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DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


BY 

GEORGE  PIERCE  BAKER 

PROFESSOR  OF  HISTORY  AND  TECHNIQUE  OF 
THE  DRAMA  IN  YALE   UNIVERSITY 


"<lA  good  play  is  certainly  the  most 
rational  and  the  highest  Sntertainment 
that  Human  Invention  can  produce.7 

COLLEY  CIBBER 


HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

BOSTON   •    NEW  YORK  •   CHICAGO   •   DALLAS   •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

fZ\)t  &tbersfoe  press  Cambnbgt 


COPYRIGHT,    1919,  BY   GEORGE  PIERCE  BAKER 


ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


The  author  aclcnowledges  courteous  'permission  to 
quote  -passages  from  copyright  plays  as  credited 
to  various  authors  and  publishers  in  the  footnotes. 


to 


CAMBRIDGE  •  MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED  IN  THE  U.S.  A. 


PREFACE 

"The  dramatist  is  born,  not  made."  This  common  saying 
grants  the  dramatist  at  least  one  experience  of  other  artists, 
namely,  birth,  but  seeks  to  deny  him  the  instruction  in  art 
granted  the  architect,  the  painter,  the  sculptor,  and  the  mu- 
sician. Play-readers  and  producers,  however,  seem  not  so 
sure  of  this  distinction,  for  they  are  often  heard  saying:  "The 
plays  we  receive  divide  into  two  classes :  those  competently 
written,  but  trite  in  subject  and  treatment;  those  in  some 
way  fresh  and  interesting,  but  so  badly  written  that  they 
cannot  be  produced."  Some  years  ago,  Mr.  Savage,  the 
manager,  writing  in  The  Bookman  on  "The  United  States 
of  Playwrights,"  said :  "  In  answer  to  the  question,  *  Do  the 
great  majority  of  these  persons  know  anything  at  all  of  even 
the  fundamentals  of  dramatic  construction?'  the  managers 
and  agents  who  read  the  manuscripts  unanimously  agree  in 
the  negative.  Only  in  rare  instances  does  a  play  arrive  in 
the  daily  mails  that  carries  within  it  a  vestige  of  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  science  of  drama-making.  Almost  all  the  plays, 
furthermore,  are  extremely  artificial  and  utterly  devoid  of 
the  quality  known  as  human  interest."  All  this  testimony 
of  managers  and  play-readers  shows  that  there  is  something 
which  the  dramatist  has  not  as  a  birthright,  but  must  learn. 
Where?  Usually  he  is  told,  "In  the  School  of  Hard  Experi- 
ence." When  the  young  playwright  whose  manuscript  has 
been  returned  to  him  but  with  favorable  comment,  asks 
what  he  is  to  do  to  get  rid  of  the  faults  in  his  work,  both 
evident  to  him  and  not  evident,  he  is  told  to  read  widely  in 
the  drama;  to  watch  plays  of  all  kinds;  to  write  with  end- 
less patience  and  the  resolution  never  to  be  discouraged. 


iv  PREFACE 

He  is  to  keep  submitting  his  plays  till,  by  this  somewhat 
indefinite  method  of  training,he  at  last  acquires  the  ability 
to  write  so  well  that  a  manuscript  is  accepted.  This  is 
"The  School  of  Experience."  Though  a  long  and  painful 
method  of  training,  it  has  had,  undeniably,  many  distin- 
guished graduates. 

Why,  however,  is  it  impossible  that  some  time  should  be 
saved  a  would-be  dramatist  by  placing  before  him,  not  mere 
theories  of  play-writing,  but  the  practice  of  the  dramatists  of 
the  past,  so  that  what  they  have  shared  in  common,  and 
where  their  practice  has  differed,  may  be  clear  to  him?  That 
is  all  this  book  attempts.  To  create  a  dramatist  would  be 
a  modern  miracle.  To  develop  theories  of  the  drama  apart 
from  the  practice  of  recent  and  remoter  dramatists  of  differ- 
ent countries  would  be  visionary.  This  book  tries  in  the  light 
of  historical  practice  merely  to  distinguish  the  permanent 
from  the  impermanent  in  technique.  It  endeavors,  by  show- 
ing the  inexperienced  dramatist  how  experienced  dramatists 
have  solved  problems  similar  to  his  own,  to  shorten  a  little 
his  time  of  apprenticeship.  The  limitations  of  any  such  at- 
tempt I  fully  recognize.  This  book  is  the  result  of  almost 
daily  discussion  for  some  years  with  classes  of  the  ideas  con- 
tained in  it,  but  in  that  discussion  there  was  a  chance  to 
treat  with  each  individual  the  many  exceptions,  apparent 
or  real,  which  he  could  raise  to  any  principle  enunciated. 
Such  full  discussion  is  impossible  in  a  book  the  size  of  this 
one.  Therefore  I  must  seem  to  favor  an  instruction  far  mor? 
dogmatic  than  my  pupils  know  from  me.  No  textbook  can 
do  away  with  the  value  of  proper  classroom  work.  The  prac- 
tice of  the  past  provides  satisfactory  principles  for  students 
of  ordinary  endowment.  A  person  of  long  experience  or  un- 
usually endowed,  however,  after  grasping  these  principles, 
must  at  times  break  from  them  if  he  is  to  do  his  best  work. 
The  classroom  permits  a  teacher  such  adaptations  of  existing 


PREFACE  v 

usage.  Such  special  needs  no  textbook  can  forestall.  This 
book,  then,  is  meant,  not  to  replace  wise  classroom  instruc- 
tion, but  to  supplement  it  or  to  offer  what  it  can  when  such 
instruction  is  impossible. 

