3.7 Keeping a secret
Good advice, often and authoritatively laid down, is that a dramatist must on no account keep a secret from his audience, because it is so extremely difficult to keep, try as you may. From only one audience can a secret be fairly successfully hidden – the first-night audience.
A huge percentage of any subsequent audience will be certain to know all about it in advance. Surely, the more striking and successful the first-night effect of surprise is, the more rapidly the report of it will circulate through all strata of the theatrical public. A mystery play might make a great first-night success, but the more the playwright relies upon the mystery for effect, the more fatally would that effect be discounted at each successive repetition.
To actually keep a secret and appeal to the primary curiosity of actual ignorance may be ruled out as practically impossible, and not really worthy of serious art. But there is also the secondary curiosity of the audience that, knowing the facts more or less, judges the development of the play from an instinctive point of view of ignorance.
A play should be self-sufficient and not rely on previous knowledge of the audience, acquired from outside sources. The playwright must formally “assume” ignorance in his audience, though he must not practically “rely upon” it. It is really important to determine how long a secret may be kept from an audience, assumed to have no prior knowledge, and at what point it should be revealed. It is useless to keep a secret which, when revealed, is certain to disappoint the audience, and to make it feel underestimated.
In Bernard Shaw’s “The Devil’s Disciple”, in the second act, an example of inartistic secrecy is found - an injudicious, purposeless and foolish, keeping of a secret. It may be argued that Bernard Shaw was forced to make Judith misunderstand her husband’s motives in order to develop her character as he had conceived it. He was so bent on letting Judith continue to conduct herself idiotically, that he made her sensible husband act as idiotically, in order to throw dust in her eyes, and in the eyes of the audience as well, even using phrases carefully calculated to deceive both her and the audience.
In “Whitewashing Julia”, Henry Arthur Jones’s light comedy, it is proved that it is safely possible to keep a secret throughout a play, and never reveal it at all. He pretends that there is some explanation of Mrs. Julia Wren’s relations with the Duke of Savona, and keep the audience waiting for this “whitewashing” disclosure, while it was not really his plan. Julia says that “an explanation will be forthcoming at the right moment”, which never arrives. Julia thinks that there was never anything degrading in her conduct and the audience is asked to accept this as sufficient. The play’s success shows that in light comedy, keeping a secret can work well.
Keeping of a secret may diminish tension, and deprive the audience of that superior knowledge in which the irony of drama lies. In Walter Frith’s play, “Her Advocate” the question to be considered is whether the author did right in reserving the revelation of the secret to the last possible moment. Would he have done better to have given the audience an earlier clue of the true state of affairs - that the client loves another man and not the attorney? To keep the secret placed the audience as well as the advocate on a goose chase, and deprived it of the sense of superiority it would have felt in seeing him marching confidently towards an illusory happiness.
It may be dangerous and even foolish for an author to keep a secret from the audience, but the dramatist should not just reveal his secrets at random. The art lies in knowing just how long to keep silent and when is just the right time to share it. In Arthur Pinero’s “Letty” he gains a significant effect and proves that he knew perfectly well what he was doing by keeping a secret just long and carefully enough. He allowed the truth to slip out just in time to let the audience feel the whole force of irony during the last scene of the act and the greater part of the second act where the tension is delicately graded.
When a reasonable expectation is aroused, it should be fulfilled by the author. If a riddle is put forward, its answer must be pleasing and smart. If a secret is to be kept at all, it must be worth keeping or the audience will resent it. A good balance should be kept between effort and effect, and between promise and performance. The playwright should never shy away from some objective he set out to do. The art is to arouse just the right measure of anticipation, and fulfill it at just the right time. A correct insight into the mind of the audience is a good indication of the skill of the dramatist.