of literature ; such a discussion, under- 
 taken from time to time, may foster that interest in literature, on 
 which in the end the spread of its study must depend. With that 
 much said by way of justification, or of apology, as you will, I proceed 
 to my task. 
 
 Some months ago I happened to read a novel in the whole course 
 of which nobody said anything — not one of the characters was repre- 
 sented in the act of speaking to another with the living voice. One 
 remark was indeed quoted in a letter as having been made viva voce 
 on a previous cx-casion, Ijut this sudden breach of consistency did not 
 command my belief — it seemed like an assertion that in an assembly 
 of veritable mutes somebody had suddenly shouted. The book was 
 not in the main in tiie form of letters — it was almost pure narrative. 
 The effect was worse tiian unreal. An intense sense of lifelessness 
 was })roduced ; you moved among the dead — or even the shadows of 
 the dead. It was a lesson in the importance of dialogue in fiction 
 which no writer could ever forget. 
 
 What, then, is this dialogue ? Formally defined it includes, I sup- 
 pose, any conversation — any talk in which two or more persons t^ke 
 part ; while it excludes a monologue, whic^h one delivers while others 
 listen, and a soiiiociuy, which one delivers when there is nob<Kly to 
 listen — unless, perchance, behind the arras. Jiut some dialogues are, 
 if I may coin a woid. much more tlionuighly dialogic than others — 
 there is much more of wliat is the real essence of the matter. That 
 real essence I take to be the meeting of minds in talk — the recipnual 
 -exhibition of mind to mind. The most famous compositions in the 
 world to whieh the title of (lialog\ies is expressly given I'lato's own — 
 vary greatly in this essential ijuality. Some have it in a liigli degree : 
 I others become in great measure merely an exposition, punctuated by 
 I a8H<.;nts or admissicmK which tend to become almost purely a matter 
 
 • An aildn-Hndelivcrwl to the nn'mbt-THof tlie EngliHli AfHociiitioii, October 28, MHM). 
 
 A 
 
 109^ ' '^7
 
 2 DIALOGUE 
 
 of form. Later philosophical dialogues, like Landor's, give, to my 
 mind, even less the impression of conversation — though an exception 
 may well be made to some extent for Mr. Mallock's New Republic. 
 But speeches are not true dialogue, and you cannot make them such 
 by putting in a succession of them. For an instance, see Mr. Lowes 
 Dickinson's Modern Symposium. One is inclined to say that unstinted 
 liberty of interruption is essential to the full nature of dialogue — to 
 give it its true character of reciprocity, of exchange, and often of 
 combat. Without that it inclines towards the monologue — towards 
 an exposition by one, and away from a contribution by several. 
 
 Thus it is that not all good talk can be cited as a good or typical 
 example of dialogue. I have taken philosophical examples — let me turn 
 hastily to something which, I hope at least, I know rather more about., 
 We all know, and doubtless all love, Sam Weller's talk, but Sam's creator 
 is, naturally enough, too much enamoured of him to give his inter- 
 locutors much of a chance. The whole is designed for the better 
 exhibition of Sam — the other party is, in the slang of the stage, ' feeding 
 him ' — giving him openings. It 's one-sided. A quite modern instance 
 of the same kind, and one which, at its best, is not unworthy of being 
 mentioned in the same breath, is to be found in The Conversations of 
 Mr. Dooley. ' Hinnissey ' gets no chance, he is merely a ' feeder ' ; 
 the whole aim is the exhibition of the mind of Mr. Dooley. Contrast 
 with these the conversations in Tristram Shandy — to my mind some 
 of the finest and, scientifically regarded, most perfect dialogue in 
 English literature. Every character who speaks contributes — really 
 contributes, and is not merely a feeder or a foil. Each has his own 
 mind, his own point of view, and manfully and independently main- 
 tains it. Uncle Toby is the author's pet perhaps, but I think he is 
 hardly less fond of Mr. Shandy — while Mrs. Shandy, Dr. Slop, Corporal 
 Trim, and the rest, are all sharply defined and characterized out of 
 their own mouths, and have their independent value as well as their 
 independent views. If you would seek good modern examples of 
 these dialogic virtues, you might turn to Mr. Anstey's Voces Populi 
 or to Mr. Jacobs's stories. In the latter the things that make you 
 laugh most are often not in themselves remarkable — certainly not 
 witty and indeed not aiming at wit ; but they suddenly exhibit and 
 light up conflicting points of view — and irresistible humour springs 
 full-born from the clash of outlook and of temperament. 
 
 It is precisely this power inherent in dialogue — the power of bringing 
 into sharp vision the conffict of characters and points of view — which 
 favours the increased use of it in modern novels. Serious modern 
 novels tend to deal with matters of debate more than their prede- 
 cessors of corresponding rank did — at once to treat more freely of 
 matters open to question, and to find open to question more matters 
 than our ancestors thought — or at all events admitted — to come 
 within that category. It is both more efficacious and less tedious to 
 let A and B reveal their characters and views to one another than for 
 the author to tell the reader A's character and views, and then B's 
 character and views, and to add the obvious statement that the two 
 characters and views differ. We do not want merely to be told they 
 differ ; the drama lies in seeing them differing, and in seeing the 
 difference gradually disclose and establish itself until it culminates in 
 a struggle and ends in a drawn battle, or a hard- won victory. Of
 
 DIAI.OGUE 3 
 
 course, when a man is figliting alone in liis own soul, you must rely 
 on analysis — on analytic narrative (unless indeed you resort to an 
 allegorical device), but where there is a conflict between two men — 
 representing perhaps two tvpcs of humanity, or two sides of a disputed 
 case — dialogue comes more and more to be used as the most technically 
 effective medium at the writer's disposal. 
 
 But its increased use is not limited to this function. It is found 
 possible to employ it more and more in the direct interest of literary 
 form and teclinique. There are very many facts which the author 
 of a novel desires to convey to his readers. A considerable proportion 
 of them must be conveyed by narrative — so considerable a proportion 
 that it is all gain if the number can be cut down. Here a skilful use 
 of dialogue comes to the author's aid. To take an example. The 
 author wishes to acquaint the reader with the heroine's personal 
 appearance, since the reader is required to understand the hero's 
 passion and the villain's wiles. We all recollect how in many old 
 novels — even in those of the great masters of the craft — the fashion 
 was to catalogue the lady's charms on her first appearance on the 
 scene. There they all were — the raven locks, the flashing eyes, the 
 short curling upper lip, et cetera. You read them — and according 
 to my experience you were in no small danger of entirely forgetting 
 what manner of woman she was by the time you had turned half 
 a dozen pages. But if you can see her beauty in action, so to speak, 
 it 's a different thing. Say that her eyes are the feature on which 
 special stress is desirable. Merely to state that ' she had beautiful 
 blue eyes ' — well, you accept the fact, but it leaves you cold. But if 
 the hero, by a dexterous compliment, gallant yet not obtrusive, can, 
 \ first, tell you about the eyes, secondly exliibit to you the effect the eyes 
 are having on him, thirdly, get a step forward in his relations with 
 the lady, and fourthly, aided by her reply to the compliment, show 
 you how she is disposed to receive his advances — the result is that the 
 author has done more and has done it better. I have purposely 
 chosen a simple — almost a tri\'ial — instance, but it is not therefore, 
 I think, a bad example of liow the use of dialogue can not merely avoid 
 tedium, though that is a supremely desirable and indeed a vital tiling 
 in itself, but can also give a natural effect instead of an unnatural, 
 and add to tlie dramatic value of a fact by showing it in actual opera- 
 tion, producing results, instead of merely chronicling its existence, 
 almost as an item in a list. Novelists have realized this, and the 
 realization of it unites with the reasons which I have alri-ady touched 
 upon to make them try to work more and more through dialogue — 
 more and more to make the characters speak for themselves, and 
 less and less to .speak for them except \shen they nmst. There is 
 a gain all round — in naturalness, in drama, in conciseness, and in 
 Khapciincss. 
 
 It remains, while we are on this ])oint of the technical usefulness 
 of dialogue, to note two or three otlicr ways in \\hich it serves the 
 / novelist's turn. He finds it exceedingly to his purjjose if he wishes 
 I to be impersonal, to be impartial, to keep a secret, or to hold a situa- 
 tion in suspcn.se. It enables him to withdraw behind the curtain, 
 and leave his characters alone with the rc.idci'. It enables him to 
 get rid of the air of onniiscicnci' which narrative forces upon him, 
 and to a.ssume the limitations of his dramatis jyersonae. liy so doing 
 
 A -2
 
 4 DIALOGUE 
 
 he adds reality to them — they are less puppets. Speaking through 
 A's mouth, he sees only A's point of view, and when he speaks through 
 B's mouth his knowledge of the state of events is only B's knowledge, 
 and no greater. He may often desire to do this, for much the same 
 reasons as sometimes lead a writer to assume, altogether and through- 
 out the book, the garb of one of the characters, to write in the first 
 person, to see only what the hero sees, to know only what he knows, 
 and to feel only what he feels. The use of dialogue is in this aspect 
 of it a less drastic form of the same device. 
 
 I have tried to indicate the uses of dialogue to the writers of books — 
 I must say a word or two about the stage later on — but it would be 
 a mistake to suppose that its employment has no limits. One we 
 have already touched upon — a man can't talk dialogue to himself — 
 well, unless he 's a ventriloquist, and in these days his right to solilo- 
 quize, or even to say ' Hallo ! ' when he 's by himself — except into 
 the telephone, of course — is keenly canvassed or sternly denied. But 
 even apart from this necessary hmitation on dialogue, there are, 
 I think, no doubt others. In the first place, dialogue, so excellent 
 a means of exhibiting character and opinion, is on the whole not 
 the most appropriate or effective mode of exhibiting action — unless, 
 that is, the whole importance of the action depends on how it is received 
 by one of the parties to the dialogue. Take the case of a murder. 
 If the object is to tell an ingenious and thrilling story of a murder, 
 it is in nine cases out of ten far better for the author to tell it himself. 
 He gains nothing by putting it into the mouth of a character, and 
 he probably loses directness and effect. But if the import of the 
 murder lies not so much in itself as in the effect the news of it may 
 have on A, B, then it is good to tell it to A, B; the reader can see 
 the effect in operation. But with this exception I think it may be 
 taken that books containing much external action, and much rapid 
 action, will tend to rely less on dialogue, and more on narration. 
 Not only is dialogue less quick-moving and direct, but when action 
 is in the case, it loses just that naturalness which is so pre-eminently 
 its own where it is dealing with a clash of temperaments or with 
 contrasted views of life. It seems to come at second hand, and the 
 reader feels that he would sooner have been with A, who really saw 
 the thing done, than merely with B, who is only being told about it 
 by the actual witness. 
 
 Again, I think there is little doubt that the ordinary reader is fatigued 
 by too much talking, and that a long novel, mainly relying on dialogue 
 and reducing narrative to a merely subordinate position, is in great 
 danger of becoming tedious. This it may do in one of two ways — 
 or, if it is very unfortunate, in both — at different places. The writer 
 may try to tell too much by dialogue, Math the result that his characters 
 speak at great length, and he topples over the line which divides 
 dialogue from speech-making. Or, on the other hand, alive to the 
 perils of speech-making, he may try to cut it all up into question and 
 answer, and to enliven it by constant epigrams or some other form 
 of wit. This latter expedient may not bore the reader so much as 
 the speech-making, but it will probably fatigue him more. Dialogue 
 does, in fact, make a greater claim on the reader than narrative. 
 I think this is true even when it is good dialogue. Something may 
 be done to help him by skilful comment or description — clever stage-
 
 DIALOGUE 5 
 
 directions in effect — but none the less he is deprived, or curtailed, of 
 much of the assistance on his vay whicli the narrative form can give 
 him. I think that probably the best advice to offer to a novice would 
 be: As few k:)ng conversations as possible — but as many short ones. 
 Let the dialogue break up the narrative, and the narrative cut short 
 any tendency to prohxity in the dialogue. 
 
 Just now I referred to the possibility of assisting dialogue by com- 
 ment or description, much as wlien you read a play you are assisted 
 to follow and appreciate the Unes written to be spoken on the stage 
 by tlie directions inserted to guide tlie actor. This reference, I dare 
 say, raised in \'our minds the thought that the dialogue I have been 
 speaking of — dialogue as it is used in novels — is very rarely pure 
 dialogue at all. The objection is well founded, and its application 
 is wide, though the degree of its application varies immensely. You 
 may find pure dialogue, without stage-directions, here and there, even 
 in novels. George Borrow, for instance, is fond of it, and is a master 
 of a peculiar quality of it. But far the more general form is dialogue 
 assisted by comment and description — a hybrid kind of composition, 
 in which tlie author plays a double part, speaking through the charac- 
 ters' mouths at one moment, describing their actions, gestures, even 
 their unspoken thouglits, at the next. This is the normal form of 
 novel dialogue. The variations occur in the relative amount of this 
 description or comment — of this stage-direction, as I have called it. 
 And I call it that because this comment or description takes the place 
 of what they call ' business ' on the stage. The actor's task is divided 
 between his words and his ' business ', and the play%\Tight is entitled 
 to rely on the ' business ' to help out the words, just as the novelist 
 describes or comments on the actions and gestures of his speakers, 
 in order to assist and elucidate tlie meaning of the actual words they 
 use. If you read a play — not seeing the actors — and if the author 
 has given no stage-directions as to how the characters look or speak — 
 as to whether they show anger or fright, or pleasure, or sui-prise, for 
 instance, you will find, I think, that j^ou have to read w ith an increased 
 degree of attention — perhaps I may say of sympathetic imagination — 
 and that, even with tliis brought to bear, you will sometimes be in 
 doubt. So with novel dialogue. If the author denied himself descrip- 
 tion or comment interlarded with the actual words spoken, he would 
 set a harder task both to his own skill and to the reader's intelligence. 
 The comments of the novelist, like the ' business ' of tlie playwright, 
 clothe the skeleton of tiie actually spoken words with a living form, 
 expressing itself in action, in gesture, by frowns or smiles, by tears 
 or laughter. I have little doubt that if we possessed not only Sliake- 
 .spearc's words, but Shakcsjx'arc's ' busiric^ss ', many a controversy as 
 to the exact meaning of this passage or that, many a question as to 
 the precise character or mental condition of this or that of his dramatis 
 persoruir. could never have arisen — and many learned, and possibly 
 some tedious, books would have gone unwritten. 
 
 Now, HO far as I know — but. I hasten to add that I am not a wide 
 reader of plays, though I am mudi addicted to seeing them acted — 
 Mr. licriianl Shaw was the first among I'lnglish drariiatists to see and 
 exphjil fully the jxjssibilities of .stagr-dircctions in helping the imagina- 
 tion of those who n^id, an distinct from those wlio see, his plays. 
 Some of his Htage-dinH;ti(m.s are, in my humble opinion, among the
 
 6 DIALOGUE 
 
 best things he has ever done — terse, humorous, incisive, complete — 
 see, for example, his description of Mrs. Warren. But novelists were 
 quicker to see the possibility of their stage-directions, their comments 
 on moods, their descriptions of the actions or the gestures accompanying 
 the spoken words. When you talk to a man or woman, you don't 
 shut your eyes and merely listen to the voice. You do listen carefully 
 to the voice — since he may say ' Yes ' as if he really meant it, or as 
 if he only half-meant it, or as if he meant just the opposite — but 
 you also watch his eyes and his mouth — and in moments of strong 
 excitement it is recorded of many a villain that his fingers twitched, 
 and of many a heroine that her bosom heaved ; so fingers and bosoms 
 are worth watching too. Now the point is that a skilful use of these 
 stage-directions can not only immensely assist the meaning of novel 
 dialogue, but can also add enormously to its artistic value and merit. 
 It can diffuse an atmosphere, impart a hint, create an interest by 
 a dexterous suspending of the answer. This last is, from a professional 
 point of view, a particularly pretty trick — it 's not much more than 
 a trick, but let us call it a literary device — and Sterne brought it to 
 great perfection — and knew well what he was doing. I will make 
 bold to quote a passage of his which bears on the whole subject, and 
 show^s both his method and the absolute consciousness with which he 
 employed it — to say nothing of the shameless candour \\dth which 
 he laughs at his own trick. Corporal Trim is discoursing to his fellow 
 servants on the death of Tristram's brother, Master Bobby. ' Are 
 we not here now ? ' continued the Corporal (striking the end of his 
 stick perpendicularly upon the floor, so as to give an emblem of 
 health and stabihty) ' and ' (dropping his hat upon the ground) ' gone 
 in a minute ? ' Then Sterne digresses, and repeats — as his manner is. 
 But he comes back — and is good enough to explain : ' Let us only 
 carry back our minds to the mortality of Trim's hat,' he says. ' Are 
 we not here now — and gone in a moment ? There was nothing in 
 the sentence — 'twas one of your self-evident truths we have the 
 advantage of hearing every day : and if Trim had not trusted more 
 to his hat than to his head, he had made nothing at all of it.' And 
 he proceeds : ' Ten thousand and ten thousand times ten thousand 
 (for matter and motion are infinite) are the ways by which a hat 
 may be dropped on the ground without any effect. Had he flung it, 
 or thrown it, or cast it, or skimmed it, or squirted it, or let it slip 
 or fall in any possible direction under heaven — had he dropped it like 
 a goose, like a puppy, like an ass — or in doing it or even after he had 
 done it, had looked like a fool, like a ninny, like a nincompoop — it 
 had failed, and the effect upon the heart had been lost.' And he 
 ends — most justifiably — ' Meditate, I beseech you, upon Trim's hat ! ' 
 Trim's hat may certainly stand as an instance of the value of stage- 
 directions to novel dialogue. 
 
 Returning to actually spoken words — the real talk bet\^'een the 
 interlocutors — we may note the great adaptability and elasticity of 
 /the dialogue form. The hesitation, the aposiopesis, the interruption, 
 ' are all ready and flexible devices, apt to convey hints, innuendoes, 
 doubts, objections, apt to convey the sense of a balance inclining 
 now this way, now that, to show one mind feehng its way towards 
 a knowledge of the other, while sedulously guarding its own secrets. 
 Or you may seek the broader effects of comedy with the sudden
 
 DIALOGUE 7 
 
 betrayal of irreconcilable divergence, or of an agreement as complete 
 as it is paradoxical, or of the nmtual helplessness \\liich results from 
 total misunderstanding of the one by the other, or, finally, of the 
 well-worn but still effective device — a favourite one in the theatre — 
 of two people talking at cross-pui-poses, one meaning one thing, the 
 other a different one, and the pair arriving at an harmonious agreement 
 from utterly inharmonious premises — the false accord of a hundred 
 scenes of comedy. 
 
 Sucli are some of the arts of dialogue, as they are employed some- 
 times in the task of serious and delicate analysis, as for example by 
 Mr. Henry James, sometimes in the cause of pure comedy, as by 
 Gv-p. That lady made an interesting experiment. She tried to indi- 
 cate the gestures, therein her countrymen are so eloquent, by a system 
 of notation — so many notes of interrogation, or so many of exclama- 
 tion, being B's response to A's spoken observation. But here, I think, 
 she must be held to have resorted to ' business ' as we have already 
 discussed it, and to have passed beyond true dialogue. An ' Oh ', 
 an ' All ! ' or a ' Humpli ! ' constitute about the irreducible minimum 
 of that articulate speech \\hich makes dialogue. Notes of exclamation 
 won't quite do. 
 
 One other function of dialogue deserves especial mention. Unless 
 an author adopts the drastic course I have already alluded to — that 
 of sinking himself absolutely in the personality of one of his characters 
 and writing in the name and garb of that character — as for example 
 did Defoe — and as, for example, does Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, when 
 he plays Dr. Watson to Sherlock Holmes's ' lead ' as they say in the 
 theatre — unless he does this, dialogue alone will enable him to impart 
 ' local colour ', in other words, to set before his reader the speech 
 and the mind of races or classes far different in their thoughts, in 
 their modes of expression, and in their actual vocabulary and pro- 
 nunciation, from wliat we may term the ordinary educated reader. 
 Scores of Dickens's cockney characters, Mr. Hardy's Wessex rustics, 
 Mr. Kipling's soldiers, live and move and have their being for us 
 solely in virtue of what they say and the way they say it. In fact 
 they couldn't be described — tiiey must be seen and heard. They 
 must be on the stage. Therefore they must use — their creators must 
 use for them — that literary form which is, in the end, the link between 
 novels and the stage — the form common to both — the form of dialogue. 
 
 That last observation leads me naturally to pass on to the literary 
 vehicle in wliich dialogue is in its glory — in which it is the sovereign 
 instrument, in wliich it reaches its highest level of independence, in 
 wliich it leans its lightest <»n any other aid than that iiilierent in its 
 own capacity. This is the drama — and the drama written for the 
 actual stage. I do not think that what are called ' plays for the 
 study ' need detain us. It is really only a question of degree in each 
 case. They either ajiproximate closely to the true stage-play or, on 
 the other hand, they are really books in which, by artifice ami often 
 by an effort which is rather too visible, those parts that would naturally 
 assume a narrative form, are presented in th(^ guise of dialogue — 
 or rather not so juueh of dialogues as we are now discussing it, but, 
 as I should say, of spec^ches which are, in essence, either narrative, 
 or argumentative, or reflective, or h()rtative in character. 
 
