SCENE 7. _Tiburce, then Francois_[19]

What this French use of the word "scene" leads to, when logically

carried out so that even servants entering or leaving the stage create a

scene, the following from Act IV of _George Barnwell_, will show:

SCENE 5. _To them a Servant_

_Thorowgood._ Order the groom to saddle the swiftest horse, and

prepare himself to set out with speed!--An affair of life and death

demands his diligence. (_Exit Servant._)

SCENE 6. _Thorowgood, Trueman, and Lucy_

_Thorowgood._ For you, whose behavior on this occasion I have no time

to commend as it deserves, I must ingage your farther assistance.

Return and observe this Millwood till I come. I have your directions,

and will follow you as soon as possible. (_Exit Lucy._)

SCENE 7. _Thorowgood and Trueman_

_Thorowgood._ Trueman, you I am sure would not be idle on this

occasion. (_Exit_.)

SCENE 8.

_Trueman._ He only who is a friend can judge of my distress.

(_Exit._)[20]

This French division of scenes is, of course, made for the convenience

of the dramatist as he composes and for the reader, not for the actor or

the audience. Though somewhat copied in the past by English authors, it

is now rejected by most stages. Even French dramatists are breaking away

from it. Memory of this French usage, however, still affects popular

speech: when we speak of any part of an act in which two or more people

are on stage, we are very likely to call it their "scene" no matter

whether they have come on in a changed setting or not. Obviously if

_scene_ is to correspond with _setting_, we need another word for what

in our practice is the same as the older French _scene_.

Not only do necessary changes in setting make proportioning material

into acts and within acts difficult, but the time question also raises

many problems. It may be troublesome within the act, between the acts,

and at the opening of the play. In the final soliloquy of _Faustus_ (p.

35), an hour is supposed to elapse in some thirty lines. Though the

Elizabethan, in a case like this, was ready to assist the dramatist,

today we are so conscious of time spaces that practically all stage

clocks are temporarily out of order, lest they mark too distinctly the

discrepancy between pretended and real time.[21] The novelist, in a few

lines, tells us of many happenings in a considerable space of time, or

writes: "Thus, in idle talk, a full hour passed," and we do not query

the supposed passage of time. On the stage, however, when one gossip

says to another: "I must be off. I meant to stop a minute, and I have

gossiped an hour," auditors who recognize perfectly that the two people

have not talked ten minutes are likely to laugh derisively. As has been

pointed out,[22] this time difficulty has made it practically

impossible to dramatize satisfactorily Stevenson's _The Sire de

Maletroit's Door_. The swiftly-moving simple story demands the one-act

form, but certain marked changes in feeling, convincing enough when they

are said to come after ten or twelve hours of strong emotion, become,

when they are seen to occur after twenty minutes to an hour,

unconvincing. The central situation may be used, but for success on the

stage the story must be so re-told that the marked changes in feeling

are convincing even when seen. A dilemma results: lapses of time are

handled more easily in three or four acts than in one act; the moment

_The Sire de Maletroit's Door_ is re-cast into three or four acts, it

needs so much padding as to lose nearly all its original values.

When a dramatist faces the need to represent on stage, a passage of time

which could not in real life be coincident with the action of the scene,

he must (_a_) hypnotize an audience by a long scene of complicated and

absorbing emotion into thinking that the required time has passed; or

(_b_) must discover some motive sufficiently strong to account for a

swift change in feeling; (_c_) or must get his person or persons off

stage and write what is known as a "Cover Scene."

An audience led through an intense emotional experience does not mark

accurately the passage of time. Make the emotional experience

protracted, as well as absorbing, and you may imply or even state that

any reasonable length of time has passed. The fearful agony of _Faustus_

so grips an audience that it loses track of the time necessary for the

speech, or would, were it not for the unfortunate emphasis on the actual

time: "Ah, half the hour is passed; 'twill all be passed anon"; "The

clock strikes twelve." In _Hamlet_, the fourth act takes place during

the absence of Hamlet in England. By its many intensely moving

happenings, it makes an auditor willing to believe that Hamlet has been

absent for a long time, when in reality he has been on the stage within

a half hour. Such time fillings may, of course, be a portion of a

scene, a whole scene, or even a whole act. In most cases, it is quite

impossible that the time really requisite and the time of action should

coincide. The business of the dramatist is to make the audience feel as

if the time had passed--to create an illusion of time.

The second method of meeting the time difficulty, finding motivation of

some marked change in character or circumstances which permits it to be

as swift as it is on the stage, is best treated in the next chapter.

In _The Russian Honeymoon_,[23] a play once very popular with amateurs,

there is bad handling of a time difficulty. The hero, going out in his

peasant costume, must return after a few speeches, in full regimentals.

A lightning change of costume is, therefore, necessary. More than once

this lack of a proper Cover Scene has caused an awkward wait at this

point in the play. Mark the absurdly short time Steele, in his

_Conscious Lovers_ allows Isabella for bringing Bevil Junior on stage.

Apparently, the latter and all his group must have been waiting at the

end of the corridor.

_Isabella._ But here's a claim more tender yet--your Indiana, sir,

your long lost daughter.

_Mr. Sealand._ O my child! my child!

_Indiana._ All-gracious Heaven! Is it possible? Do I embrace my

father?

_Mr. Sealand._ And I do hold thee--These passions are too strong for

utterance--Rise, rise, my child, and give my tears their way--O my

sister! (_Embracing her_)

_Isabella._ Now, dearest niece, my groundless fears, my painful cares

no more shall vex thee. If I have wronged thy noble lover with too

hard suspicions, my just concern for thee, I hope, will plead my

pardon.

_Mr. Sealand._ O! make him then the full amends, and be yourself the

messenger of joy: Fly this instant!--Tell him all these wondrous

turns of Providence in his favour! Tell him I have now a daughter to

bestow, which he no longer will decline: that this day he still shall

be a bridegroom: nor shall a fortune, the merit which his father

seeks, be wanting: tell him the reward of all his virtues waits on his

acceptance. (_Exit Isabella._) My dearest Indiana!

(_Turns and embraces her._)

_Indiana._ Have I then at last a father's sanction on my love? His

bounteous hand to give, and make my heart a present worthy of Bevil's

generosity?

_Mr. Sealand._ O my child, how are our sorrows past o'erpaid by such a

meeting! Though I have lost so many years of soft paternal dalliance

with thee, yet, in one day, to find thee thus, and thus bestow thee,

in such perfect happiness! is ample! ample reparation! And yet again

the merit of thy lover--

_Indiana._ O! had I spirits left to tell you of his actions! how

strongly filial duty has suppressed his love; and how concealment

still has doubled all his obligations; the pride, the joy of his

alliance, sir, would warm your heart, as he has conquered mine.

_Mr. Sealand._ How laudable is love, when born of virtue! I burn to

embrace him--

_Indiana._ See, sir, my aunt already has succeeded, and brought him to

your wishes.

(_Enter Isabella, with Sir John Bevil, Bevil Junior, Mrs. Sealand,

Cimberton, Myrtle, and Lucinda._)

_Sir John Bevil._ (_Entering._) Where! where's this scene of wonder!

Mr. Sealand, I congratulate, on this occasion, our mutual

happiness.[24]

The inexperienced dramatist sending a servant out for wraps, brings him

back so speedily that, apparently, in a well-ordered Fifth Avenue or

Newport residence, garments lie all about the house or replace

tapestries upon the walls. The speed with which servants upon the stage

do errands shows that they have been trained in a basic principle of

drama: "Waste no time." A more experienced dramatist, realizing that

such speed destroys illusion, writes a brief scene which seems to allow

time for the errand.

The telephone and the automobile have been godsends to the young

dramatist. By use of the first, a lover can telephone from the

drug-store just around the corner, run all the way in his eagerness,

take an elevator, and be on the scene with a speed that saves the young

dramatist any long Cover Scene. Of course, if said lover be rich or

extravagant enough to own an automobile, the distance from which he may

telephone increases as the square of the horse-power of his machine. In

the old days, and even today, if the truth be regarded, something must

be taking place on the stage sufficient to allow time for a lover,

however ardent, to cover the distance between the telephone booth and

the house.

Here, however, a dramatist meets his Scylla and Charybdis. He yields to

Scylla, if he does not write any such scene; to Charybdis, if he writes

such a scene but does not advance his play by it--that is, if he merely

marks time. In a recent play, whenever a time space was to be covered, a

group of citizens talked. What they said was not uninteresting. The

characters were well sketched in. But the scene did not advance the

story at all. Bulwer-Lytton faced this difficulty in writing _Money_:

I think in the first 3 acts you will find little to alter. But in Act

4--the 2 scenes with Lady B. & Clara--and Joke & the Tradesman don't

help on the Plot much--they were wanted, however, especially the last

to give time for change of dress & smooth the lapse of the theme from

money to dinner; you will see if this part requires any amendment.[25]

The principle here is this: Whatever is written to cover a time space,

long or short, must help the movement of the play to its climax. It may

be said that the fourth act of neither _Macbeth_ nor _Hamlet_ complies

with this statement; but more careful thought will show that in each

case the act is very important to the whole story. The title of each

play, and present-day interest in its characterization rather than its

story, make us miss greatly the leading figure, wholly absent in the

act. Therefore we hasten to declare, not recognizing that story was of

first importance in Shakespeare's day, that because this act is not

focused on Macbeth or Hamlet the act in question clogs the general

movement.

Otway, in _Venice Preserved_, handles passage of time admirably. Toward

the end of the first act, Pierre makes an appointment with Jaffier to

meet him that night on the Rialto at twelve. Exit Pierre. Immediately

Belvidera enters to Jaffier. Their talk, only about four pages in

length, is so passionately pathetic that a hearer loses all accurate

sense of time. There is an _entr'acte_, and then a scene between Pierre

and Aquilina. Again it is brief, only three and a half pages, but it is

dramatic, and complicates the story. Consequently, when Jaffier does

meet Pierre on the Rialto, we are quite ready to believe that

considerable time has passed and it is now twelve o'clock. Otway has

used three devices to cover a time space: an absorbing emotional scene,

an _entr'acte_, and a Cover Scene.[26]

All the methods just described have had to do with representing time on

stage. When time necessary for the telling of a story may be treated as

passing off stage, other devices may be used. Most of them gather about

a dropping of the curtain. Recently there has been much use of the

curtain to denote, without change of set, the passing of some relatively

brief time. When a group of people leave the stage for dinner, the

curtain is dropped, to rise again as the group, returning from dinner,

take up the action of the play. Just this occurs in Act I of Pinero's

_Iris_.[27] Mr. Belasco, in _The Woman_, dropped the curtain at the

beginning of a cross examination, to raise it for the next act as the

examination nears its climax. In _The Silver Box_,[28] dropping the

curtain twice in Act I makes it possible to see the Barthwicks'

dining-room "just after midnight," "at eight-thirty A.M.," and at "the

breakfast hour of Mr. and Mrs. Barthwick." Such curtains, though

justifiable, have one serious objection. They bring us back with a jolt

from absorbed following of the play to the disturbing truth that we are

not looking at life, but at life selectively presented under obvious

limitations of the stage. Scene 1 of _The Silver Box_, which began "just

after midnight," lasts only a few minutes; yet when the curtain "rises

again at once," we are to understand that eight hours have elapsed.

The simplest method of handling time off stage is to treat it as having

elapsed between acts or on the dropping of a curtain within an act.[29]

In how many, many plays--for instance, Sir Arthur Pinero's early _Lady

Bountiful_--has the hero, in whatever length of time between the fourth

and fifth acts the dramatist has preferred, become the regenerated

figure of the last act! All that is needed in _The Man Who Came Back_,

as produced, to change the dope-ridden, degenerating youth into a firm

character, even into a landed proprietor, is a sea voyage from San

Francisco to Honolulu--and an _entr'acte_! What takes place between acts

is far too often--medicinally, morally, dare we say dramatically?--more

significant than what we see. Yet why deride this refuge of the

dramatist? Such use is merely an extension of what we permit any

dramatist who, writing two plays on the same subject or person, implies

or states that very many years have elapsed between the two parts. No

one seriously objects when thousands of years are supposed to elapse

between the _Prometheus Bound_ and the _Prometheus Unbound_ of

Aeschylus.[30] Surely, it is logical to treat spaces between acts like

spaces between plays on related subjects. The trouble lies, not in the

time supposed to have elapsed, but in the changes of character said to

have taken place. As long as our drama was primarily story, and not, as

it has come to be increasingly, a revealer of character, we were

content, if each act contained a thrilling dramatic incident, to be told

that this or that had happened between the acts. The early drama did

this by the Dumb Show and the Chorus.

ACT II

PROLOGUE

_Flourish. Enter Chorus_

_Chorus._ Now all the youth of England are on fire,

And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.

Now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought

Reigns solely in the breast of every man.

They sell the pasture now to buy the horse,

Following the mirror of all Christian kings,

With winged heels, as English Mercuries.

For now sits Expectation in the air,

And hides a sword from hilts unto the point

With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets,

Promis'd to Harry and his followers.

The French, advis'd by good intelligence

Of this most dreadful preparation,

Shake in their fear, and with pale policy

Seek to divert the English purposes.

O England! model to thy inward greatness,

Like little body with a mighty heart,

What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do,

Were all thy children kind and natural!

But see thy fault! France hath in thee found out

A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills

With treacherous crowns; and three corrupted men,

One, Richard Earl of Cambridge, and the second,

Henry Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third,

Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland,

Have, for the gilt of France,--O guilt indeed!--

Confirm'd conspiracy with fearful France;

And by their hands this grace of kings must die,

If hell and treason hold their promises,

Ere he take ship for France, and in Southampton.

Linger your patience on, and we'll digest

The abuse of distance, force a play.

The sum is paid; the traitors are agreed;

The King is set from London; and the scene

Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton.

There is the playhouse now, there must you sit;

And thence to France shall we convey you safe,

And bring you back, charming the narrow seas

To give you gentle pass; for, if we may,

We'll not offend one stomach with our play.

