THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS
THE DRAMATIZATION OF NOVELS AND THE NOVELIZATION OF PLAYS
In Professor Bliss Perry's admirably suggestive 'Study of Prose Fiction,' he devotes one chapter to a careful consideration of the essential distinctions between prose fiction and the drama, in which he makes it plain that "the novel and the play are not merely two different modes of communicating the same fact or truth," because "the different modes of presentation really result in the communication of a different fact." Professor Perry declares that the field of the dramatist is marked off from that of the novelist "by the nature of the artistic medium which each man employs," and he asserts that the choice of a medium for presenting his story and projecting his characters "depends wholly upon the personality and training of the artist and the nature of the fact or truth that he wishes to convey to the public". And he sums up by insisting that "a novel is typically as far removed from a play as a bird is from a fish, and that any attempt to transform one into the other is apt to result in a sort of flying-fish, a betwixt-and-between thing--capable, indeed, of both swimming and flying, but good at neither." In other words, a dramatized novel or a novelized play is an attempt to breed an amphibious creature which, as the Irishman once defined it, "can't live on the land, and dies in the water."
The difference between the novel and the play is due to the inexorable fact that one is intended to be read alone in the study, and that the other is intended to be seen on the stage by a crowd; it ought to be obvious to all who care to consider the question, and yet there are many who fail to grasp the distinction, deceived by the illusive but superficial similarities between the two forms, each of which contains a story carried on by characters who take part in dialogs. And as a result of this failure to apprehend the vital differences between the two types of story-telling, the narrative to be perused and the action to be witnessed, our theaters have long been invaded by dramatized novels, and our book-stores are now being besieged by novelized plays. In many cases, if not in most of them, the motive for the transformation is simply commercial; and in view of the immediate gain to be garnered, the artistic disadvantages of the procedure are overlooked. If hundreds of thousands of readers have found pleasure in following the footsteps of a fascinating heroine thru the pages of a prose fiction, it is possible always that hundreds of thousands of spectators may be lured to behold her adventures when they are set forth anew in a stage-play. And if a compelling plot has drawn audiences night after night into the theater, it is possible again that this plot may attract book-buyers in equal numbers when it is retold in a narrative for the benefit of those remote from the playhouse, or reluctant to risk themselves within its portals. Managers are ready to tempt the novelist with the hope of a second crop of fame and fortune, and publishers dangle the same golden bait before the eyes of the dramatist.