to transfer a group of people from the exact setting in which an
occurrence took place to another which makes possible other important
action. In Haraucourt's adaptation of _Les Oberle_, a dinner party at
the Brausigs' is transferred to the home of Jean Oberle, with his father
and mother as hosts. This change permits the adapter to follow the
dinner party with episodes which must take place in Jean's home. This
group of changes concerns, obviously, bringing to one place events which
happened to the same persons at another place, and even at another time.
Sometimes necessary condensation forces a dramatist to bring together at
one place what really happened at the same time, but to other people in
another place. For instance, the heroine of the play is concealing in
the house her Jacobite brother, supposed by the people who have seen him
to be the Pretender himself. The Whig soldiery come to search the house.
Sitting at the spinet, the girl makes her brother crouch between her and
the wall, folding her ample gown around and over him. Then, as the
officer and his men minutely search the room, she plays, apparently idly
song after song of the day. Just at this time, but at a distance, her
lover, a young Whig officer, is eating his heart out with jealousy,
because he fears that she is concealing the Pretender through love of
him. Why waste time on a separate scene for the lover? Make him the
officer in command of the searching troop: then all that is vital in
what was his scene can be brought out when what happened to the same
people at the same time, but at different places, is made to happen at
the same place.
Similarly, what happened to two people in the same place but at
different times may sometimes, with ingenuity, be made to happen to one
person, and thus time saved.
Finally, what happened to another person at another time, and at another
place may at times be arranged so that it will happen to any desired
figure. About midway in the novel _Les Oberle_, Jean and his uncle
Ulrich hear the women at the autumn grape-picking sing the song of
Alsace. In the play, in the first scene, Jean sings it as he passes from
the railway station to his house.[13] Shakespeare, in handling the
original sources of _Macbeth_, also illustrates successful combination
around one person of incidents or details historically associated with
other persons, times, and even places.
Most of the story is taken from Holinshed's account [in the _Historie
of Scotland_] of the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth (A.D. 1034-1057),
but certain details are drawn from other parts of the chronicle. Thus
several points in the assassination of Duncan, like the drugging of
the grooms by Lady Macbeth, and the portents described in II, iv., are
from the murder of Duncan's ancestor Duffe (A.D. 972); and the voice
that called "Sleep no more!" seems to have been suggested by the
troubled conscience of Duffe's brother Kenneth, who had poisoned his
own nephew.[14]
Marlowe, in his _Edward II_,--a dramatization of a part of Holinshed's
_History_,--proves that he perfectly understood all these devices for
compacting his material.
The action covers a period of twenty years, from 1307, when Gaveston
was recalled, to the death of Edward in 1327. Marlowe's treatment of
the story shows a selection and transposing of events in order to
bring out the one essential fact of the King's utter incompetence and
subjection to unworthy favorites. Gaveston was executed in 1312, and
the troubles in Ireland (II, ii.) and in Scotland (II, ii.) occurred
after his death, but Marlowe shifts both forward in point of time in
order to connect them with Gaveston's baleful influence. Warwick died
in his bed in 1315, seven years before the battle of Boroughbridge,
but Marlowe keeps him alive to have him captured and ordered to
execution in retaliation for his killing of Gaveston. At the time the
play opens the Earl of Kent was six years old, but Marlowe, needing a
counsellor and supporter of the King, used Kent for the purpose. In
the play young Spencer immediately succeeds Gaveston as the King's
favorite; really the young Hugh le Despenser, who had been an enemy of
Gaveston, remained an opponent of Edward's for some six years after
Gaveston's death. Historically the Mortimers belong with the Spencers,
i.e. to the later part of the reign, but in order to motivate the
affair between the Queen and young Mortimer Marlowe transfers them to
the beginning of the play and makes them leaders in the barons'
councils.[15]
The essential point in all this compacting is: when cumbered with more
scenes than you wish to use, determine first which scenes contain
indispensable action, and must be kept as settings; then consider which
of the other scenes may by ingenuity be combined with them.
Evidently a dramatist must develop great ingenuity and skill in so
re-working scenes originally conceived as occurring in widely separated
places and times that they may be acted in a single set. As has been
said, the audience of the public theatres in Shakespeare's day
imaginatively shifted the scene at any hint from text, stage properties,
or even signs. With the Restoration came elaborate scenery, a gift from
earlier performances at the English court and from the continental
theatres which the English nobility had attended in their exile. By
means of the "drawn scene" dramatists now changed rapidly from place to
place. In _The Spanish Friar_, Scene 1 of Act II is "The Queen's
ante-chamber." For Scene 2, "The scene draws, and shows the Queen
sitting in state; Bertram standing next her; then Teresa, etc." These
drawn scenes held the stage until very recently. Painted on flats which
could be pulled off stage from left and right, these scenes could not be
"drawn" without hurting theatrical illusion. If moved in any light, all
illusion departed; if changed in darkness, but not instantaneously, they
interfered with illusion. To overcome these objections there have been
many inventions in recent years--Revolving, Wagon, Sinking Stages.[16]
Undoubtedly, these make changes of scene within the act well-nigh
unobjectionable. The difficulty with them is that most are elaborate and
expensive, and therefore exist in only a few theatres. It is,
consequently, useless to stage a play with them in mind, for on the road
it will not find the conditions of production essential to its success.
Occasionally, as in _On Trial_, some simple, easily portable device
makes these very quick changes possible even on the road. At present,
though invention tries steadily to make change of scene so swift as to
be unobjectionable, it is wiser to keep to one setting to an act, unless
the play will greatly suffer by so doing, or the change is one which may
be made almost instantaneously when the lights are lowered or the
curtain dropped.
On the other hand, recently dramatists have rather overdone reducing
possible settings to the minimum. While a change of setting within the
act always demands justification, forcing a play of three to five acts
into one or two settings when, at a trifling additional cost, a
pleasing variety to the eye and a change of place helpful to the
dramatist might have been provided, is undesirable. Lately there have
been signs that our audiences are growing weary of plays of only one
set, especially when they suspect the play has been thus arranged by
skill, rather than necessity. Certainly, the newer group of dramatists
permit themselves changes of scene even within the act. Act II of _The
Silver Box_,[17] by Galsworthy, shows as Scene 1, "The Jones's lodgings,
Merthyr Street"; as Scene 2, "The Barthwicks' dining-room." In _Hindle
Wakes_,[18] by Stanley Houghton, Scene 1, Act I, is the "Kitchen of the
_Hawthorns'_ house"; Scene 2 is the "Breakfast room of the _Jeffcotes'_
house." To the preliminary statement of scenes the dramatist appended
words which hint the underlying danger in all changes of
setting,--disillusioning waits:
Note.--The scene for Act I, Scene 1, should be very small, as a
contrast to the room at the Jeffcotes'. It might well be set inside
the other scene so as to facilitate the quick change between Scenes 1
and 2, Act I.
All things considered, it is probably best to repeat the statement
already made: a change of scene within the act is desirable only when
absolutely necessary; a change of scene with each act is desirable,
except when truth to life, expense, or undue time required for setting
it forbid.
What exactly does this constantly repeated word "Scene" mean? In English
theatrical usage today, and increasingly the world over, it signifies:
"a change of setting." All that happens from one change of set to
another change makes a scene. French usage, based on the Latin, till
very recently always marked off a scene when any person more important
than a servant or attendant entered or left the stage. For instance, in
_Les Petits Oiseaux_ of Labiche, known in English as _A Pair of
Spectacles_, four consecutive scenes in Act I, which throughout has no
change of setting read thus: