The confidant in plays

As we know, the monologue is a bad theater trick. As playwrights began to half sense its falsity, they cast around for some means to obviate its apparent necessity. Certain infor¬mation, certain emotions, must be conveyed to the audience. The monologue was unnatural, therefore the " confidant " became a character in many plays. This was a personage of either sex whose sole pur¬pose in the piece was to be on hand to listen to all the stories, feelings, and ideas the hero or heroine wished to express, and for which the inexpert drama¬tist knew no other method of revelation. There are still plays in which the leading character has a bosom friend to whom he talks more freely than to the others. Since that is an entirely natural state of affairs in real life, there can be no objection. But, this character is made to serve other purposes in the play, has an active relationship to the plot be¬yond his confidential capacity. The ever-present telephone is a useful invention which in many cases does away with the need for either monologue or confidant. If you use a character of this nature, see to it, then, that he is a personality and not a mere feeder for another role.

"The Spy." In a play where the personages are inspired by their emotions, these emotions becoming the mainspring of action and characterization, there will be no real necessity for the discussion of their feelings with others, beyond an ordinary, legitimate expression or confession of thought or mood. In Henri Kistemacker's play, The Spy, there is an adroit, dramatic use made of the "confidant," who in this case is a priest. To no other could the heroine speak with as much cause as to this character. Though he serves no other especial purpose in the drama, the " trick " is never noticeable. We must know Monique's reasons for her intentions. They lie back over so long a stretch of time that only in this way can they reach us. Her childhood friend and confessor is the natural recipient of her confidences.

In this connection, I have no reference to one char¬acter telling another something the audience must know. It is only when the other character plays no other part than that of a mere listener and adviser that legitimate reasons must be found for his presence in the plot, and this takes skill. Kiste¬macker managed it well and unobtrusively.

"The New Sin." If your characters are human, flesh-and-blood personalities, you will easily find a use for their being, since the average human listener to any confidence of great import is inspired with a desire to make use of it, either to help or hurt the other. In The New Sin, the hero tells his two pals of his intolerable situation, and tells it at some length. Neither of his listeners is a mere " confidant " in the obnoxious dramatic meaning of the term, since both are characters of almost equal importance with the hero in the development of the story.