How to Write a Play Letters from Augier, Banville, Dennery, Dumas, Gondinet, Labiche, Legouvé, Pailleron, Sardou and Zola — Background and Themes

The Paradox of Instruction

The volume's central tension is announced by Gillette himself: those who can do, cannot teach. He notes that Shakespeare, Milton, and Beethoven never issued rules, and implies that the playwrights here are being prodded into speech against their better judgment. The letters bear this out. Four writers confess they do not know how to write a play; two of them then proceed to explain anyway, illustrating their own point. Dumas is blunt: “Some from birth know how to write a play and the others do not and never will.” Pailleron offers a fable of a canary that sings by instinct, concluding, “That's all that I can tell you.” The collection thus becomes a meta-commentary on the limits of artistic instruction.

Individual Temperament Over Universal Rules

Sardou's letter is the most explicit in rejecting a single method. He insists there is no one necessary way to write a play; everyone works according to his temperament and intellect. He lists rules that are “invariable, precise, and eternal” for dramatic art, but then immediately undercuts them by saying the only true method is to know where you are going and take the best road there. Zola, writing from the novelist's perspective, finds the theater repugnant with its “cookery” and “hobbles.” He prefers the independence of the novel, where the author remains absolute master. The letters collectively argue that playwriting is a matter of personal habit, not recipe.

A Document of Its Moment

The book is a historical artifact of late 19th-century French theater. The correspondents are major figures of the era, and their letters capture a moment when the well-made play dominated but was already being questioned. Zola's disdain for theatrical convention—the “imposing leading man down to the prompter”—foreshadows naturalist reforms. Sardou's reference to his own prefaces and letters shows how playwrights were already reflecting on their craft in public. The notes by B.M. (1916) provide context on Dreyfus and his lecture, grounding the letters in a specific occasion. Readers interested in the history of dramatic theory will find this a primary source of unusual candor.

This is not a manual but a conversation. The letters reward reading as a set of personal statements rather than a unified doctrine. Notice how each writer's voice differs: Sardou is genially practical, Zola is dismissive of the theater's compromises, Pailleron is playful. The book's value lies in its variety and its honesty about the limits of advice. For anyone studying the craft of playwriting, it offers a cautionary lesson: the best instruction may be to distrust instruction itself.

There’s something tender about letters meant to teach, when the writers admit they only stumbled their own way. It made me think of Eliza, whose private diary holds a similar quiet honesty—moments not shaped for an audience, just a person trying to live truly. A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England — Text and Context lingers like that: less a lesson, more a hand left open beside yours.