But, till the King come forth, and not till then,

Unto Southampton do we shift our scene. (_Exit._) _Henry V._

As audiences, becoming more interested in characterization and less in

mere story, grew to expect that each act would show the central figure

growing out of the preceding act and into the next, they balked more and

more at hearing of changes instead of seeing them. They insisted that

the effective forces must work before their eyes. Hence the

disappearance of Dumb Show and Chorus. With _Lady Bountiful_[31] the

public did not object strongly to what was supposed to happen between

the fourth and fifth acts, because it took the whole play as a mere

story. But in _Iris_, when the author asked it to accept all the

important stages in the moral breakdown of Iris as taking place between

the fourth and fifth acts, there was considerable dissent. Contrast the

greater satisfactoriness when an auditor can watch important changes, as

he may with Sophy Fullgarney in the third act of the _Gay Lord

Quex_,[32] or with Mrs. Dane in the fourth act of _Mrs. Dane's Defence_.

To assume that a lapse of time stated to have passed in a just preceding

_entr'acte_, and a change of environment there, have produced marked

difference in character is not today enough. A dramatist may assume that

only as much time has passed between acts as he makes entirely plausible

by the happenings and characterization of the next act. For any needed

statement of what has happened since the close of a preceding act he

must depend only on deft exposition within the act in question.

Recent usage no longer insists that acts may not somewhat overlap.

"Toward the end of Act II of Eugene Walter's _Paid in Full_, Emma Brooks

is disclosed making an appointment with Captain Williams over a

telephone. In the next act we are transferred to Captain Williams's

quarters, and the dramatic clock has, in the meanwhile, been turned back

some fifteen minutes, for presently the telephone bell rings, and the

same appointment is made over again. In other words, Act II partly

overlaps Act I in time, but the scene is different."[33] There is a

similar use in _Under Cover_. At the beginning of the last act, a group,

sleepily at cards, is startled by the burglar alarm. The climax of the

preceding act was that same alarm.

The most difficult kind of off-stage time to treat comes not within or

between the acts. It is the time before the play begins in which events

took place which must be known as soon as the play opens, if auditors

are to follow the play understandingly. Every dramatist, as he turns

from his story to his plot, faces the problem: How plant in the mind of

the audience past events and facts concerning the characters which are

fundamental in understanding the play. The Chorus and the Dumb Show

again were, among early dramatists, the clumsy solution of this

problem.

THE PROLOGUE

In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece

The princes orgillous, their high blood chaf'd,

Have to the port of Athens sent their ships,

Fraught with the ministers and instruments

Of cruel war. Sixty and nine, that wore

Their crownets regal, from the Athenian bay

Put forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made

To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures

The ravish'd Helen, Menelaus' queen,

With wanton Paris sleeps; and that's the quarrel.

To Tenedos they come,

And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge

Their warlike fraughtage. Now on Dardan plains

The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch

Their brave pavilions. Priam's six-gated city,

Dardan, and Timbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien,

And Antenorides, with massy staples

And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts

Spar up the sons of Troy.

Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits,

On one and other side, Troyan and Greek,

Sets all on hazard; and hither am I come

A prologue arm'd, but not in confidence

Of author's pen or actor's voice, but suited

In like conditions as our argument,

To tell you, fair beholders, that our play

Leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils,

Beginning in the middle, starting thence away

To what may be digested in a play.

Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are.

Now good or bad; 'tis but the chance of war.[34]

A growing technique led the dramatists from Dumb Show and Chorus to

soliloquy, in order to provide this necessary preliminary exposition. Is

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, at the opening of _Richard III_, much more

than a re-christened Chorus?

ACT I. SCENE I. (_London. A street._)

_Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester, solus_

_Gloucester._ Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;

Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;

Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings,

Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.

Grim-visag'd War hath smooth'd his wrinkled front;

And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber

To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.

But I, that am not shap'd for sportive tricks,

Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;

I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty

To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;

I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time

Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,

And that so lamely and unfashionable

That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;

Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,

Have no delight to pass away the time,

Unless to see my shadow in the sun

And descant on mine own deformity.

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover

To entertain these fair well-spoken days,

I am determined to prove a villain

And hate the idle pleasures of these days.

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams,

To set my brother Clarence and the King

In deadly hate the one against the other;

And if King Edward be as true and just

As I am subtle, false, and treacherous,

This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up

About a prophecy, which says that G

Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be.

Dive, thoughts, down to my soul; here Clarence comes.

Led by Shakespeare, dramatists have come to understand that such

information should, if in any way possible, be conveyed not by soliloquy

but within the play itself. It should, too, be so incorporated with the

text that it is acquired almost unconsciously by an auditor held

absorbed by the immediate dramatic action.

Sometimes, however, it is well-nigh impossible thus to incorporate

needed exposition with the dramatic action. For instance, a play

depicted the fortunes of a Jacobite's daughter. All that is dramatic in

her story as a young woman is predetermined by terrible scenes attending

the death of her father, when she was a child of six. Somehow the

audience must be made to understand very early in the play what these

scenes were which made a lasting, intense impression on the child. That

the young woman, when twenty, should recall the scenes with such

minuteness as to make the audience perfectly understand their dramatic

values is hardly plausible. To have some one come out of the past to

reawaken the old memories is commonplace, and likely, by long

descriptions to clog the movement of the act. Facing this problem,

present-day dramatists, avoiding chorus, soliloquy, and lengthy

description, have chosen to put such needed material into a division

which, because it is preliminary, they have at will distinguished from

the other acts as the Induction or more frequently the Prologue. The

latter term is a confusing use. Historically, it signifies the single

figure or group of figures who, before the curtain, bespeak the favor of

the audience for the play to follow. Very rarely, the Prologue partook a

little of the nature of Chorus, stating details that must be understood,

were the play to have its full effect. Dramatists, feeling that the

relation of this introductory division to the other divisions is not so

close as are the inter-relations of the other divisions, have called

this preliminary action, not _Act I_, but _Prologue_. A similar

situation exists for what has been dubbed Epilogue. Historically, a

figure from the play just ended, or an entirely new figure, strove,

often in lines not written by the dramatist, to point the story or, at

least, to win for it the final approval of the audience. Today, when a

dramatist wishes to point the meaning of a play which he seems to have

brought to a close, or to include it in some larger scheme, he writes

what he prefers to call, not an additional act, but an Epilogue.

A dramatist should be very careful that what he calls Prologue or

Epilogue is not merely an additional act. An act does not cease to be an

act, and become a prologue or an epilogue, because its length is shorter

than that usual for an act. True it is that most prologues and epilogues

are short, but that is not their distinguishing characteristic. If they

are brief, it is because the dramatist wants to move as quickly as

possible from his induction or prologue to his main story, or knows that

when the play proper is ended, he cannot with his epilogue hold his

audience long. Not always, however, are prologues, or epilogues short.

That of _Madame Sans Gene_[35] has the same number of pages as Act II,

seventeen. The Prologue of _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_[36]

fills some sixty-two pages. The Epilogue of the same play covers

fifty-six pages. An act in this play makes seventy-eight pages. In _A

Celebrated Case_[37] the Prologue covers twenty-one pages; the

subsequent acts run from eight to twelve pages each.

Nor is an act changed into a prologue or epilogue because the space of

time between it and the other divisions is longer than between any two

of them. Does an act cease to be an act and become a prologue or

epilogue, when the space of time between it and the other acts is

twenty-five years, or should it be thirty? The absurdity of making the

use of the words Prologue or Epilogue depend upon the space of time

between one division and another is evident. It is true that the

Prologue of _Madame Sans Gene_ takes place nineteen years before the

three acts which follow, but it concerns the same people. It might

equally well be called Act I. _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_

might just as correctly be announced as a play in three acts instead of

"An idle fancy in a Prologue, a Play, and an Epilogue." Recently _A

Successful Calamity_ was stated to be in two acts, each preceded by a

Prologue. Except for the novel appearance of the statement in the

program, it might more correctly have been called a play in four acts.

Little except the will of the dramatist settled that the last division

of Pinero's _Letty_ should be called an Epilogue. It occurs only two

years and a half after the preceding act. It presents the same people.

Similarly the Prologue to Tennyson's _Becket_ might just as well be

called Act I, except that this nomenclature would give the play six

acts. In the stage version by Henry Irving, the four acts and a Prologue

might correctly be called five acts.

The anonymous play, _The Taming of a Shrew_,[38] on which Shakespeare

founded his farce-comedy of similar title, shows a good use of Prologue

and Epilogue. By a practical joke, _Christopher Sly_ the beggar is made

to believe he is a Lord. As a part of the joke, the play is acted before

him. Now and again, in the course of it, he comments on it. He and his

group finish the performance in a sort of Epilogue. When Shakespeare

uses Sly, only to let him shortly withdraw for good, the arrangement

seems curiously incomplete and unsatisfactory. _Romance_, by Edward

Sheldon, shows right use of so-called epilogue and prologue. As the

curtain falls on the brief prologue, the aged Bishop is telling his

grandson the story of his love for the Cavallini. Then the play, which

is the Bishop's story, unrolls itself for three acts. In turn they fade

into the epilogue, in which the grandson, as the Bishop finishes his

story, goes off in spite of it to marry the girl he loves. By means of

the epilogue and prologue Mr. Sheldon gains irony and contrast, relates

the main play to larger values, and answers the inevitable question of

his audience at the end of his third act: What happened to them

afterward? Not to have used the so-called epilogue and prologue here

would have forced total reconstruction of the material and probably a

clumsier result. Such setting of a long play within a very brief play is

one of the conditions for the legitimate use of the so-called prologue

and epilogue.

Another legitimate use, though perhaps not so clear-cut, is illustrated

by the Prologue to _A Celebrated Case_.[39] The play might, perhaps, be

written without it, but, if it were, the scene of Act I in which

Adrienne recognizes the convict as her father, would be filled with much

more exposition, and the present emphasis on the powerful emotions of

the moment would be somewhat blurred by the emotions called up by

exposition of the past. Clearly, the play gains rather than loses by the

presence of the prologue. Obviously the latter stands somewhat apart

from the three acts which follow, less definitely related to them than

they are to one another. So it may, perhaps, better be called a prologue

than an act.

Of course, the distinction between prologue and act is a matter of

nomenclature, not of effectiveness in acting. Look at _My Lady's Dress_,

by Edward Knobloch. Scene 1, Act I, and Scene 3, Act III, have the same

setting, a boudoir, and are more closely related to each other than to

the rest of the play.[40] Indeed, what stands between are one-act plays

making the dream of Anne. According to present usage, Mr. Knobloch could

have called these scenes Prologue and Epilogue, and treated all that

stands between as the play proper. That he did or didn't makes no

difference in the acting. The growing use of the two words, Prologue and

Epilogue, merely marks an increasing sense of dramatic technique which

tries by nomenclature to emphasize for a reader nice differences which

the dramatist discerns in the inter-relations of his material.

To sum up, there is real significance, though present confusion, in

recent use of the words, Prologue and Epilogue. The use rests on a fact:

that sometimes a play is best proportioned, when it has at the beginning

or end, or both, a brief division related to the story and essential to

it, but not so closely related to any act as are the acts to one

another. The names Prologue and Epilogue should not, however, be used

interchangeably for acts. They should be kept for their historical

use--verse or prose spoken in front of the curtain before or at an end

of the play, in order to win or intensify sympathy for it. We should

find different names for these divisions,--perhaps, Induction and

Finale?

What should be the length of an act? There can be no rule as to this.

Naturally, the work of the first and last acts differs somewhat from the

intervening acts, whether one or three in number. While it is the chief

business of the intervening acts to maintain and increase interest

already created, the first act must obviously create that interest as

swiftly as possible, and the last act bring that interest to a climactic

close. The first act, because in it the characters must be introduced,

necessary past history stated, and the story well started, is likely to

be longer than the other acts. The last act, inasmuch as even at its

beginning we are usually not distant from the climax of the play, is

most often the shortest division, for as soon as the climax is reached,

we should drop the curtain as quickly as possible. A glance at certain

notable plays of different periods will show, however, that the length

of an act most depends, not on any given rule, but on the skill of the

dramatist in accomplishing what he has decided the particular act must

do. In the Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's _Lear_ (printed in two

columns of fine type) the acts run as follows:

Act I 9-1/2 pages

Act II 7 pages

Act III 6-1/2 pages

Act IV 6-1/4 pages

Act V 5-1/4 pages

_Kismet_, a play modeled on the Elizabethan, shows this division:

Act I 48 pages

Act II 33 pages

Act III 22-1/2 pages

For three plays of Richard Steele it is possible to give the exact

playing-time:[41]

_The Funeral_ _The Conscious Lovers_ _The Tender Husband_

Act I 30 min. Act I 33 min. Act I 25 min.

Act II 36 min. Act II 28 min. Act II 22 min.

Act III 20 min. Act III 24 min. Act III 14 min.

Act IV 20 min. Act IV 28 min. Act IV 15 min.

Act V 20 min. Act V 31 min. Act V 18 min.

Total, 2 hrs. 6 min. Total, 2 hrs. 24 min. Total, 1 hr. 34 min.

Two recent plays divide thus:

_Candida_ _The Silver Box_

Act I 27 pages Act I 27 pages

Act II 24 pages Act II 27 pages

Act III 21 pages Act III 21 pages

The plays just cited are of very different lengths: _Kismet_[42] took

nearly three hours in performance; _Candida_[43] and _The Silver

Box_[44] are so short that they force a manager, if he is to provide an

entertainment of the usual length, to a choice: he must begin his

performance late, or allow long waits between the acts, or give a

one-act piece with the longer play. Yet it is noteworthy that in all

these plays except Steele's, the first is as long as any other act, or

longer, and the last act is the shortest. However, the only safe

principle is that of Dumas _pere_ already quoted: "First act clear, last

act short, and everywhere interest."

In proportioning the whole material into acts, it should be remembered,

of course, that the time allowed for a theatrical performance ranges

from two hours to two hours and three quarters. Five to fifteen minutes

should be allowed for each _entr'acte_ unless the usual waits are to be

avoided by some mechanical device. Figure that a double-spaced

type-written page takes in acting something more than a minute, though

necessary dramatic pauses and "business" make it difficult to estimate

exactly the playing time of any page. Speaking approximately, it may be

said that a three-act play of one hundred and twenty typewritten pages

will fill, with the _entr'actes_, at least two hours and a half. In

apportioning the story into acts the first requisite is, then, that the

total, even with the necessary waits between acts, shall not exceed the

length of time during which the public will be attentive.

The length of each act must in every case be determined by the work in

the total which it has to do. Since pre-Shakespearean days, the artistry

of the act has been steadily developing. Until _circa_, 1595, what

dramatists "strove to do was, not so to arrange their material that its

inner relations should be perfectly clear, but to narrate a series of

events that did not, of necessity, possess such inner relations. It is

much to be doubted whether any thought of such relations ever entered

their heads."[45] Influenced particularly by Shakespeare, the drama from

that time has steadily improved in knowledge of what each act should do

in the sum total, and how it should be done. The act is "more than a

convenience in time. It is imposed by the limited power of attention of

the human mind, or by the need of the human body for occasional

refreshment. A play with a well-marked, well-balanced act-structure is a

higher artistic organism than a play with no act-structure, just as a

vertebrate animal is higher than a mollusc. In every crisis of real life

(unless it be so short as to be a mere incident) there is a rhythm of

rise, progress, culmination, and solution. Each act ought to stimulate

and temporarily satisfy an interest of its own, while definitely

advancing the main action."[46] Each act, then, should be a unit of the

whole, which accomplishes its own definite work.

Here is Ibsen's rough apportioning of the work for each act in a play of

which he was thinking.

Do you not think of dramatising the story of Faste? It seems to me

that there is the making of a very good popular play in it. Just

listen!

Act 1.--Faste as the half-grown boy, eating the bread of charity and

dreaming of greatness.

Act 2.--Faste's struggle in the town.

Act 3.--Faste's victory in the town.

Act 4.--Faste's defeat and flight from the country.

Act 5.--Faste's return as a victorious poet. He has found himself.

It is a fine adventurous career to depict dramatically. But of course

you would have to get farther away from your story first. You perhaps

think this a barbarous and inhuman suggestion. But all your stories

have the making of a drama in them.[47]

In _The Princess and the Butterfly_,[48] Act I not only disposes of

preliminary necessary exposition, but depicts different kinds of

restlessness in a group of women at or nearing middle age. Act II does

the same for a group of men, and in the proposed duel provides what

later may be made to reveal to Sir George how much Fay Zuliani cares for

him. Act III complicates the story by showing that Fay is not the niece

of Sir George, and illustrates the growing affection between the

Princess and Edward Oriel. Act IV reveals to Sir George and Fay how much

each cares for the other. The fifth act shows how Sir George and the

Princess, who have tried to be wise and restrained, impulsively and

instinctively choose the path of seeming unwisdom but immediate

happiness.

In _The Trail of the Torch_,[49] Act I states the thesis of the play and

offers the first great sacrifice by Sabine for her daughter,

Marie-Jeanne. Sabine gives up Stangy in order to be with Marie-Jeanne,

only to find that her daughter is in love with Didier. Act II

illustrates that a mother will make every sacrifice for her children:

Madame Fontenais, the grandmother, when her daughter Sabine begs her to

sacrifice her fortune in order that Marie-Jeanne's anxiety as to the

finances of Didier may be set at rest, refuses, thinking to protect

Sabine's future. In turn, Sabine, putting aside all pride, calls Stangy

back to her, believing that he will give her the aid she desires for

Marie-Jeanne. Act III shows the extremes of sacrifice to which a mother

may go,--here the forgery, and the sacrifice by Sabine of her mother to

her daughter. Act IV illustrates the retribution for Sabine: the

revelation by Stangy that, after Sabine sent him away, he married;

Marie-Jeanne's announcement to her mother that she is to go to America

with her father and that Sabine cannot go; and the death of Madame

Fontenais caused, at least indirectly, by Sabine.

In all three cases we have only the baldest outline of what the act must

do. The illustrative dramatic action by which each act is to accomplish

its task is either in hand as part of a clearly defined story in the

mind of the dramatist, or must be found immediately. Granted that it has

been discovered (see chap. III, pp. 47-72), then as each act is shaped

up from this material it should have certain qualities. It should be

clear. It should lead the hearer on to the acts which follow: in other

words, it should at least maintain an interest already established, and

in most cases should increase that interest. To put these requisites

more briefly, each act should have clearness and movement. Movement in

an act means that, while thoroughly interesting itself, the act leads a

hearer on to its immediate successor and, above all, the finale. Good

movement depends on clearness and right emphasis. The emphasis in each

act and in the whole play should be such that ultimately it accomplishes

the purpose of the dramatist. How may these qualities, clearness, right

emphasis, and consequent movement be gained?

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Essay on Comedy_, p. 8. George Meredith. Copyright, 1897, by

Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[2] _The Trojan Women._ Translated by Gilbert Murray. G. Allen &

Sons, London.

[3] _Electra_. Von Hofmannsthal. Translated by A. Symons. Brentano,

New York.

[4] Introduction to _Miss Julia_. Translated by E. Bjorkman.

Copyright, 1912, by Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[5] _Hamburg Dramaturgy_, p. 370. Lessing. Bohn ed.

[6] P. 13. Harper & Bros., New York.

[7] _Chief Contemporary Dramatists_, pp. 517-546. T. H. Dickinson,

ed. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

[8] For all these plays, _idem_.

[9] Belles-Lettres Series. W. Strunk, ed. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston

and New York.

[10] In the seventh edition, a scene, "The place of execution," is

inserted to replace the original brief final scene which apparently

took place in the "room." Belles-Lettres Series. Sir A. W. Ward, ed.

D. C. Heath & Co.

[11] _Letters of Bulwer-Lytton to Macready_, XXVIII. Brander

Matthews, ed.

[12] _The Influence of Local Theatrical Conditions upon the Drama of

the Greeks._ Roy C. Flickinger. _Classical Journal_, October, 1911.

[13] See p. 83.

[14] Introduction to _Macbeth_. Cambridge ed. Houghton Mifflin Co.,

Boston.

[15] Introduction to Marlowe's _Edward II_. Tatlock and Martin. The

Century Co.

[16] See _Play Production in America_. A. E. Krows. Henry Holt & Co.,

New York.

[17] _Plays_, pp. 33, 42. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

[18] J. W. Luce & Co., Boston.

[19] _Theatre Complet_, vol. I. Calmann Levy, Paris.

[20] Belles-Lettres Series. Sir A. W. Ward, ed. D.C. Heath & Co.,

Boston and New York.

[21] Not often does a dramatist succeed in making real and supposed

time agree as well as does Sir Arthur Pinero in Act III of _The Gay

Lord Quex_. From seven to nine pages of absorbing action come between

one chiming of the quarter hour and the next. Though a stopwatch

would quickly reveal the somewhat disordered condition of that

boudoir clock, an auditor, absorbed in the action of the moment,

merely feels his tension increase if he notes the passing of time.

[22] See p. 35.

[23] Eugene Scribe, adopted by Mrs. Burton Harrison. Dramatic

Publishing Co., Chicago.

[24] Mermaid Series. Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[25] _Letters of Bulwer-Lytton to Macready_, LXIII. Brander Matthews,

ed.

[26] Belles-Lettres Series. C. F. McClumpha, ed. D. C. Heath & Co.,

Boston and New York.

[27] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[28] _Plays._ G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

[29] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[30] Everyman's Library. Plumptre, ed.

[31] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[32] R. H. Russell & Co., New York.

[33] _The Influence of Local Theatrical Conditions upon the Drama of

the Greeks._ R. C. Flickinger. _Classical Journal_, October, 1911.

[34] _Troilus and Cressida._

[35] Samuel French, New York.

[36] Hurst & Blackett, Ltd., London.

[37] Penn Publishing Co., Philadelphia.

[38] _Shakespeare's Library_, vol. VI. W. C. Hazlitt, ed. Reeves &

Turner, London.

[39] Penn Publishing Co., Philadelphia.

[40] Drama League Series. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

[41] _Life of Richard Steele_, vol. II, p. 368. G. Aitken. Wm.

Isbister, London.

[42] Methuen & Co., Ltd., London.

[43] _Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant._ Brentano, New York.

[44] _Plays._ G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

[45] _A Note on Act Division as practiced in the Early Elizabethan

Drama._ Bulletin of Western Reserve University.

[46] _Play-Making_, p. 136. Wm. Archer. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston.

[47] _Letters of Henrik Ibsen_, p. 236; to Jonas Lie.

[48] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[49] P. Hervieu. Drama League Series. Doubleday, Page & Co., New

York.

CHAPTER VI

FROM SUBJECT TO PLOT: ARRANGEMENT FOR CLEARNESS, EMPHASIS, MOVEMENT

The chief desideratum of a dramatist beginning to arrange his material

within a number of acts already decided on is to create interest as

promptly as possible. To that end neither striking dialogue nor stirring

situation is of prime consequence. Clearness is. When an audience does

not understand who the people are with whom the play opens and their

relations to one another, no amount of striking dialogue or stirring

situation will create lasting interest. The danger for a later public of

allusive reference clear enough at one time is shown by the verses sung

when the Helstone Furry, or Flower Dance, takes place in Cornwall. Lines

once full of meaning are today so out of date as to be meaningless.

From an early hour the place is alive with drums and fifes, and

townsmen hoarsely chanting a ballad, the burden of which conveys the

spirit of the festival:

With Hal-an-tow,

Jolly rumble O,

And we are up as soon as any day O,

And for to fetch the Summer home,

The Summer and the May O;

For the Summer is a-come O,

And Winter is a-go O!

The verses of the ballad seem to convey topical allusions that have

become traditional. One speaks of Robin Hood and Little John as gone

to the fair, and the revellers will go too; another triumphs in the

Spaniards eating the gray goose feather while the singers will be

eating the roast. Another runs thus quaintly:

God bless Aunt Mary Moses

With all her power and might O;

And send us peace in merry England

Both night and day O.

With Hal-an-tow,

Jolly rumble O,

And we were up as soon as any day O,

And for to fetch the Summer home,

The Summer and the May O;

For the Summer is a-come O,

And Winter is a-go O!

Thus singing they troop through the town; if they find anyone at work,

they hale him to the river and make him leap across; arrived at the

Grammar School they demand a holiday; at noon they go "fadding" into

the country, and come back with oak branches and flowers in their hats

and caps; then until dusk they dance hand-in-hand down the streets,

and through any house, in at any door, out at another; when night

falls they keep up the dancing indoors. The character of the dancing

is exactly that of the ancient Comus; and the whole spirit of the

Cornish Furry is a fair representation of primitive nature festivals,

except, of course, that modern devoutness has banished from the flower

dance all traces of a religious festival;--unless a trace is to be

found in the fact that the dancers at one point make a collection.[1]

The Greek dramatist, staging religious legends, could assume in his

audience common knowledge as to the identity and the historic background

of his figures which saved him much exposition. Today, readers of his

play demand explanatory notes because of these omissions.

The _Choephori_, like the plays of Aeschylus generally, consists of

scenes from a story taken as known. Some indispensable parts of it are

represented only by allusions. Others can scarcely be said to be

represented at all. The history of Pylades belongs to the second class;

that of Strophius belongs to the first. What is evident is that the

author presumes us to be familiar with his conception of both, that as

a fact we are not, and that our only way of approaching the play

intelligently is by the assumption of some working hypothesis.[2]

Something like the position of these elder dramatists toward exposition

is held today by writers of plays on George Washington or Abraham

Lincoln. Dealing, as the dramatist ordinarily does, however, with a

mixture of historical and fictitious figures or with characters wholly

fictitious, he must in most cases carefully inform his audience at the

outset who his people are, and what are their relations to one another,

where the play is laid, and when.

Examine the first column of what follows: it is not a burlesque, but the

beginning of a so-called play. Why is it unsatisfactory?

ORCHIDS

_Conservatory of the Strones' house. Natalie is walking about among

the flowers and plants, arranging them for the day in the vases on the

near-by table._

_Natalie._ _Natalie._

(_To herself._) O-oh, (_To herself._) O-oh,

I'm sleepy this morning. It's I'm sleepy this morning. It's

very nice to have your fiance live very nice to have your fiance

in the next house, but when he live in the next house, but when

insists on writing his stories and (Tom) insists on writing his stories

things until two or three in the and things until two and

morning--well, I don't think three in the morning--well, I

it's very thoughtful of him. don't think it's very thoughtful

He might realize that his light of him. He might realize

shines directly across into my that his light shines directly

eyes and keeps me awake. Oh, across into my eyes and keeps

dear, Mary's been putting me awake. Oh, dear, (that

lilies-of-the-valley in all the maid's) been putting

vases again. I'll not have those lilies-of-the-valley in all the

everywhere when we've got orchids vases again. I'll not have those

instead. Flowers don't need everywhere when we've got orchids

fragrance anyway; they're just instead. Flowers don't need

meant to be seen. (_Dumping the fragrance anyway; they're just meant

wilted lilies in a basket by her to be seen. (_Dumping the wilted

side and arranging the newly-cut lilies in a basket by her side and

orchids in their place._) Tom [Who arranging the newly-cut orchids

is Tom--brother or fiance?] in their place._)

always makes a fuss when I have Tom always makes a fuss when

nothing but orchids, so I suppose I have nothing but orchids, so

Mary put the others about I suppose Mary put the others

to calm him down. [Who is about to calm him down.

Mary, then: a maid, a sister,

a girl friend, some one engaged

to Tom?] Really I've

got to speak to him about last Really I've got to speak to (Tom

night when he comes. The light Hammond) about last night,

is bad enough, but I won't when he comes. The light is bad

have him firing his gun out of enough, but I won't have him

the window besides. It must firing his gun out of the window

have been at that horrid thin besides. It must have been

cat that's always clawing Hopeful. at that horrid thin cat that's

[A cat, a dog, or a small always clawing Hopeful.

sister?] I'm glad _she_ [Hopeful I'm glad (Hopeful)

or the thin cat?] was locked up was locked up indoors if Tom's

indoors if Tom's going to act going to act that way (with cats).

that way. Oh, dear, these are Oh, dear, these are the wrong

the wrong shears again. (_Rings shears again. (_Rings bell. Enter

bell. Enter maid._) Mary, bring maid._) Mary, bring me the

me the other shears--and other shears--and Mary,

Mary, where's Hopeful this where's Hopeful this morning;

morning; I haven't seen her? I haven't seen her?

_Mary._ The kitten, Miss _Mary._ The kitten, Miss

Strone? Strone?

_Natalie._. Yes, of course. _Natalie._ Yes, of course.

_Mary._ Why--why she hasn't _Mary._ Why--why she hasn't

been in this morning. (_Starts been in this morning. (_Starts

away._) away._)

_Natalie._ Come back, Mary. _Natalie._ Come back, Mary.

Don't run off while I'm speaking Don't run off while I'm speaking

to you. Haven't you seen to you. Haven't you seen

her at all? her at all?

_Mary._ Well--yes, Miss _Mary._ Well--yes, Miss

Strone--that is Parkins [another Strone--that is (the butler)

maid, a butler, or a found--I mean--

milkman?] found--I mean--

_Natalie._ (_Impatiently._) Well? _Natalie._ (_Impatiently._) Well?

_Mary._ The shots last night, _Mary._ The shots last night,

Miss Strone--that is we think Miss Strone--that is we think

it was--although she _was_ on it was--although she _was_ on

the _other_ side of the garden the _other_ side of the wall when

when Parkins came on her--and Parkins came on her--and

there's the wall and the alley there's the wall and the alley

between--still, Mr. Hammond between--still, Mr. Hammond

was shooting out of the was shooting out of the upper

upper windows and-- windows and--

_Natalie._ (_Quickly._) Has _Natalie._ (_Quickly._) Has

anything happened to Hopeful? anything happened to Hopeful?

_Mary._ Why--why, Parkins-- _Mary._. Why--why, Parkins--

(_Enter Parkins._) (_Enter Parkins._)

_Parkins._ (_Quietly._) I buried _Parkins._ (_Quietly._) I buried

her all right just now, Miss her all right just now, Miss

Strone. (_Louder._) Mr. Hammond. Strone. (_Louder._) (Mr. Hammond.)

(_Exit [sic.] Mary and Parkins,_ (_Exeunt Mary and Parkins,_

_enter Tom Hammond._) _enter Tom Hammond._)

In the left-hand column practically every one in the cast is

unidentified when first mentioned. That is, the text fails in the first

essential of clearness: we do not for some time know who the people are

and their relations to one another. The very slight changes in the

right-hand column do away with this fault.

Identify characters, then, as promptly as possible. Writing, "John Paul

Jones enters in full Admiral's uniform," a dramatist often runs on for

some time before the text itself reveals the identity of the person who

has entered. Except in so far as the costume or make-up presents a

well-known historical figure, or information carefully given before the

figure enters may reveal identity, every newcomer is an entirely unknown

person. He must promptly make clear who he is and his relation to the

story. The following opening of a play shows another instance of the

vagueness resulting when this identification is not well managed:

ANNE--A PLAY IN TWO ACTS

ACT I

_Evening of a June day. John Hathaway's Study. Door at right and at

left back. Heavy, old-fashioned library furnishings. Walls lined with

shelves of books. General disorder of books to produce the effect of

recent using. Large flat-topped desk with a double row of drawers

stands at front, half way between center and right wall. Desk is

covered with books and loose manuscript. Chair at left front. Stool in

front of desk. Other chairs toward back._

_When the curtain rises, John Hathaway is seated at desk working. Anne

enters at right, bangs the door, and stands with back to it._

_Anne._ I hate Aunt Caroline. (_She hurries forward to stand at

opposite side of desk._) Oh, I know what you will say--just preach and

preach and call me "Anne" and tell me I must ask her pardon.--Why

don't you begin?

_John._ (_Smiling._) Now, Anne!

_Anne._ Yes, there's the "Anne." I know the rest without your going

on:--"Aunt Caroline is a peculiar woman, but is _most_ worthy. Her

Puritanism keeps her from understanding your temperament, and you are

too young to understand hers,--" and you'll go on preaching and

smiling in that horrid way--you always do--and you'll make me see how

wrong _I've_ been and how saintly _Aunt Caroline_ is, and at last I'll

slink out of the room like a good little pussy-cat to find Aunt

Caroline and beg her pardon. But it won't do _this_ time, for I begged

her pardon _before_ I lost my temper so that you _couldn't_ send me

back.--Oh, Duke, _can't_ we send Aunt Caroline away, and just you and

me live here always together. (_She swings round the desk to sit on

the stool at his side, her back to him. He turns a little in his

chair, letting a hand fall on her shoulder._) When Dad died, he left

me with you because next to me he loved you best in all the world.

Hundreds and hundreds of times he told me that.--It would have been

very nice, Duke, if Dad hadn't died, wouldn't it?

_John._ Yes, Nan.

_Anne._ In just that one thing God has not been quite fair to me. Aunt

Caroline tries so hard to make me think I am wrong about it.--I know

you think so too, but you never argue about it with me. I like you for

that, Duke. You see, if Dad had lived, our kingdom would have been

complete. Why! a kingdom's only _half_ a kingdom without a king.

_John._ That's true,--but there are still a few of us left. There's

the Prime Minister, and the Countess, and the Slave, every one of them

loyal to the Princess. Even the War Department is loyal--in warfare.

Perhaps, who knows, some day from out a great foreign land a great

king may come riding, and the Princess will place him beside her on

the throne--and--live happily ever afterward.

_Anne._ (_Inattentively._) Perhaps. Duke, did you ever think that the

Prime Minister was very fond of the Countess?

_John._ Why, I have thought so at times.

_Anne._ And did you ever think that perhaps the Prime Minister would

like to _marry_ the Countess?

_John._ Why, yes, now you mention it, that also has occurred to me.

_Anne._ Well, why doesn't he?

_John._ Perhaps the Countess isn't willing.

Who is this "Anne"? What is her last name? Is she the niece of "Duke"?

How could we learn from the text that "Duke" is John Hathaway? It is the

stage direction which gives us that information. And what are we to do

with this whole Burke's Peerage,--the Prime Minister, the Countess, the

Slave? The author is depending for identification upon a list of

_dramatis personae_ just preceding what has been quoted:

Time, present day.

Characters:

Anne Chesterfield, "The Princess."

John Hathaway, Anne's guardian, "The Duke."

Caroline Hathaway, John's aunt, "Head of the War Department."

Doctor Stirling, a friend, "The Prime Minister."

Katharine Bain, a friend, "The Countess."

Tommy Bain, Katharine's young brother, "The Slave."

Professor Heinrich Adler, "The Foreign Ambassador."

James, a Servant.

Cut out this list of characters; in the stage directions strike out

"John Hathaway," substituting "A man"; strike out "Anne," substituting

"A young woman." At once it is clear that the dialogue reveals nothing

about these people, except that a young woman who speaks is a niece of

"Aunt Caroline." Yet these substitutions show what the scene looks like

to a man entering the theatre without a program. Whenever such

substitution of a type name for that of an individual in the titles

prefixed to the speeches leaves the speakers unidentified, it is time to

re-phrase the material for greater clearness.

Scenery and costume, of course, may show where the opening or later

action of a play takes place. If these make clear the nationality of the

speakers, or, at most, the province to which they belong, this is in

many instances enough for any audience. In some cases, however, the

nature of the plot is so dependent on the customs of a particular

community that it is necessary or wise to make the text farther

particularize any placing of the play by scenery or costumes. Simple

interiors, too, are not always easily identifiable as of this or that

province, or even country. If province or country at all determines the

action of the piece, the text should help out the setting. One reason

why the plays of Synge aroused bitter opposition was that some auditors

believed them representations of life anywhere in Ireland and not, as

they were meant to be, pictures of the manners of Aran Islanders, a

group so isolated as to retain much savagery. Also, if the text is clear

as to place, suggestion may take the place of realism in the scenery,

thus decreasing expense. The emphasis on place in the opening of _The

Rising of the Moon_ both permits scenery that merely suggests a quay and

plants in the minds of hearers a setting essential to the whole

development of the play:

SCENE: _Side of a quay in a seaport town. Some posts and chains. A

large barrel. Enter three policemen. Moonlight._

_Sergeant, who is older than the others, crosses the stage to right

and looks down steps. The others put down a pastepot and unroll a

bundle of placards._

_Policeman B._ I think this would be a good place to put up a notice.

(_He points to a barrel._)

_Policeman X._ Better ask him. (_Calls to Sergeant._.) Will this be a

good place for a placard? (_No answer._)

_Policeman B._ Will we put up a notice here on the barrel? (_No

answer._)

_Sergeant._ There's a flight of steps here that leads to the water.

This is a place that should be minded well. If he got down here, his

friends might have a boat to meet him; they might send it in here from

outside.

_Policeman B._ Would the barrel be a good place to put a notice up?

_Sergeant._ It might; you can put it there. (_They paste the notice

up._)

_Sergeant._ (_Reading it._) Dark hair--dark eyes, smooth face, height

five feet five--there's not much to take hold of in that--It's a pity

I had no chance of seeing him before he broke out of jail. They say

he's a wonder, that it's he makes all the plans for the whole

organization. There isn't another man in Ireland would have broken

jail the way he did. He must have some friends among the jailers.

_Policeman B._ A hundred pounds reward is little enough for the

Government to offer for him. You may be sure any man in the force that

takes him will get promotion.

_Sergeant._ I'll mind this place myself. I wouldn't wonder at all if

he comes this way. He might come slipping along there (_points to side

of quay_) and his friends might be waiting for him there (_points down

steps_), and once he got away it's little chance we'd have of finding

him; it's maybe under a load of kelp he'd be in a fishing boat, and

not one to help a married man that wants it to the reward.[3]

The period in which the play is supposed to take place, if of importance

to the action, needs careful statement. Helped out by setting and

costumes, the following shows that the play is taking place at the time

of the French Revolution.

_At rise of curtain, drums are heard beating, trumpets sounding the

charge in the distance. A report of a cannon as the curtain rises._

_Jennie._ (_R., going up to door C._) Did you hear that? It must be

somewhere near the Rue d'Echelle now.

_Julie._ (_L. crossing to R._) My! I'm frightened to death.

_Marie._ (_Carrots--up C._) I only hope they won't come fighting down

_our_ street.

_Julie._ (_Kneeling._) Bless us and save us!

_Jennie._ (_Up C._) Down our street. What should they come here for?

It's the Tuileries and the King they're after. (_Going to window L._)

_First Neighbor and Omnes._ (_At back._) Of course they are. That's

it.

_First Woman._ (_Up C._) I tell you they're at the Carrousel. (_Report

of cannon._)

_Marie._ It will be a mercy if they don't smash every pane of glass in

the shop.

_Julie._ Well I shan't forget this 10th of August in a hurry.

(_At back a National Guard wounded in the leg supported by two other

guards enters at L., is taken into the druggist's shop. All the

people move towards the shop._)[4]

Lapse of time between two acts, if important to the development of the

plot, should also be clearly stated. Dramatists like to depend on the

programs for such information, but they run the chance that many

auditors will not see the printed note. Doubtless a program would give

these words from the stage direction at the beginning of the fourth act

of Hauptmann's _Lonely Lives_: "Time between 4 and 5 P.M.," but the

quick passage of time is so important a fact in the development of the

plot that six or seven pages later there is the following dialogue:

_Braun._ (_Looks at telegram._) It is the six o'clock train that Mr.

Vockerat is coming by? What o'clock is it now?

_Mrs. Vockerat._ Not half-past four yet.

_Braun._ (_After a moment of reflection._) Has there been no change in

the course of the week?

_Mrs. Vockerat._ (_Shakes her head hopelessly._) None.

_Braun._ Has she given no hint of any intention to go?[5]

In _The Galloper_, by Richard Harding Davis, what the audience hears

will place the play in a hotel at Athens, even if the scenery does

not:

_Before the curtain rises one hears a drum-and-fife corps playing a

lively march, and the sound of people cheering. This comes from the

rear and to the left, and continues after the curtain is up, dying

away gradually as though the band, and the regiment with it, had

passed and continued on up the street._

_Anstruther is discovered seated on the lower right-end corner of the

table, with his right foot resting on the chair at that corner. He is

reading the Paris "New York Herald" and smoking a cigarette. He is a

young man of good manner and soldierly appearance. He wears gray

whipcord riding breeches, tan riding boots, and Norfolk jacket of

rough tweed. His slouch hat, with a white puggaree wrapped round it,

lies on the table beside him. Griggs stands at the edge of the French

window looking off left. In his hand he holds a notebook in which he

takes notes. He is supposed to be watching the soldiers who are

passing. He is a pompous little man of about forty with eyeglasses. He

wears a khaki uniform similar to that of an officer of the British

army, with the difference that the buttons are of bone. His left chest

is covered with ribbons of war medals. Hewitt, a young man with a

pointed beard and moustache, stands to the left of Griggs, also

looking off left. He wears a khaki coat made like a Norfolk jacket,

khaki riding breeches, and canvas United States Army leggings and tan

shoes. On the table are his slouch hat and the khaki-colored helmet of

Griggs._

_Captain O'Malley enters right. He is a dashing young Irishman, in the

uniform of an officer of the Greek Army. He halts to right of

Anstruther and salutes._

_Capt. O'Malley._ Pardon, I am Captain O'Malley of the Foreign Legion.

Am I addressing one of the foreign war correspondents?

_Capt. Anstruther._ Yes.

_Capt. O'Malley._ (_Showing him a visiting card._) Pardon, is this

your card?

_Capt. Anstruther._ (_Reading card._) "Mr. Kirke Warren." No.

_Capt. O'Malley._ Do you know if Mr. Warren is in this hotel?

_Capt. Anstruther._ I couldn't tell you. We arrived in Athens only

last night.

_Capt. O'Malley._ (_Saluting and moving off left._) I thank you.

(_He exits left._)[6]

But the dramatist prefaced this with a careful description of the

setting. What has just been quoted shows that the dramatist risked no

chance that what would probably identify this setting,--"Greek letters

of gilt" on the picture frames, and the distant view of the

Acropolis,--might fail him. He added what has just been quoted.

_This scene shows the interior of the reading room in the Hotel

Angleterre at Athens. It is large, cheerful-looking, and sunny, with a

high ceiling. Extending nearly across the entire width of the rear

wall is a French window, which opens upon the garden of the hotel.

Outside it are set plants in green tubs, and above it is stretched a

striped green-and-white awning. To the reading room the principal

entrance is through a wide door set well down in the left wall. It is

supposed to open into the hall of the hotel. Through this door one

obtains a glimpse of the hall, where steamer trunks and hatboxes are

piled high upon a black-and-white tiled floor. In the right wall there

is another door, also well down on the stage. It is supposed to open

into a corridor of the hotel. Below it against the wall are a writing

desk and chair. A similar writing desk is placed against the rear wall

between the right wall and the French window. On the left of the

stage, end-on to the audience, is a long library table over which is

spread a dark-green baize cloth. On top of it are ranged periodicals

and the illustrated papers of different countries. Chairs of bent wood

are ranged around this table, one being placed at each side of the

lower end. Of these two, the chair to the left of the table is not

farther from the left door than five feet. The walls of the room are

colored a light, cool gray in distemper, with a black oak wainscot

about four feet high. On the walls are hung photographs of the

Acropolis and of classic Greek statues. On the black frames holding

these photographs appear the names of shopkeepers in Greek letters of

gilt. The floor is covered with a gray crash. The back drop, seen

through the French window, shows the garden of the hotel, beyond that

the trees of a public park, and high in the air the Acropolis. The

light is that of a bright morning in May._

The test in deciding whether the place and the time should be stated is

not, "Has it been given in the program?" nor, "May it with ingenuity be

guessed from the settings and costumes?" but, first, "Does place or

time, or do both at all determine the action of the piece?" secondly,

"Will any intelligent observer be vague as to place or time, as the play

develops?" If the answer to either of these questions is yes, it is

wisest to make these matters clear in the text.

Far more troublesome than merely identifying the characters or

emphasizing the place and time of the play is showing the relations of

the characters to one another. This usually requires exposition of past

history which must be clearly understood if the play is to have its full

emotional effect. More than one reader has been disposed to believe the

theory that _Macbeth_, as we know it, is a cut stage version because,

when Lady Macbeth first enters, she seems less prepared for and less

clearly related to the other figures than is Shakespeare's custom.

SCENE 5. _Inverness. Macbeth's castle_

_Enter Lady Macbeth, alone, with a letter_

_Lady Macbeth_. (_Reads._) "They met me in the day of success; and I

have learn'd by the perfect'st report, they have more in them than

mortal knowledge. When I burn'd in desire to question them further,

they made themselves air, into which they vanish'd. Whiles I stood

rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the King, who all-hail'd

me, 'Thane of Cawdor'; by which title, before, these weird sisters

saluted me, and referr'd me to the coming on of time, with 'Hail, King

thou shalt be!' This I have thought good to deliver thee, my dearest

partner of greatness, that thou mightst not lose the dues of

rejoicing, by being ignorant of what greatness is promis'd thee. Lay

it to thy heart, and farewell."

Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be

What thou art promis'd. Yet do I fear thy nature;

It is too full o' the milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great,

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it. What thou wouldst highly,

That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false,

And yet wouldst wrongly win. Thou'dst have, great Glamis,

That which cries, "Thus thou must do, if thou have it";

And that which rather thou dost fear to do

Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear,

And chastise with the valour of my tongue

All that impedes thee from the golden round

Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem

To have thee crown'd withal.

The Dumb Show, Chorus, and Soliloquy are now outworn devices for setting

forth necessary initial expository facts. Today any experienced

dramatist knows that such preliminary exposition demands the art which

conceals art, for an audience resents a mere recital of necessary facts.

Examine the first act of Schnitzler's _The Lonely Way_.[7] All of it is

interesting for characterization and statement of facts essential to an

understanding of the play, but it does not grip the attention as do the

other acts where drama, not exposition, is of first consequence.

Early steps in advance on the Chorus were the butler and the maid

servant, garrulously talking of what each must have known ever since he

came into his position. A closely related form is unbosoming oneself to

a male or female confidant.

ACT I

(_Enter Hippolytus, Theramenes._)

_Hippolytus._ My mind is settled, dear Theramenes,

And I can stay not more in lovely Troezen.

In doubt that racks my soul with mortal anguish,

I grow ashamed of such long idleness.

Six months and more my father has been gone,

And what may have befallen one so dear

I know not, nor what corner of the earth

Hides him.

_Theramenes._ And where, prince, will you look for him?

Already, to content your just alarm,

Have I not cross'd the seas on either side

Of Corinth, ask'd if aught were known of Theseus

Where Acheron is lost among the Shades,

Visited Elis, doubled Toenarus,

And sail'd into the sea that saw the fall

Of Icarus? Inspired with what new hope,

Under what favor'd skies think you to trace

His footsteps? Who knows if the king, your father,

Wishes the secret of his absence known?

Perchance, while we are trembling for his life,

The hero calmly plots some fresh intrigue,

And only waits till the deluded fair--

_Hippolytus._ Cease, dear Theramenes, respect the name

Of Theseus. Youthful errors have been left

Behind, and no unworthy obstacle

Detains him. Phaedra long has fix'd a heart

Inconstant once, nor need she fear a rival.

In seeking him I shall but do my duty,

And leave a place I dare no longer see.

_Theramenes._ Indeed! When, prince, did you begin to dread

These peaceful haunts, so dear to happy childhood,

Where I have seen you oft prefer to stay,

Rather than meet the tumult and the pomp

Of Athens and the court? What danger shun you,

Or shall I say what grief?

_Hippolytus._ That happy time

Is gone, and all is changed, since to these shores

The gods sent Phaedra.

_Theramenes._ I perceive the cause

Of your distress. It is the queen whose sight

Offends you. With a step-dame's spite she schemed

Your exile soon as she set eyes on you.

But if her hatred is not wholly vanish'd,

It has at least taken a milder aspect.

Besides, what danger can a dying woman,

One too who longs for death, bring on your head?

Can Phaedra, sick'ning of a dire disease

Of which she will not speak, weary of life

And of herself, form any plots against you?

_Hippolytus._ It is not her vain enmity I fear;

Another foe alarms Hippolytus.

I fly, it must be owned, from Aricia,

The soul survivor of an impious race.

_Theramenes._ What! You become her persecutor too!

The gentle sister of the cruel sons

Of Pallas shared not in their perfidy;

Why should you hate such charming innocence?

_Hippolytus._ I should not need to fly, if it were hatred.

_Theramenes._ May I, then, learn the meaning of your flight?[8]

Another device is an intensely inquisitive stranger just returned from

foreign parts who listens with patience not always shared by an auditor

to any needed preliminary exposition.

_The Opportunity_,[9] by James Shirley, shows an ingenious adaptation of

the device of the inquisitive stranger newly come to some city. Aurelio,

a gentleman of Milan, coming to Urbino with his friend Pisauro, is

mistaken for Borgia, who has been banished from Urbino. As one person

after another, greeting Aurelio as Borgia, naturally talks to him of his

past, his family, and what is to be expected of him now that he is

returned, they identify and relate clearly to one another the chief

people whom Aurelio is to meet in the play. A hearer would take in

almost unconsciously the needed exposition, so amused would he be at the

increasing bewilderment of Aurelio.

Such ways and means as these three--the servant, the confidant, the

stranger--Buckingham ridiculed in the late seventeenth century in his

_Rehearsal_:

_Enter Gentleman-Usher and Physician_

_Physician._ Sir, by your habit, I should guess you to be the

Gentleman-Usher of this sumptuous palace.

_Usher._ And by your gait and fashion, I should almost suspect you

rule the healths of both our noble Kings, under the notion of

Physician.

_Physician._ You hit my function right.

_Usher._ And you mine.

_Physician._ Then let's embrace.

_Usher._ Come.

_Physician._ Come.

_Johnson._ Pray, sir, who are those so very civil persons?

_Bayes._ Why, sir, the Gentleman-Usher and Physician of the two Kings

of Brentford.

_Johnson._ But, pray, then, how comes it to pass that they know one

another no better?

_Bayes._ Phoo! that's for the better carrying on of the plot.[10]

Another method, talking back to people off stage, as one enters, in such

a way as to bring out necessary facts, erence both used and ridiculed

centuries ago. This is his use of the device:

_Enter Mysis_

_Mysis._ (_Speaking to the housekeeper within._) I hear, Archilis, I

hear: Your orders are to fetch Lesbia. On my word she's a drunken

reckless creature, not at all a fit person to take charge of a woman

in her first labour: am I to fetch her all the same? (_Comes

forward._)[11]

In the last lines of the following he ridicules this very use:

_Re-enter Lesbia_

_Lesbia._ (_Speaking through the doorway_.) So far, Archilis, the

usual and proper symptoms for a safe delivery, I see them all here.

After ablution give her the drink I ordered and in the prescribed

quantity. I shall be back before long. (_Turning round._) Lor' me, but

a strapping boy is born to Pamphilus. Heaven grant it live, for the

father's a noble gentleman and has shrunk from wronging an excellent

young lady. (_Exit._)

_Simo._ For example now, wouldn't any one who knew you think you were

at the bottom of this?

_Davus._ Of what, sir?

_Simo._ Instead of prescribing at the bedside what must be done for

the mother, out she plumps and shouts it at them from the street.[12]

Lately the telephone, the stenographer, and most recently the dictaphone

have seemed to puzzled dramatists the swift road to successful initial

exposition. To all these human or unhuman aids some overburdened soul

has felt free to say anything the audience might need to hear. Probably

this use of the telephone has come to stay, for daily there is proof

that nothing is too intimate for it. There are, however, more ambitious

workers who, weary of servants, confidants, telephones, stenographers,

and dictaphones, want to set forth necessary information so naturally

that no one may question whether it might have come out in this way.

Also, they want the information to be so interestingly conveyed that an

auditor thinks of what is happening rather than merely of the facts.

In the first act of _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_,[13] the audience must

hear a narrative setting forth Aubrey Tanqueray's position in society,

his first marriage, his relations with his daughter, and the nature of

his proposed second marriage. What complicates the task is that the

narrative must be told to old friends, so that much of it is to them

well known. What device will make the narrative, under the

circumstances, plausible? Here is where a modern dramatist sighs for the

serviceable heralds, messengers, and chorus of plays of decades long

past or for the freer methods in narrative of the novelist. How easy to

tell much of this in your own person, as have Thackeray or Meredith, in

comparison with stating it through another so placed that he will be

glad to hear again much which he already knows! The necessity creates

with Sir Arthur the device of the little supper party in Aubrey

Tanqueray's chambers in the Albany, to which he has invited four of his

oldest friends. The moment chosen for the opening of the play is when

the old friends, over the coffee, fall quite naturally into reminiscent

vein. What helps to freer exposition is their chance to talk of Cayley

Drummle, who, even yet, though bidden, has not appeared. Before the chat

is over and Cayley enters, much needed information is in the minds of

the audience. Cayley brings news of a terrible _mesalliance_ in a family

known to all the supper party. In his efforts to advise and comfort the

distracted mother he has been kept from the meeting of old friends. The

news leads Aubrey Tanqueray to avow his quixotic scheme for a second

marriage. Through the contrasting comments of the friends, even through

their reservations, the audience becomes perfectly informed as to the

view the world will take of this second marriage. Indeed, as the supper

party breaks up, all the audience requires in order to listen

intelligently to the succeeding acts, is a chance to see Paula herself.

Her impulsive visit to Tanqueray, just after the supper party ends,

provides the information needed, for in it her character is sketched in

broadly as it will be filled out in detail in the succeeding acts.

Evidently device, the ingenious discovery of a plausible reason for

exposition necessary in a play, is basal in the best stage narrative.

Without it, character is sacrificed to mere necessary exposition; with

it, the spectator, absorbed by incident or characterization, learns

unconsciously that without which he cannot intelligently and

sympathetically follow the story of the play. In other words, successful

discovery of devices for such exposition clearly means that disguising

which is essential to the best narrative in drama.

The first quality of good expository device is clearness. Secondly, it

should be an adequate reason for the exposition it contains: i.e., it

must seem natural that the facts should come out in this way. Thirdly,

and of the utmost importance, the device must be something so

interesting in itself as to hold the attention of an auditor while

necessary facts are insinuated into his mind. Lastly, the device should

permit this preliminary exposition to be given swiftly. It is hard to

conceal exposition as such if the movement is as slow as in the first

two scenes of Act I of _The Journey of Papa Perrichon_.

ACT I

_The Lyons railway station at Paris. At the back, a turn-stile opening

on the waiting-rooms. At the back, right, a ticket window. At the

back, left, benches, a cake vender; at the left, a book stall._

SCENE 1. _Majorin, A Railway Official, Travelers, Porters_

_Majorin._ (_Walking about impatiently._) Still this Perrichon doesn't

come! Already I've waited an hour.... Certainly it is today that he is

to set out for Switzerland with his wife and daughter. (_Bitterly._)

Carriage builders who go to Switzerland! Carriage builders who have

forty thousand pounds a year income! Carriage builders who keep their

carriages! What times these are! While I,--I am earning two thousand

four hundred francs ... a clerk, hard-working, intelligent, always

bent over his desk.... Today I asked for leave ... I said it was my

day for guard duty.... It is absolutely necessary that I see Perrichon

before his departure.... I want to ask him to advance me my quarter's

salary.... Six hundred francs! He is going to put on his patronizing

air ... make himself important ... a carriage builder! It's a shame!

Still he doesn't come! One would say that he did it on purpose!

(_Addressing a porter who passes, followed by travelers._) Monsieur,

at what time does the train start for Lyons?

_Porter._ (_Brusquely._) Ask the official. (_He goes out at the

left._)

_Majorin._ Thanks ... clodhopper! (_Addressing the official who is

near the ticket window._) Monsieur, at what time does the through

train start for Lyons?

_The Official._ (_Brusquely._) That doesn't concern me! Look at the

poster. (_He points to a poster in the left wings._)

_Majorin._ Thanks.... (_Aside._) The politeness of these corporations!

If ever you come to my office, you...! Let's have a look at the

poster.... (_He goes out at the left._)

SCENE 2. _The Official, Perrichon, Madame Perrichon, Henriette_

(_They enter at the right_)

_Perrichon._ Here we are! Let's keep together! We couldn't find each

other again.... Where is our baggage? (_Looking to the right; into the

wings._) Ah, that's all right! Who has the umbrellas?