 U'e may come then to the fliculre itself — hut before I attempt to
 
 8 DIALOGUE 
 
 say anything on the relations between stage dialogue and book dialogue, 
 I should like to remind you again that even this greater independence 
 of stage dialogue is very far indeed from being absolute. We have 
 already referred to the stage-directions. These are amplified by the 
 actor, of his own motion or in pursuit of the instructions he receives 
 at rehearsal. The result is his ' business ' — everything he does on 
 the stage except what he does with his tongue. The ' business ' 
 coun^.s for much, but what counts for even more is that the words 
 are spoken there on the stage by living man to living man. I think 
 it is hard to exaggerate the effect of this — the immense help it gives 
 to the words. It is not merely a question of vividness, though that 
 is important enough. It is equally, or even more, a question of 
 appropriateness, of the words matching the personality from which 
 they proceed. The novelist can make his words match the personality 
 which he has created in his own mind. Where he is at a disadvantage 
 compared with the playwright is that it is infinitely harder for him, 
 in spite of all his stage-directions, and his descriptions, and his analysis, 
 to set that personality as completely before his reader as the corporeal 
 presence of the actor sets it before the audience in the theatre. Hence 
 the match — the harmony — between the words and the personality — 
 though it may exist, is apt not to be nearly so effective in the book 
 as on the stage, and a line that misses its mark as written in the one 
 may triumph in the other, thanks to the man who speaks it — to his 
 skill, to his emotional power, not seldom, and especially in comedy, 
 even to his personal appearance. In a word the independence of 
 dialogue on the stage is qualified by its dependence on the actor. 
 He has to do what the novelist does by descriptions and comments. 
 He has to clothe the skeleton ; and if it has been one's fortune to 
 see two or three great or accomplished actors play the same part, 
 especially, say, in a classic play, where they are not guided — or tram- 
 melled — by too many stage-directions, and are not instructed — perhaps 
 sometimes over-instructed — by the author, one will not, I think, doubt 
 that the clothes they put on the skeleton may very considerably affect 
 the appearance of its anatomy, sometimes seeming to alter the very 
 shape of the bones. 
 
 Still, all allowances made, it remains true that the stage offers the 
 fullest, the fairest, and the most independent opportunity for pure 
 dialogue — and it is necessary to ask the question — however hard the 
 answer may be — what effect the medium of the theatre has upon 
 dialogue. I admit at once that I think the question is very hard to 
 answer. We are in presence of the indisputable fact that dialogue 
 which is highly moving or amusing in a book may fall quite flat on 
 the stage — while on the other hand dialogue which is very effective 
 on the stage may sound either obvious or bald in a book. This is 
 not to say, of course, that some dialogue A\dll not be found good for 
 both. Practical experiments are constantly being tried, owing to the 
 habit of dramatizing novels which have achieved a popular success. 
 The temptation is to carry over into the play as much of the dialogue 
 of the novel as you can contrive to use ; the object is to preserve as 
 far as possible both the hterary flavour and the commercial goodwill 
 of the original. The result is interesting. The novelist, whether he 
 acts as his own dramatist or not, will almost always notice, I think, 
 that passages of dialogue which are most effective in the book are
 
 DIALOGUE 9 
 
 least effective on the stage — often that they need complete remodelling 
 before tliey can be used at all. On the other hand, passages which he 
 has little esteemed in the book — regarded perhaps almost as mere 
 machinery, part of the necessaiy traffic of the story — make an imme- 
 diate hit ^^^th audiences in the theatre. 
 
 It is a commonplace in the theatrical world that there is no telling 
 what ' they ' \\ ill like — ' they ' means the public — not even what 
 plays they will or will not like, mucli less what particular scenes or 
 passages — and nobody with even the least practical experience would 
 care to back his opinion save at very favourable odds. If then it is 
 impossible to tell what they will or won't like, it seems still more 
 hopeless to inquire why they will or won't like it ; but that is, in 
 reality, not quite the case. It is not, I think, so much that the play- 
 WTight does not know what he has to do to please them, as that it 
 happens to be ratlier difficult to do it, and quite as difficult to know 
 when you have done it. Happily, however, we are to-night not on 
 the hard liighroad of practice, but in the easy pastures of criticism, 
 and may tlierefore be bold to try to suggest what are the main features 
 of good theatrical dialogue — features which, though they may be found 
 in and may assist novel dialogue, yet are not indispensable to it, but 
 which must characterize theatrical dialogue and are indispensable to 
 success on the stage. These indispensable qualities may in the end be 
 reduced to two — practicality and universality. 
 
 By practicality — not a happy term, I confess, and one which I use 
 only because I cannot think of any other single word — I mean the 
 quality of helping the play forward, either by getting on with the 
 evolution of the situations, or by exhibiting the drama which is the 
 result of the situations (I must add, parenthetically, that by situations 
 I do not mean merely external happenings — tlie term properly includes 
 botli characters and events, and their reciprocal action on one another). 
 A play is a very short thing ; a very solid four-act play — I am talking 
 of the modem tlieatre now — will not cover more than 140 to 150 
 ordinary type-written sheets ; a novel of tlie ordinary length will 
 cover from three to four hundred. The obvious result is that the 
 author has not, to put it colloquially, much time to play about. He 
 may allow himself a little of what is technically termed ' relief '. 
 A gotxl line pays for its place. But broadly speaking, all the dialogue 
 has to work — each line has its task of advancing action or exhibiting 
 character. Now only so many lines being possible between tlie rise 
 and the fall of the curtain, it is clear that there is no room for digres- 
 sion or for rambhng — things that are often most delightful in a book, 
 where space and time are practically unlimited. More than this. 
 Not only is there no space for rambling and irrelevant talk, but the 
 necessary talk — the talk that is licijjful and pertinent — must at the 
 same time carefully consult the limits of space. There are a lot of 
 points to be made in every act — aye, in every scene. The playwright 
 cannot afford too nnieh space to any one point. And the ])oint must 
 not only hr made with all possible brevity — it nmst be made with 
 all possible certainty, so that there may be no need of going back 
 to it, no need of re|)etition ; it should be stuck straight into th(^ 
 audience's mind, as one sticks a pin into u ehurt. Hence there is 
 need of direetnesH — a certain (juality of unmistakal)leness — one might 
 almfjst say bluntn(!ss, when one comimrcs theatrical dialogu(> with
 
 10 DIALOGUE 
 
 some of the minutely wTought novel dialogue to which I have referred 
 to-night. But what then — I'm afraid you wiD be beginning to ask — 
 what then, if you are right, is to become not only of the literary graces 
 of style, but also of the intellectual quality of your work — of its pro- 
 fundity, of its subtlety, of its delicacy ? Well, I can make only one 
 answer — and being to-night, as I say, in the happy pastures of theory — 
 I can give it light-heartedly. You must keep all those, and manage 
 to harmonize them wdth your brevity and your certainty. That is one 
 of the reasons — not the only one — why it is distinctly difficult to write 
 good plays, not very easy to WTite even what are often contemptuously 
 referred to as commercially successful plays — ^and not absolutely easy 
 to write anything that can be called in any serious sense a play at all. 
 There is a great deal of difference between just being a bad play and 
 not being a play at all. The real playwright sometimes writes a bad 
 play — but it is a play that he writes. Yes, your beauty, your pro- 
 fundity, your subtlety, your dehcacy, must submit to drill — they 
 must toe the line — they must accept the strait conditions of this most 
 exacting medium. Conciseness and certainty — a quality of clean-cut 
 outHne — is demanded by stage conditions. The writer must know 
 with accuracy where he is going at every minute and just how far. 
 He ought to do the same in a book, you'll say, and I admit it. But 
 in the latter it is an ideal, and many a successful and even many 
 a delightful book has been written without the ideal being reached — 
 or perhaps even aimed at. On the stage the ideal is also the indispen- 
 sable — ^for there a writer in the least of a mist wraps his audience in 
 the densest fog. 
 
 The second quahty which I suggest as pre-eminently required by 
 stage dialogue and which I have called universaUty really goes deeper 
 and afifects more than the mere dialogue, though strictly speaking we 
 are this evening concerned with its effect in that sphere only. Con- 
 sider for a moment the different aim which a writer of novels and 
 a writer of plays respectively may set before himself. Of course the 
 novelist may set out to please the whole British public — ^and the 
 American and Continental too, if you Hke, though for simpUcity's 
 sake we may confine ourselves to these islands. A certain number 
 no doubt start -wdth that aim. A few may have succeeded — very 
 few. But such an ambitious task is in no way incumbent on the 
 novelist. Whether he looks to his pride or his pocket, to fame or to 
 a sufficient circulation, it is quite enough for him to please a section 
 of the public. He may be a famous literary man and enjoy a large 
 income, as fame and incomes go in authorship, without three-quarters 
 of the adult population — let alone the boys and girls — knowing or 
 caring one jot about him. And he may be quite content to have it 
 so — content deliberately and voluntarily, and not merely perforce, to 
 hmit the extent of his appeal, finding compensation in the intenser, 
 though narrower, appeal he makes to liis chosen audience, and in the 
 increased liberty to indulge and to develop his owti bent — to go his 
 own way, in short, happy in the knowledge that he has a select but 
 sufficient body of devoted followers. For example, I don't suppose 
 that Mr. Meredith expected or tried to please the boys who worshipped 
 Mr. Henty, or that Mr. Henty, in his turn, had any idea of poaching 
 on the preserves of Mr. Pett Ridge. In a word, a novelist can, if he 
 likes or if he must (often the latter is the case), specialize in his audience
 
 DIALOGUE 11 
 
 just as he can in his subject or his treatment. If he pleases the class 
 he tries to please, all is \vell with him ; he can let the others go, Mith 
 just as much regret and just as much poHteness as his circumstances 
 and his temperament may dictate. 
 
 Now, of course, this is true to some degree of the theatre also — 
 at any rate in the great centres of population like London, where 
 there are many neighbourhoods and many theatres. You would not 
 expect to fill a popular ' low price ' house \\ ith the same bill that 
 might succeed at the St. James's or, in recent days, at the Court 
 Theatre. Nevertheless, it is immensely less true of the theatre than 
 it is of the novel. Take the average West End theatre — it has to 
 cater for all of us. The fashionable folk go, you and I go, our growing 
 boys and girls go, our relations from the country go, our servants 
 go, our butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers go, the girls from 
 the A. B.C. shops, and the young gentlemen from Marshall & Snel- 
 grove's go — we have all to be catered for — we have all to be pleased 
 with the same dinner ! Across the footlights lies a miniature world, 
 in which wellnigh every variety that exists in the great Avorld outside 
 has paid its money and sits in its seat. Is this to say that the theatre 
 must rely on the commonplace and obvious ? Not at all — but it is 
 to say that it must in the main rely on the universal — on that which 
 appeals to all the varieties in virtue of the common humanity that 
 underlies the variations. It must find, so to say, the least common 
 denominator, and work tiirough and appeal to that. The things that 
 will do it differ profoundly — 
 
 ' To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
 Creeps in this potty pace from day to day 
 To the last syllable of recorded time, 
 And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
 The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! ' 
 
 That does it. Or Congreve's ' Though Marriage makes man and 
 wife one flesh, it leaves them still tw'O fools ! ' — That does it, though 
 obviously in quite a different way — or ' Romeo, Romeo, wherefore 
 art thou Romeo ? ' — again in a different way. Or again something 
 quite elementary — even schoolboyish if one may dare to use the word 
 of Shakespeare — may win its way by its absolute naturalness, as 
 when Jacques says to Orlando — of Rosalind, ' I do not like her name ' — 
 ' There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened ' — 
 an unanswerable retort to an impertinent observation which I have 
 never known to fail in pleasing the house. The thing may or may 
 not be simple, it may or may not be yirofouud, it may or may not 
 be witty, but it must liave a wide ajjpcal — it. must touch a common 
 chord. I imagine that very few plays — though I think I have known 
 a few — get produced c'lnd then please nobody — absolutely nobody in 
 the house. I have known sonic failuics that have j)lcascd very highly 
 fK*o[)lc whom any author should be jiruud to please. Rut they haven't 
 pleased enough people — not merely not enough to succeed, but not 
 <-nough to establish them as good plays, liowevcr much good literary 
 Ktuff and good literary form tiiere might be contained and cxhibiLi-d in 
 them. 
 
 Now this need for universality — for the lliin^ witli a wide aj)peal
 
 12 DIALOGUE 
 
 not limited to this or that class or character of intellect — ^has its 
 effect, I think, on the actual form of the dialogue, though I freely 
 admit that is an effect extremely hard to measure and define with 
 any approach to accuracy. It in no way excludes individuality or 
 even whimsicality, whether in situation or dialogue. The writer who 
 is probably the most successful living British dramatist to-day is also 
 probably the most individual and the most whimsical. It in no way 
 demands undue concession to the commonplace — but it does, I think, 
 require that the dialogue shall be in some sense in the vulgar tongue — • 
 that it shall be understanded of the people. The thing need not be 
 seen or put as the audience would see or put it, but it must be seen 
 and put as the audience can understand that character seeing and 
 putting it. It must not be perverse, or too mannered, or too obscure. 
 It may not be allowed so much licence in this respect as book-dialogue, 
 if only for the reason that its effect has to be much more immediate — 
 there can be no such thing as reading the speech over again the better 
 to grasp its meaning — a necessity not unknow^n in novel reading. Its 
 appeal is immediate, or it is nothing at all. It must also be, above 
 all things, natural — and this again is on the stage even more pre- 
 eminently requisite than in the written page — if only for the reason 
 that the speaker is more vividly realized on the stage, and the author 
 less vividly remembered — so that any discrepancy between the speaker 
 as he lives before you and the particular thing he says is more glaringly 
 apparent. And, as a corollary to this necessity for naturalness, follows 
 the need for full and distinct differentiation of character. The dialogue 
 must clearly attach to each character in the play his point of view 
 and must consistently maintain it. On the whole therefore we may 
 say that the universality of appeal which the stage demands operates 
 on the form of the dialogue by way of imposing upon it certain obliga- 
 tions of straightforwardness of effect, of lucidity and immediateness 
 in appeal, and of naturalness and exact appropriateness to the speaker 
 — obligations which exist for book-dialogue also, but are less stringent 
 and less peremptory there than in the theatre. 
 
 This question of naturalness, which is germane to the whole subject 
 of dialogue and not merely to stage dialogue, is one of the most difficult 
 things to lay down any rale about. It is not easy even to get any 
 working formula which is helpful. On the one side there seems to 
 lie the obvious rule — that all dialogue ought to be natural, appropriate 
 to the person in whose mouth it is put — not merely what in substance 
 he would say, but also said in the way he would say it. On the other 
 side is the obvious fact that no two writers of any considerable merit 
 do, as a fact, write dialogue in the same way, even when they are 
 presenting the same sort of characters. Comparatively impersonal as 
 the dialogue form is, when set beside the narrative, yet the writer's 
 idiosyncrasy -will have its way, and in greater or less degree the author's 
 accent is heard from the hps of his imaginary interlocutors — and of 
 each and all of them, however widely different they may be supposed 
 to be, and really are, from one another. This appears to land us in 
 an impasse ; the obvious fact seems to conflict wdth the obvious rule. 
 If it be so, i suppose the rule must go to the wall, for all its obvious- 
 ness. But I fancy that some approach to a solution may be found 
 in the suggestion that no two authors of creative power do, in fact, 
 ever create characters of quite the same sort, and that we got into
 
 DIALOGUE 13 
 
 a seeming impasse by being guilty of a fallacy. \Vlien an author 
 sits down at his desk to contemplate, criticize, and reproduce the 
 world about liim, it is natural at the first thought to regard the author 
 as subject contemplating and reproducing the world as object — pure 
 subject as against pure object. Here is the fallacy as I conceive. 
 The author as subject does not and cannot contemplate the world 
 as pure object. What he sees is object-subject — that is to say, he 
 consciously sets himself to contemplate and describe a w-orld which 
 is already nuxlitied for him by the unconscious projection of his o\\'n 
 personality into it — or. in more homely language, he always looks 
 through his own spectacles. It follows that when two creative minds — 
 say Dickens and Thackeray — both set out to describe a duke or a 
 costermonger, it is nevei' tlie same duke or costermonger — it is not 
 the abstract idea of duke or costermonger, laid up in heaven — but it 
 is a duke- Dickens or a duke-Thackeray — a costermonger-Dickens or 
 a costermonger-Thackeray. Consequently again it is not in the end 
 natural — and. therefore, as tlie Admirable Crichton would remind 
 us, it is not in the end right — that these two dukes or these two coster- 
 mongers should speak in exactly the same way — though no doubt 
 both of the pairs ought still to speak as dukes and costermongers of 
 some sort — be it Dickensian or Thackerayan as the case may be. Of 
 course, if an author's idiosyncrasy is so peculiar that the subjective 
 infusion of himself which he pours into the objective costermonger 
 is so powerful as to cause the human race at large to object that no 
 costermonger of any kind whatsoever ever did or could speak in that 
 way — weU, then the world will say that the picture of the costermonger 
 is untrue and the language of the costermonger is inappropriate and 
 unnatural — a conclusion summed up by saying tliat tlie author can't 
 draw a costermonger. His personality won't blend with costermongers 
 — perhaps it will ^\^th dukes — he had better confine himself to the 
 latter. The autlior may take comfort in the thouglit that there are 
 sure to be a few persons enamoured of singularity, and perhaps hking 
 to be wi.ser than their neighbours, who will declare that his co.ster- 
 mongers are of a superior brand to all others, and are indeed the 
 only complete and veritable revelation of the quiddity of the coster- 
 monger ever set before the world since tliat planet began its journey 
 round the sun. 
 
 We arrive, then — as we draw near the close of these remarks — 
 rather rambhng remarks, I am afraid — at the conclusion, ])ciliaps 
 a conclusion with a touch of the paradoxical in it — that in dialogue 
 the writer is always trying to do what in the nature of the case he 
 can never do completely. He is always trying to present objectively 
 a persfjnahty othci- than liis own. He never fully succeeds, and it 
 would be to the ruin of his work as literature, if he did. The creator 
 is always there in the created, and it is probably true to say that ho 
 is there in greater degree just in jjpoporlion to the forr-e of his personality 
 and the power of his creative faculty. Is the greater writer then less 
 true to life than the smaller ? I am not going to be as surprising as 
 that — for, though he puts in more of himself, the greater writer sees 
 and puts in a lot more of the ol)jeetive costermonger also. I?ut it 
 is, 1 think, true to say that, what we get from liiin is not, in the strict 
 use of words, anything that exists. It is a hy])othetical person, if 
 I may so put it — it is a compound of what the author takes from the
 
 14 DIALOGUE 
 
 world outside and what he himself contributes. The result is, then — 
 to take an instance or two — in Diana of the Crossways, not an actual 
 historical character, but what Mr. Meredith would have been had he 
 been that lady — not an actual skipper of a coastwise barge, but what 
 Mr. Jacobs would have been had he been skipper of a barge — not an 
 actual detective, but what Gaboriau, or Wilkie Collins, or Sir Arthur 
 Conan Doyle would have been had he been a detective, or, to take 
 extreme cases, not the inhabitants of the jungle, but all the varieties 
 which Mr. Kapling's fertile genius would have assumed if he had had 
 to people the jungle all off his own bat. True as this is of all imagina- 
 tive writing, it is most true of dialogue. That is an attempt at direct 
 impersonation, as direct as the actor's on the stage — ^and it is and can 
 be successful only within the limits indicated. The author, like the 
 actor, must go on trying to do what he never can and never ought to 
 succeed in doing — namely, obliterating his own personality. The real 
 process is not obliteration but transformation or translation — a fusion 
 of himself with each of his speakers — he modifies each of them and 
 is himself in each case modified by the fusion. And we may probably 
 measure a man's genius in no small degree just by his susceptibility 
 to this fusion. We talk of Shakespeare's universal genius, and say 
 that he ' understands ' everybody ; that is to say, that he is at home 
 in speaking in any man's mask — that he can fuse himself with any- 
 body. Lesser writers can fuse only wdth people of a certain type, 
 or a certain class, or a certain period, or a certain way of thinking. 
 Some very clever people and accomplished writers fail in the novel 
 or the play because they are deficient in the power of fusing at all, 
 and their own personality is always the overpowering ingredient, so 
 that they can preach, or teach, or criticize, but they cannot, as the 
 saying goes, get into another man's skin — a popular way of putting 
 the matter which Avail express the truth about what is needful very 
 well, if we add the proviso that when the author gets in he must not 
 drive the original owner out, but the two must dwell together in 
 unity. 
 
 Thus we see dialogue fall into its place among the varieties of literary 
 expression, as the most imitative and the least personal, yet not as 
 entirely imitative nor as wholly impersonal. It carries the imitative 
 and impersonal much further than the Ijrric coming straight from the 
 poet's own heart, much further than the philosophic poem with its 
 questioning of a man's own thoughts about the universe, further than 
 narrative with its frankly personal record of how things appear to 
 the narrator, and its unblushing attempt to make them appear in the 
 same light to the reader. At its best it carries imitation to such 
 a point that its own excellence alone convinces us that there is some- 
 thing more than imitation after all, and more than the insight which 
 makes imitation possible — that among all the infinitely diverse crea- 
 tions of a rich imagination and an unerring penetration there is still 
 a point of unity, which determines the exact attitude of each character 
 towards the life which it is his to lead and the world which he has 
 to live in. The point of unity is the author's voice, veiled and muffled, 
 but audible sLill, however various, however fantastic, however trans- 
 formed, the accents in which it speaks. Tlie unity in multiplicity for 
 which poetry yearns, philosophy labours, and science untiringly seeks — 
 this is also the aim and ideal of dialogue, and of drama, its completest
 
 DIALOGUE 15 
 
 form — so that out of the infinite diversity of types and of individuals 
 which pour forth from the mind of a great creator there shall still 
 emerge sometliing that we know to be his, something that ho has given 
 to, as well as all that he has taken from, the great scene about him, 
 his view of life as it must present itself to all sorts and conditions of 
 men, his criticism of a world in wliich all these sorts and conditions 
 of men exist.
 
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 and can be purchased only by members on application to the 
 
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 1907. 
 
 No. 1. Types of English Curricula in Boys' Secondary Schools. 
 
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 (Provisional suggestions). Price Id. 
 
 No. 3. A Short List of Books on English Literature from the 
 beginning to 1832, for the use of Teachers. 
 
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 1908. 
 
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 1909. 
 
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