Creativity Quote by Dorothy Fields

Fields is laying down a hard rule that sounds like craft advice but functions as an audience contract: in musical theater, emotion is never an excuse to hit pause. Her insistence that a song must "take the place of dialogue" treats music as narrative machinery, not decorative wallpaper. It is an argument against the indulgent "showstopper" fantasy where performers freeze the plot so a star can collect applause. Fields is basically warning that applause is not the same thing as belief.

The subtext is pragmatic and slightly unsentimental: audiences are generous until you waste their time. "They won't buy it" is commercial language, and that matters. Fields came up in an era when Broadway was both mass entertainment and a business built on repeat customers, not just prestige. The lyricist's job, in her view, isn't to write pretty lines in a vacuum; it's to keep the whole apparatus moving. The audience's unhappiness isn't about being too dumb for artistry. It's about feeling manipulated - like the show is asking for admiration without earning it through consequence.

There's also a quiet feminist edge here, even if she doesn't state it. As a woman succeeding in a male-dominated industry, Fields is staking authority on discipline. Song becomes proof of competence: it does work, it advances stakes, it clarifies choices. When it stalls, it exposes the seams of performance. Her standard is strict because the medium is fragile; once the spell breaks, the room turns into people watching people sing.