_Henriette._ I, papa.

_Perrichon._ And the carpet bag? The cloaks?

_Madame Perrichon._ Here they are!

_Perrichon._ And my panama? It has been left in the cab! (_Making a

movement to rush out and checking himself._) Ah! No! I have it in my

hand!... Phew, but I'm hot!

_Madame Perrichon._ It is your own fault!... You hurried us, you

hustled us!... I don't like to travel like that!

_Perrichon._ It is the departure which is tiresome ... once we are

settled!... Stay here, I am going to get the tickets.... (_Giving his

hat to Henriette._) There, keep my panama for me.... (_At the ticket

window._) Three, first class, for Lyons!...

_The Official._ (_Brusquely._) Not open yet! In a quarter of an hour!

_Perrichon._ (_To the official._) Ah! pardon me! It is the first time

I have traveled.... (_Returning to his wife._) We are early.

_Madame Perrichon._ There! When I told you we should have time. You

wouldn't let us breakfast!

_Perrichon._ It is better to be early! ... one can look about the

station! (_To Henriette._) Well, little daughter, are you

satisfied?... Here we are, about to set out!... A few minutes yet, and

then, swift as the arrow of William Tell, we rush toward the Alps!

(_To his wife._) You brought the opera glasses?

_Madame Perrichon._ Of course!

_Henriette._ (_To her father._) I'm not criticizing, papa, but it is

now two years, at least, since you promised us this trip.

_Perrichon._ My daughter, I had to sell my business.... A merchant

does not retire from business as easily as his little daughter leaves

boarding school.... Besides, I was waiting for your education to be

ended in order to complete it by revealing to you the splendid

spectacle of nature!

_Madame Perrichon._ Are you going on in that strain?

_Perrichon._ What do you mean?

_Madame Perrichon._ Phrase-making in a railway station!

_Perrichon._ I am not making phrases.... I'm improving the child's

mind. (_Drawing a little notebook from his pocket._) Here, my

daughter, is a notebook I've bought for you.

_Henriette._ For what purpose?

_Perrichon._ To write on one side the expenses, and on the other the

impressions.

_Henriette._ What impressions?

_Perrichon._ Our impressions of the trip! You shall write, and I will

dictate.

_Madame Perrichon._ What! You are now going to become an author?

_Perrichon._ There's no question of my becoming an author ... but it

seems to me that a man of the world can have some thoughts and record

them in a notebook!

_Madame Perrichon._ That will be fine, indeed!

_Perrichon._ (_Aside._) She is like that every time she doesn't take

her coffee!

_A Porter._ (_Pushing a little cart loaded with baggage._) Monsieur,

here is your baggage. Do you wish to have it checked?

_Perrichon._ Certainly! But first, I am going to count them ...

because, when one knows the number ... One, two, three, four, five,

six, my wife, seven, my daughter, eight, and for myself, nine. We are

nine.

_Porter._ Put it up there!

_Perrichon._ (_Hurrying toward the back._) Hurry!

_Porter._ Not that way, this way! (_He points to the left._)

_Perrichon._ All right! (_To the women._) Wait for me there! We

mustn't get lost! (_He goes out running, following the porter._)[14]

The first scene undoubtedly helps to create the atmosphere of a large

railway station, but everything in it could be brought out in what is

now Scene 2. Even the way in which Majorin is passed from one employee

to the other could be transferred to Perrichon. Every fact in Majorin's

soliloquy is either repeated in the scenes which follow, or could easily

be brought out in them.

What has made necessary this swifter preliminary exposition is,

probably, the growing popularity of three or four acts as compared with

five. Less space has forced a swifter movement. Contrast, in the

five-act piece _Une Chaine_[15] by Scribe, the slow exposition in a

first act of thirty-two pages with the perfectly adequate re-statement

in six and a half pages in the one-act adaptation by Sidney Grundy, _In

Honour Bound_.[16]

It is easy, however, to overload a first act with what seems needed

exposition but is not. Careful consideration may show that some part may

be postponed for "later exposition." Here is the history which lies

behind Act I of Sudermann's _Heimat_, or _Magda_.[17] The famous singer,

Dall'Orto, who was Magda Schwartze, has returned to her native place for

a music festival. Ten years before she was driven from home by her

father, an army officer, because she would not marry the man of his

choice, Pastor Hefferdingt. Going to Berlin to train her voice, she was

betrayed by young von Keller, a former acquaintance. After six months he

deserted her. A child was born to whom she is passionately devoted. Von

Keller is now a much respected citizen of the home town, who lives in

awe of public opinion. He and Magda have not met since their Berlin days

and he does not know there was a child. Since his return to the town he

has kept away from the Schwartzes. Hefferdingt has remained single,

devoting himself to good works. Magda's father nearly lost his mind

from an apoplectic shock when he learned of her flight, but he has won

back some part of his health through the wise and tender aid of

Hefferdingt. There has been no communication between Magda and her

family in the ten years. Now the younger sister Marie is engaged to the

nephew of von Keller, Max, but the young people have not enough money to

marry. They have been hoping that an aunt, Franziska, who caused Magda

much unhappiness in the old days, will aid them. The narrow life of the

town and the subservience of the Schwartzes to it had much to do with

the rebelliousness of Magda as a girl. Through hard work and much bitter

experience, she has won a supreme place in the world of music. She has

developed a somewhat cynical philosophy of life which calls for complete

self-expression, at any cost to others. She craves sight of her family

again, and especially of Marie, a mere child when Magda left home.

Somewhere in the course of the play an audience must learn all these

facts. How many of them must be set forth in Act I, and how many may be

set apart for "later exposition"? Sudermann decided to postpone till Act

II any detailed statement of the past relations between Magda and

Hefferdingt. In Act I we learn only that he wished to marry Magda, and

that there is anger in the family because of the way in which she

refused him. What that was is not stated. Thus by giving mystery to

these past relations of Magda and Hefferdingt, curiosity and interest

are aroused and suspense created.

Of Magda's relations with von Keller we really learn nothing in Act I.

We are, it is true, made to suspect that his admitted meeting with her

in Berlin covers more than he is willing to reveal, and that his

avoidance of the Schwartzes means something, but we learn nothing

clearly until Act III. Not till then do we know a child was born and is

still alive. In other words, postponing detailed exposition of these

matters provides the most important scene of Act II, that of Hefferdingt

and Magda, and the central scene of Act III between von Keller and

Magda. Note that deciding what shall be preliminary and what later

exposition has much to do here, as always, with creating Suspense, a

subject which will be treated under Movement. A difficult task for the

dramatist is this determining what in the historical background of his

play must be treated as preliminary exposition, and what may be

postponed for later treatment, when the real action of the play is well

under way.

Even when it is clear just what must go into preliminary exposition the

ordering of the details chosen is very important. Look again at _Magda_.

It is love for Marie which, in large part, draws Magda to her home, and

at first keeps her there. The love affair which Magda fled from seemed

to her conventional. Sudermann opens his play, therefore, with a picture

of the thoroughly conventional engagement of Max and Marie, but

remembering that the sooner a dramatist creates interest the better, he

starts with the mysterious bouquet, far too expensive if sent by Max to

Marie and wholly unacceptable if sent by any one else. When Max,

entering, says that the flowers are not from him, there is a chance to

emphasize two points of importance: the lovers' lack of money, and their

fear of gossip. Meantime the fact has been planted that there is a music

festival in the town. As the two young people talk of their need and the

people who might help them, we learn that the father thinks Magda's

departure was for some reason a "blot" on the family, and that

Hefferdingt wished to marry her. The call of von Keller shows that since

his return home he has been distant toward the Schwartzes; that he is

afraid of public opinion; and that he met Magda in Berlin, "but only for

a moment, on the street." With the entrance of the father and mother we

have the petty social ambitions of the latter, and the tyrannical

attitude of the former toward his family. The scene with von Klebs and

Beckmann not only illustrates social conditions in the town, but begins

to connect Dall'Orto with the lost daughter by showing the extraordinary

interest of Hefferdingt in meeting the singer. The coming of Aunt

Franziska with her announcement that the Dall'Orto is Magda ends the

preliminary exposition, for with the arrival of Hefferdingt and his

effort to bring Magda home, the real action of the play begins.

Obviously much thought and care have gone into the re-ordering of these

details, so that the facts which must be first understood are stated

first and so that there shall be growing interest through the creation

of more and more suspense.

In one of the early drafts of _Rosmersholm_, the opening page ran as

follows. Note that there is no mention of any "white horses."

(_Mrs. Rosmer is standing by the farthest window, arranging the

flowers. Madam Helset enters from the right with a basket of table

linen._)

_Madam Helset._ I suppose I had better begin to lay the tea-table,

ma'am?

_Mrs. Rosmer._ Yes, please do. He must soon be in now.

_Madam Helset._ (_Laying the cloth._) No, he won't come just yet; for

I saw him from the kitchen--

_Mrs. Rosmer._ Yes, yes--

_Madam Helset._--on the other side of the millpond. At first, he was

going straight across the foot-bridge; but then he turned back--

_Mrs. Rosmer._ Did he?

_Madam Helset._ Yes, and then he went all the way round. Ah, it's

strange about such places. A place where a thing like that has

happened--there--. It stays there; it isn't forgotten so soon.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ No, it is not forgotten.

_Madam Helset._ No, indeed it isn't. (_Goes out to the right._)

_Mrs. Rosmer._ (_At the window, looking out._) Forget. Forget, ah!

_Madam Helset._ (_In the doorway._) I've just seen the rector, ma'am.

He's coming here.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ Are you sure of that?

_Madam Helset._ Yes, he went across the millpond.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ And my husband is not at home.

_Madam Helset._ The tea is ready as soon as you want it.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ But wait; we can't tell whether he'll stay.

_Madam Helset._ Yes, yes. (_Goes out to the right._)

_Mrs. Rosmer._ (_Goes over and opens the door to the hall._) Good

afternoon; how glad I am to see you, my dear Rector![18]

In this version the "white horses" appear, definitely explained, after

some sixteen pages:

_Rosmer._ ... My former self is dead. I look upon it as one looks upon

a corpse.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ Yes, but that is just when these white horses appear.

_Rosmer._ White horses? What white horses?

(_Madam Helset brings in the tea-urn and puts it on the table._)

_Mrs. Rosmer._ What was it you told me once, Madam Helset? You said

that from time immemorial a strange thing happened here whenever one

of the family died.

_Madam Helset._ Yes, it's true as I'm alive. Then the white horse

comes.

_Rosmer._ Oh, that old family legend--

_Mrs. Rosmer._ In it comes when the night is far gone. Into the

courtyard. Through closed gates. Neighs loudly. Launches out with its

hind legs, gallops once round and then out again and away at full

speed.

_Madam Helset._ Yes, that's how it is. Both my mother and my

grandmother have seen it.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ And you too?

_Madam Helset._ Oh, I'm not so sure whether I've seen anything myself.

I don't generally believe in such things. But this about the white

horse--I do believe in that. And I shall believe in it till the day of

my death. Well, now I'll go and-- (_Goes out to the right._)[19]

In the final draft, Ibsen put the "white horses" into his opening page.

The beginning of this draft emphasizes particularly a grim, unexplained

tragedy. The most mysterious touch in the new arrangement is given by

the "white horses," here treated referentially, not in definite

explanation.

(_Sitting-room at Rosmersholm; spacious, old-fashioned, and

comfortable._)

(_Rebecca West is sitting in an easy chair by the window and

crocheting a large white woolen shawl, which is nearly finished. Now

and then she looks out expectantly through the leaves of the plants.

Soon after, Madam Helseth enters from the right._)

_Madam Helseth._ I suppose I'd better begin to lay the table, Miss?

_Rebecca West._ Yes, please do. The Pastor must soon be in now.

_Madam Helseth._ Do you feel the draught, Miss, where you're sitting?

_Rebecca._ Yes, there is a little draught. Perhaps you had better shut

the window.

(_Madame Helseth shuts the door into the hall, and then comes to the

window._)

_Madam Helseth._ (_About to shut the window, looks out._) Why, isn't

that the Pastor over there?

_Rebecca._ (_Hastily._) Where? (_Rises._) Yes, it's he. (_Behind the

curtain._) Stand aside, don't let him see us.

_Madam Helseth._ (_Keeping back from the window._) Only think, Miss,

he's beginning to take the path by the mill again.

_Rebecca._ He went that way the day before yesterday, too. (_Peeps out

between the curtains and the window frame._) But let us see whether--

_Madam Helseth._ Will he venture across the foot-bridge?

_Rebecca._ That's what I want to see. (_After a pause._) No, he's

turning. He's going by the upper road again. (_Leaves the window._) A

long way round.

_Madam Helseth._ Dear Lord, yes. No wonder the Pastor thinks twice

about setting foot on _that_ bridge. A place where a thing like that

has happened--

_Rebecca._ (_Folding up her work._) They cling to their dead here at

Rosmersholm.

_Madam Helseth._ Now _I_ would say, Miss, that it's the dead that

clings to Rosmersholm.

_Rebecca._ (_Looks at her._) The dead?

_Madam Helseth._ Yes, it's almost as if they couldn't tear themselves

away from the folk that are left.

_Rebecca._ What makes you fancy that?

_Madam Helseth._ Well, if it weren't for that, there would be no white

horse, I suppose.

_Rebecca._ Now what _is_ all this about the white horse, Madam

Helseth?

_Madam Helseth._ Oh, I don't like to talk about it. And, besides, you

don't believe in such things.

_Rebecca._ Do _you_ believe in them?

_Madam Helseth._ (_Goes and shuts the window._) Now you're making fun

of me, Miss. (_Looks out._) Why, isn't that Mr. Rosmer on the mill

path again--?

_Rebecca._ (_Looks out._) That man there? (_Goes to the window._) No,

it's the Rector!

_Madam Helseth._ Yes, so it is.

_Rebecca._ How glad I am! You'll see, he's coming here.

_Madam Helseth._ He goes straight over the foot-bridge, _he_ does, and

yet she was his sister, his own flesh and blood. Well, I'll go and lay

the table then, Miss West.

(_She goes out to the right. Rebecca stands at the window for a short

time; then smiles and nods to some one outside. It begins to grow

dark._)

_Rebecca._ (_Goes to the door on the right._) Oh, Madam Helseth, you

might give us some little extra dish for supper. You know what the

Rector likes best.

_Madam Helseth._ (_Outside._) Oh yes, Miss, I'll see to it.

_Rebecca._ (_Opens the door to the hall._) At last! How glad I am to

see you, my dear Rector.[20]

How a dramatist opens his play is, then, very important. He is writing

supposedly for people who, except on a few historical subjects, know

nothing of his material. If so, as soon as possible, he must make them

understand: (1) who his people are; (2) where his people are; (3) the

time of the play; and (4) what in the present and past relations of his

characters causes the story. Is it any wonder that Ibsen, when writing

_The Pillars of Society_, said: "In a few days I shall have the first

act ready; and that is always the most difficult act of the play"?[21]

What has just been said as to ordering the details in preliminary

exposition is equivalent to saying: Decide where, in this exposition,

you will place your emphasis. What a dramatist is trying to do will not

be clear throughout his play unless he knows how properly to emphasize

his material, for it is above all else emphasis which reveals the

meaning of a play. Right emphasis depends basally on knowing what

exactly is the desired total effect of the piece,--a picture, a thesis,

a character study, or a story. Remember that Dumas fils said: "You

cannot very well know where you should come out, when you don't know

where you are going." Often, too, a play is either meant to set people

thinking of undesirable social conditions, or to state a distinct

thesis. With these two kinds particularly in mind, Mr. Galsworthy has

said: "A drama must be shaped so as to have a spire of meaning."[22]

Whatever we make prominent by repetition, by elaborate treatment, by the

position given it in an act or in the play as a whole, or by striking

illustration, we emphasize, for it stays in the memory and shapes the

meaning of a play for an auditor. In _Othello_, why does Shakespeare

bring forward Iago at the end of an act as chorus to his own villainy?

In order that the audience may not go astray as to the purposes of Iago

and the general meaning of the play. Hence the soliloquies: "Thus do I

ever make my fool my purse," as well as "And what's he, then, that says

I play the villain?" It might almost be said that good drama consists in

right selection of necessary illustrative action and in right emphasis.

Even though the general exposition of a play be clear, it is sure,

without well-handled emphasis, to leave a confused effect. When a play

runs away with its author, its emphasis is always bad. The cause of this

trouble usually is that the author drifts or rushes on, as the case may

be, lured by an idea which he tries to present dramatically; or by the

development of some character who, for the moment, possesses his

imagination; or by the handling of some scene of large dramatic

possibilities. In a recent play meant to illustrate amusingly a series

of situations arising from the gossip of a small town, Act I so ended

that a reader could not tell whether the school principal, a woman

dentist, or the atmosphere of gossip was meant to be of prime

importance. Nor was this poor emphasis ever corrected anywhere. Result:

a confusing play.

A story-play in some respects of great merit failed in its total effect

because the author never really knew whether it was a study of the

deterioration of a young man's character or of a mother's

self-sacrificing and redeeming love, a mere story-play, or a drama

intended to drive home a central idea which, apparently, always eluded

the author. Fine realism of detail, good characterization in places, and

genuine if scattered interest could not carry this play to success.

In another play, Act I ended with the failure of a well-intentioned

friend to take a child from her father for her better bringing-up.

Apparently, we were entering upon a study of parental affection. In Act

II, however, this interest practically disappeared, and we were asked to

give all our attention to the way in which a son-in-law was bringing

ruin upon this same parent. In Act III, another cause for anxiety on the

part of the parent appeared, the other disappearing. At the end of the

play, however, we were expected to understand that the fond parent was

in sight of calm weather. Proper emphasis which would have brought out

the central idea illustrated by each of the acts was missing.

In _The Trap_, a four-act play developed from a vaudeville sketch, lack

of good emphasis went far to spoil an interesting play. In the original

sketch, a woman, induced by lies of the villain, comes to the apartment

of a man who has at one time been in love with her. She is determined to

know whether what the villain has told her is true or not. All is a trap

which the villain has set for her. From it the astuteness and quick

decision of her former admirer rescue her. In the vaudeville sketch, it

was the former lover who was the active person,--advising, scheming, and

controlling the situation. When this was made over, in Act I the heroine

was the central figure; in Act II the villain took this position away

from her; in Act III the hero, as in the original sketch, had the centre

of the stage; in Act IV there was an attempt to bring the heroine back

into prominence, but she divided interest with the hero. As a result of

this uncertain emphasis, the play seemed intended for the heroine but

taken away from her by the greater human appeal of the hero. Just as the

lecturer keeps clear from start to finish the main theme of his

discourse and the bearing upon it of the various divisions of the work,

the dramatist keeps his main purpose clear and also the relations to it

of scenes and acts. This he does by well-handled emphasis. Othello, for

instance, must have some proof which the audience will believe

conclusive for him of Desdemona's infidelity. This is the handkerchief

which Iago tells Othello that Desdemona gave to Cassio. Notice the

iteration with which this handkerchief is impressed upon the attention

of the public just before it is used as conclusive proof of Desdemona's

guilt.

_Othello._ I have a pain upon my forehead here.

_Desdemona._ Faith, that's with watching; 'twill away again:

Let me but bind it hard, within this hour

It will be well.

_Othello._ Your napkin is too little; (_Lets fall her napkin._)

Let it alone. Come, I'll go in with you.

_Desdemona._ I am very sorry that you are not well.

(_Exeunt Othello and Desdemona._)

_Emilia._ I am glad I have found this napkin;

This was her first remembrance from the Moor.

My wayward husband hath a hundred times

Woo'd me to steal it; but she so loves the token,

For he conjur'd her she should ever keep it,

That she reserves it evermore about her

To kiss and talk to. I'll have the work ta'en out,

And give it to Iago. What he will do with it

Heaven knows, not I;

I nothing but to please his fantasy.

(_Re-enter Iago_)

_Iago._ How now! what do you here alone?

_Emilia._ Do not you chide; I have a thing for you.

_Iago._ A thing for me? It is a common thing--

_Emilia._ Ha!

_Iago._ To have a foolish wife.

_Emilia._ Oh, is that all? What will you give me now

For that same handkerchief?

_Iago._ What handkerchief?

_Emilia._ What handkerchief!

Why, that the Moor first gave to Desdemona;

That which so often you did bid me steal.

_Iago._ Hast stolen it from her?

_Emilia._ No, faith; she let it drop by negligence,

And, to the advantage, I, being here took't up.

Look, here it is.

_Iago._ A good wench; give it me.

_Emilia._ What will you do with't, that you have been so earnest

To have me filch it?

_Iago._ (_Snatching it._) Why, what is that to you?

_Emilia._ If it be not for some purpose of import,

Give't me again. Poor lady, she'll run mad

When she shall lack it.

_Iago._ Be not acknown on't; I have use for it,

Go, leave me. (_Exit Emilia._)

I will in Cassio's lodging lose this napkin,

And let him find it. Trifles light as air

Are to the jealous confirmations strong

As proofs of holy writ; this may do something.

The Moor already changes with my poison,

Dangerous conceits are, in their natures, poisons,

Which at the first are scarce found to distaste,

But with a little act upon the blood,

Burn like the mines of sulphur.[23]

Five times the handkerchief is mentioned. The first time the action is

such that Othello specially notices the handkerchief. The second time we

find another reason why the Moor should specially remember the

handkerchief, and learn that Iago wants it for some reason of his own.

The third time appears the iteration,

... that same handkerchief?

_Iago._ What handkerchief?

_Emilia._ What handkerchief!

and emphasis on the ideas already stated:

_Emilia._ Why, that the Moor first gave to Desdemona;

That which so often you did bid me steal.

The next time, the action, as Iago snatches the handkerchief and Emilia

tries to get it back, holds it before our attention. Finally, Iago, left

alone, tells us his malicious scheme in regard to it. Surely, after all

this, the audience has been properly prepared for the scenes in which

Iago deceives and enrages Othello by means of this very handkerchief.

In the first few minutes of the play, _Lady Windermere's Fan,_ the

attention of the audience is drawn to the fan:

_Lady Windermere._ My hands are all wet with these roses. Aren't they

lovely? They came up from Selby this morning.

_Lord Darlington._ They are quite perfect. (_Sees a fan lying on the

table._) And what a wonderful fan! May I look at it?

_Lady Windermere._ Do. Pretty, isn't it! It's got my name on it, and

everything. [Note the emphasis here.] I have only just seen it myself.

It's my husband's birthday present to me. You know today is my

birthday?

_Lord Darlington._ No? Is it really?[24]

Just before the close of the first act, it is with this fan that Lady

Windermere points her threat against Mrs. Erlynne:

_Lady Windermere._ (_Picking up fan._) Yes, you gave me this fan

today; it was your birthday present. If that woman crosses my

threshold I shall strike her across the face with it.

That Lady Windermere owns a fan; that it bears her name; that, as a gift

chosen by her husband and recently given her, he must recognize it on

sight: all these important facts have been planted by neat emphasis when

Act I ends. Even in Act II, the fan is kept before the public. Just

before Mrs. Erlynne enters, we have:

_Lady Windermere._ Will you hold my fan for me, Lord Darlington?

Thanks.

* * * * *

_Lady Windermere._ (_Moves up._) Lord Darlington, will you give me

back my fan, please? Thanks.... A useful thing, a fan, isn't it?

When Mrs. Erlynne enters, Lady Windermere "clutches at her fan, then

lets it drop on the floor":

_Lord Darlington._ You have dropped your fan, Lady Windermere. (_Picks

it up and hands it to her._)

Such careful emphasizing makes sure that Lord Windermere's instant

recognition of the significance of finding the fan in Lord Darlington's

rooms, in the critical scene of the third act, will be immediately

shared by any audience.

Mr. Augustus Thomas, in Act II of _As a Man Thinks_, wishes his audience

to feel instantly the full significance of the opera libretto picked up

by Hoover, as he watches Elinor enter the apartment of De Lota.

Therefore, earlier in the act he emphasizes as follows:

_Elinor._ (_To Burril._) Here's a libretto of Aida. Find that passage

of which you spoke.

_Burril._ There were several.

_Mrs. Seelig._ Our coffee won't interfere with your cigars.

_De Lota._ Do you mind?

_Elinor._ This room is dedicated to nicotine. (_To Mrs. Seelig._)

Besides, we're going to take Dr. De Lota to the piano.

_De Lota._ Are you?

_Elinor._ (_To Vedah._) Aren't we?

_Vedah._ We are.

_Burril._ Here's one place. (_His pencil breaks._) Ah!

_Clayton._ (_Offering a pencil attached to his watch chain._) Here.

_Burril._ (_Giving libretto to Clayton._) Just mark that passage--"My

native land," etc. (_To Elinor._) Now follow that when Aida sings

Italian and note how the English stumbles.[25]

Two pages later, as Elinor goes out to the automobile, in order that the

audience may see the libretto of which we have heard so much pass into

the hands of De Lota, we have this:

_Elinor._ Take this for me. (_Hands libretto to De Lota._)

Later in the act, when Judge Hoover is telling Clayton that he saw some

woman with De Lota as he was entering the apartment, the dialogue runs:

_Clayton._ You spoke to him?

_Hoover. Called_ to him.

_Clayton._ Called?

_Hoover._ Yes--I was forty feet away.

_Clayton._ Had your nerve with you.

_Hoover._ The girl dropped something--I thought it was a fan.

_Clayton._ Well?

_Hoover._ 'Twasn't--but that's why I called De Lota.

_Clayton._ How do you know it wasn't?

_Hoover._ I picked it up.

_Clayton._ What was it?

_Hoover._ A libretto.

_Clayton._ What libretto?

_Hoover._ Don't know--but grand opera--I remember that and libretto--

_Clayton._ You threw it away?

_Hoover._ No--kept it.

_Clayton._ Where is it?

_Hoover._ Overcoat pocket.

_Clayton._ (_Pause._) I'd like to see it. Think I could have some fun

with De Lota.

_Hoover._ (_Going up the hallway._) My idea too--fun and word of

caution. (_Gets coat and returns, feeling in pocket for libretto._)

_Clayton._ Caution--naturally.

_Hoover._ Here it is. (_Reads._) Aida.

_Clayton._ (_Taking libretto savagely._) Aida--let me see it.

_Hoover._ What's the matter? (_Puts coat on a chair._)

_Clayton._ (_In sudden anger, throws book._) The dog! Damn him--damn

both of them!

_Hoover._ What is it? See here--Who's with Dick?

_Clayton._ Not his mother--no! (_Points to libretto on the floor._)

Marked. _I_ did that myself, not an hour ago, and gave it to her.

_Hoover._ To Elinor?

_Clayton._ (_Calling as he rushes to the hall._) Sutton! Sutton!

_Hoover._ Hold on, Frank--there's some mistake.

_Clayton._ Get me a cab--never mind--I'll take Seelig's machine.

(_Disappears._) Here! Doctor Seelig says to take me to--

(_He goes out. Door bangs._)

_Sutton enters from the dining-room_

_Sutton._ Is Master Dick in danger, sir?

_Hoover._ (_Nervously._) I don't know, Sutton. Where's his mother?

_Sutton._ Opera, sir.

_Hoover._ With whom?

_Sutton._ Mr. De Lota.

Because of the emphasis given the libretto in the first quotation, the

audience's suspicions are roused at the same time as Clayton's and his

emotions are theirs. Yet, even in this last scene, note the care of Mr.

Thomas to make all absolutely clear. He does not stop when Hoover says

"A libretto," and "Of grand opera," but he lets the audience see the

same libretto which passed from Elinor to De Lota pass from Hoover to

Clayton, the latter identifying it in his cry, "Aida." That there may be

absolutely no doubt in the evidence piling up against Elinor, he has

Clayton point to the marked place with the words: "I did that myself."

Emphasis, as in these three instances, may come on some

detail--handkerchief, fan, libretto--which is to be made important later

in the development of the plot. It may come within a scene or act, or at

the end of either to emphasize a part or the whole of the scene or act.

The soliloquies of Iago referred to on page 183 are of this sort.

Emphasis may stress little by little or with one blow what the play

means. The significance of the whole play _Strife_--the utter

uselessness of the conflict chronicled--is thus emphasized in the last

lines of the play:

_Harness._ A woman dead; and the two best men both broken!

_Tench._ (_Staring at him--suddenly excited._) D'you know, sir--these

terms, they're the _very same_ we drew up together, you and I, and put

to both sides before the fight began? All this--all this--and--and

what for?

_Harness._ (_In a slow, grim voice._) That's where the fun comes in!

(_Underwood without turning from the door makes a gesture of assent._)

_The curtain falls_[26]

_The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_[27] illustrates the play in which emphasis

little by little brings out the meaning of the whole piece. Examine even

the first act. It is full of the feeling: "It cannot nor it will not

come to good." Tanqueray himself says frankly, "My marriage is not even

the conventional sort of marriage likely to satisfy society." Drummle

coming in declares that George Orreyed is "a thing of the past,"

because he has married Mabel Hervey. The group of old friends show

anxiety, and it is clear that to the mind of Cayley Drummle Tanqueray is

but repeating the rash step of Orreyed. The whole act prepares for the

finale of the play.

Hervieu's _The Trail of the Torch_ shows the emphasis which strikes one

hard blow and leaves to the rest of the play illustration of what has

been clearly stressed. About one third of the way through Act I, Maravon

explains to Sabine the thesis which the entire play illustrates:

_Sabine._ (_Pointing to the two who have just gone._) Ah, my dear

Maravon, what an absurd friend I have there!

_Maravon._ Mme. Gribert, you mean?

_Sabine._ Haven't you noticed that she is beginning to look like a

governess? I suppose it's because she has been doing a governess' work

for so long that she has ceased to have any personal existence. She no

longer cares to possess anything of her own, everything belongs to her

daughter, and her husband works his fingers to the bone to pay for

Beatrice's dresses, while Beatrice lords it over both of them in a way

that is beginning to be just a trifle odious.

_Maravon._ I'm afraid I don't agree with you, Madame. With naively

natural beings, like these, I enjoy watching the family wheels

function with such simplicity. People of this kind conform to the law

which begins by demanding of the mother the flesh of her flesh, often

her beauty, her health, and, if need be, her life, for the formation

of the child. And then, for the profit of the newer generation, Nature

exerts herself to despoil the old. She exacts without stint from the

parents in the shape of labors, anxieties, expenses, gifts, and

sacrifices, all of their vital forces to equip, arm, and decorate

their sons and daughters who are descending into the plain of the

future. Take my own case, for instance. There was the question of my

son's position in life. Didier was able to persuade me very quickly

that my property would be better placed, for the future, in his hands.

To show you that Mme. Gribert and her daughter are merely following

out a tradition of the remotest antiquity, if you can endure the

pedantry of an old college professor, I will give you an example from

the classics.

_Sabine._ Oh! Please do.

_Maravon._ You have probably never heard of the "Lampadophories," have

you? Well, on certain solemn occasions the citizens of Athens placed

themselves at regular intervals, forming a sort of chain through the

city. The first one lighted a torch at an altar, ran to the second and

passed to him the light, and he to a third who ran to the fourth and

so on, from hand to hand. Each one of the chain ran onward without

ever looking back and without any idea except to keep the flame alight

and pass it on to the next man. Then, breathlessly stopping, each saw

nothing but the progress of the flaming light, as each followed it

with his eyes, his then useless anxiety, and superfluous vows. In that

Trail of the Torch has been seen a symbol of all the generations of

the earth, though it is not I, but my very ancient friend Plato, and

the good poet Lucretius, who made the analogy.

_Sabine._ That is not at all my idea of family relations. From my

point of view, receiving life entails as great an obligation as giving

it. There is a certain sort of link which makes the obligations

counter balance. Since Nature has not made it possible for children to

bring themselves into the world, of their own accord, I say that it

was her intention to impose upon them a debt to those who give them

life.

_Maravon._ They absolve that debt by giving life in turn to their

children.

_Sabine._ They absolve it by filial piety which has been the

inspiration of many deeds of heroism as you seem to forget.[28]

A recent editor of Hauptmann's _Gabriel Schilling's Flight_ writes of

it: "His analysis is projected creatively in the characters of the two

women--Evelyn Schilling and Hanna Elias. What is it, in these women,

that--different as they are--menaces the man and the artist Schilling?

It is a passion for possession, for absorption, a hunger of the nerves

rather than of the heart. These modern women have abandoned the simple

and sane preoccupations of their grandmothers; the enormous garnered

nervous energy that is no longer expended in household tasks and in

childbearing strikes itself, beak and clawlike, into man. But man has

not changed. His occupations are not gone. He cannot endure the double

burden. That is why Gabriel Schilling, rather than be destroyed

spiritually by these tyrannies and exactions, seeks a last refuge in the

great and cleansing purity of the sea.

'The modern malady of love is nerves.'"[29]

It is possible that all this may be derived from the play, but the

Berlin audience which watched its first night left the theatre

bewildered in more than one respect. There were a half-dozen opinions as

to what this ugly story of a very weak man was meant to signify. Was it

simply the tale of a weak man? Was it meant to show, as Professor

Lewisohn thinks, that creation in an artist not naturally weak at first

may be killed if he is pursued by women selfish in their love? Does the

ending, however, show that Hanna is entirely selfish? Does the play

signify that the man who chooses to follow women rather than his art is

lost? Why is there so much emphasis on the awesomeness of Nature on the

island? Have these conditions of Nature anything to do with Schilling's

death? If so, do they not mitigate the effect upon him of the women?

Lack of well-placed emphasis made _Gabriel Schilling's Flight_ a

failure, interesting as were the questions it raised and masterly as is

much of its characterization.

Too often young dramatists forget that the beginning and the ending of

acts and plays emphasize even when the author does not so intend. As in

real life, it is first and final impressions, rather than intermediate,

which count most. An able young dramatist complained that though he

wished one of his characters to dominate Act I she certainly failed to

do this. The trouble was that an attractive old gardener, the character

who took the act away from the young woman, opened the play attractively

characterized and closed Act I with effective speech and pantomime,

when the woman was busy only with unimportant pantomime. The prominence

unintentionally given to the old gardener emphasized him at the expense

of the young woman.

For the value of openings in emphasizing the meaning of the whole play,

see Tennyson's _Becket_ as originally written, and as rearranged by Sir

Henry Irving.[30] Tennyson's _Becket_ begins with Henry and the future

Archbishop at chess, talking of matters in state and church.

PROLOGUE

_A Castle in Normandy. Interior of the hall. Roofs of a city seen

through windows. Henry and Becket at chess._

_Henry._ So then our good Archbishop Theobald

Lies dying.

_Becket._ I am grieved to know as much.

_Henry._ But we must have a mightier man than he

For his successor.

_Becket._ Have you thought of one?

_Henry._ A cleric lately poison'd his own mother,

And being brought before the courts of the Church,

They but degraded him. I hope they whipt him.

I would have hang'd him.

_Becket._ It is your move.

_Henry._ Well--there. (_Moves._)

The Church in the pell-mell of Stephen's time

Hath climb'd the throne and almost clutched the crown;

But by the royal customs of our realm

The Church should hold her baronies of me,

Like other lords amenable to law.

I'll have them written down and made the law.

_Becket._ My liege, I move my bishop.

_Henry._ And if I live,

No man without my leave shall excommunicate

My tenants or my household.

_Becket._ Look to your king.

_Henry._ No man without my leave shall cross the seas

To set the Pope against me--I pray your pardon.

_Becket._ Well--will you move?

_Henry._ There. (_Moves._)

_Becket._ Check--you move so wildly.

_Henry._ There then! (_Moves._)

_Becket._ Why--there then, for you see my bishop

Hath brought your king to a standstill. You are beaten.

_Henry._ (_Kicks over the board._) Why, there then--down go bishop and

king together.

I loathe being beaten; had I fixt my fancy

Upon the game I should have beaten thee,

But that was vagabond.

_Becket._ Where, my liege? With Phryne,

Or Lais, or thy Rosamund, or another?

_Henry._ My Rosamund is no Lais, Thomas Becket;

And yet she plagues me too--no fault in her--

But that I fear the Queen would have her life.

_Becket._ Put her away, put her away, my liege!

Put her away into a nunnery!

Safe enough there from her to whom thou art bound

By Holy Church. And wherefore should she seek

The life of Rosamund de Clifford more

Than that of other paramours of thine?

_Henry._ How dost thou know I am not wedded to her?

_Becket._ How should I know?

_Henry._ That is my secret, Thomas.

_Becket._ State secrets should be patent to the statesman

Who serves and loves his king, and whom the king

Loves not as statesman, but true lover and friend.

_Henry._ Come, come, thou art but deacon, not yet bishop,

No, nor archbishop, nor my confessor yet.

I would to God thou wert, for I should find

An easy father confessor in thee.

Irving, transposing, takes us at once into the plotting of the Queen

against Becket because of her hatred for Rosamund and Becket's supposed

protection of the King's mistress. A secondary interest in Tennyson's

presentation becomes by this shifting first interest with Irving.

PROLOGUE

SCENE 1. _A Castle in Normandy. Eleanor. Fitz Urse_

_Eleanor._ Dost thou love this Becket, this son of a London merchant,

that thou hast sworn a voluntary allegiance to him?

_Fitz Urse._ Not for my love toward him, but because he hath the love

of the King. How should a baron love a beggar on horseback, with the

retinue of three kings behind him, outroyaltying royalty?

_Eleanor._ Pride of the plebeian!

_Fitz Urse._ And this plebeian like to be Archbishop!

_Eleanor._ True, and I have an inherited loathing of these black sheep

of the Papacy. Archbishop? I can see farther into man than our

hot-headed Henry, and if there ever come feud between Church and

Crown, and I do not charm this secret out of our loyal Thomas, I am

not Eleanor.

_Fitz Urse._ Last night I followed a woman in the city here. Her face

was veiled, but the back methought was Rosamund--his paramour, thy

rival. I can feel for thee.

_Eleanor._ Thou feel for me!--paramour--rival! No paramour but his own

wedded wife! King Louis had no paramours, and I loved him none the

more. Henry had many and I loved him none the less. I would she were

but his paramour, for men tire of their fancies; but I fear this one

fancy hath taken root, and borne blossom too, and she, whom the King

loves indeed, is a power in the State. Follow me this Rosamund day and

night, whithersoever she goes; track her, if thou can'st, even into

the King's lodging, that I may (_clenches her fist_)--may at least

have my cry against him and her,--and thou in thy way shouldst be

jealous of the King, for thou in thy way didst once, what shall I call

it, affect her thine own self.

_Fitz Urse._ Ay, but the young filly winced and whinnied and flung up

her heels; and then the King came honeying about her, and this Becket,

her father's friend, like enough staved us from her.

_Eleanor._ Us!

_Fitz Urse._ Yea, by the blessed Virgin! There were more than I

buzzing round the blossom--De Tracy--even that flint De Brito.

_Eleanor._ Carry her off among you; run in upon her and devour her,

one and all of you; make her as hateful to herself and to the King as

she is to me.

_Fitz Urse._ I and all should be glad to wreak our spite on the

rose-faced minion of the King, and bring her to the level of the

dust, so that the King--

_Eleanor._ If thou light upon her--free me from her!--let her eat it

like the serpent and be driven out of her paradise!

The story of Nathan Hale might be made into a play with patriotism as

its dominant idea, a close character study of Hale himself, or little

more than a love story. Notice the way in which with Clyde Fitch the

close of the acts steadily emphasizes the love story as the central

interest. The first scene is in the school room where Hale is the

teacher of Alice Adams.

(_Hale goes toward Alice with his arms outstretched to embrace her;

Alice goes into his arms--a long embrace and kiss; a loud tapping on a

drum outside startles them._)

_Hale._ The Tory meeting!

_Alice._ Fitzroy will be back. I don't want to see him!

_Hale._ Quick--we'll go by the window! (_Putting a chair under the

window he jumps onto chair; then leans in the window and holds out his

hands to Alice, who is on the chair._) And if tomorrow another drum

makes me a soldier--?

_Alice._ It will make me a soldier's sweetheart!

_Hale._ Come.

(_She goes out of the window with his help, and with loud drum

tattoo and bugle call, the stage is left empty and the curtain

falls._)

The second act at Colonel Knowlton's house closes on Hale's decision to

serve his country as a spy:

_Alice._ (_In a whisper._) You _will_ go?

_Hale._ I must.

_Alice._ (_A wild cry._) Then I hate you!

_Hale._ And I _love you_ and always will so long as a heart beats in

my body. (_He wishes to embrace her._)

_Alice._ No!

(_She draws back her head, her eyes blazing, she is momentarily

insane with fear and grief, anger and love. Hale bows his head and

slowly goes from the room. Alice, with a faint heartbroken cry,

sinks limply to the floor, her father hurrying to her as the curtain

falls._)

This is the close of Act III.

_Fitzroy._ Look!

(_And he bends Alice's head back upon his shoulder to kiss her on

the lips._)

_Hale._ Blackguard!

(_With a blow of his right arm he knocks Cunningham on the head,

who, falling, hits his head against the pillar of the porch and is

stunned. Meanwhile, the moment he has hit Cunningham, Hale has

sprung upon Fitzroy, and with one hand over his mouth has bent his

head back with the other until he has released Alice. Hale then

throws Fitzroy down and seizing Alice about the waist dashes off

with her to the right, where his horse is. Fitzroy rises and runs to

Cunningham, kicks him to get his gun, which has fallen under him._)

_Fitzroy._ Get up! Get up! You fool!

(_Horse's hoofs heard starting off._)

_Third Picket's Voice._ (_Off stage._) Who goes there?

_Fitzroy._ (_Stops, looks up, and gives a triumphant cry._) Ah, the

picket! They're caught! They're caught!

_Hale._ Returning with Alice Adams on private business.

_Picket._ The password.

_Hale._ "Love!"

_Fitzroy._ Damnation! Of course he heard! (_Runs off right, yelling._)

Fire on them! Fire! For God's sake, fire!

(_A shot is heard, followed by a loud defiant laugh from Hale, and

echoed "Love," as the clatter of the horse's hoofs dies away, and

the curtain falls._)