The  contents  of  this  book  were  originally  brought  together 
horn  notes  for  the  classroom  as  eight  lectures  delivered  be- 
fore the  Lowell  Institute,  Boston,  in  the  winter  of  1913.  They 
were  carefully  reworked  for  later  lectures  before  audiences  in 
Brooklyn  and  Philadelphia.  Indeed,  both  in  and  out  of  the 
classroom  they  have  been  slowly  revised  in  the  intervening 
five  years.  Detailed  consideration  of  the  one-act  play  has 
been  reserved  for  later  special  treatment.  Otherwise  the 
book  attempts  to  treat  helpfully  the  many  problems  which 
the  would-be  dramatist  must  face  in  learning  the  funda- 
mentals of  a  very  difficult  but  fascinating  art. 

I  have  written  for  the  person  who  cannot  be  content  ex- 
cept when  writing  plays.  I  wish  it  distinctly  understood 
that  I  have  not  written  for  the  person  seeking  methods  of 
conducting  a  course  in  dramatic  technique.  I  view  with 
some  alarm  the  recent  mushroom  growth  of  such  courses 
throughout  the  country.  I  gravely  doubt  the  advisability 
of  such  courses  for  undergraduates.  Dramatic  technique  is 
the  means  of  expressing,  for  the  stage,  one's  ideas  and  emo- 
tions. Except  in  rare  instances,  undergraduates  are  better 
employed  in  filling  their  minds  with  general  knowledge  than 
in  trying  to  phrase  for  the  stage  thoughts  or  emotions  not 
yet  mature.  In  the  main  I  believe  instruction  in  the  writing 
of  plays  should  be  for  graduate  students.  Nor  do  I  believe 
that  it  should  be  given  except  by  persons  who  have  had  ex- 
perience in  acting,  producing,  and  even  writing  plays,  and 
who  have  read  and  seen  the  drama  of  different  countries  and 
times.  Mere  lectures,  no  matter  how  good,  will  not  make  the 
students  productive.  The  teacher  who  is  not  widely  eclectic 
in  his  tastes  will  at  best  produce  writers  with  an  easily  recog- 


vi  PREFACE 

nizable  stamp.  In  all  creative  courses  the  problem  is  not, 
"What  can  we  make  these  students  take  from  us,  the  teach- 
ers?" but,  "Which  of  these  students  has  any  creative  power 
that  is  individual?  Just  what  is  it?  How  may  it  be  given  its 
quickest  and  fullest  development?"  Complete  freedom  of 
choice  in  subject  and  complete  freedom  in  treatment  so  that 
the  individuality  of  the  artist  may  have  its  best  expression 
are  indispensable  in  the  development  of  great  art.  At  first 
untrained  and  groping  blindly  for  the  means  to  his  ends,  he 
moves  to  a  technique  based  on  study  of  successful  drama- 
tists who  have  preceded  him.  From  that  he  should  move  to 
a  technique  that  is  his  own,  a  mingling  of  much  out  of  the 
past  and  an  adaptation  of  past  practice  to  his  own  needs. 
This  book  will  help  the  development  from  blind  groping 
to  the  acquirement  of  a  technique  based  on  the  practice  of 
others.  It  can  do  something,  but  only  a  little,  to  develop 
the  technique  that  is  highly  individual.  The  instruction 
which  most  helps  to  that  must  be  done,  not  by  books,  not 
by  lectures,  but  in  frequent  consultation  of  pupil  and 
teacher.  The  man  who  grows  from  a  technique  which  per- 
mits him  to  write  a  good  play  because  it  accords  with  his- 
torical practice  to  the  technique  which  makes  possible  for 
him  a  play  which  no  one  else  could  have  written,  must 
work  under  three  great  Masters:  Constant  Practice,  Ex- 
acting Scrutiny  of  the  Work,  and,  above  all,  Time.  Only 
when  he  has  stood  the  tests  of  these  Masters  is  he  the 
matured  artist. 

Geo.  P.  Bakeb 


CONTENTS 

I.  Technique  in  Drama:  What  it  is.  The  Drama  as  an 

Independent  Art 1 

II.  The  Essentials  of  Drama:  Action  and  Emotion    .     16 

III.  From  Subject  to  Plot.  Clearing  the  Way  .      .      .  (47 

IV.  From  Subject  through  Story  to  Plot.  Clearness 

through  Wise  Selection 73 

V.  From  Subject  to  Plot:  Proportioning  the  Mate- 
rial: Number  and  Length  of  Acts     .     f      .117 
VI.  From  Subject  to  Plot:  Arrangement  for  Clear- 
ness, Emphasis,  Movement  .      .      .      .      .      .  154 

VII.  Characterization 234 

VIII.  Dialogue 309 

IX.  Making  a  Scenario 420 

X.  The  Dramatist  and  his  Public 509 

Index 523 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


CHAPTER  I 

TECHNIQUE  IN  DRAMA:  WHAT  IT  IS.  THE  DRAMA  AS 
AN  INDEPENDENT  ART 

This  book  treats  drama  which  has  been  tested  before  the 
public  or  which  was  written  to  be  so  tested.  It  does  not  con- 
cern itself  with  plays,  past  or  present,  intended  primarily 
to  be  read  —  closet  drama.  It  does  not  deal  with  theories 
of  what  the  drama,  present  or  future,  might  or  should  be. 
It  aims  to  show  what  successful  drama  has  been  in  differ- 
ent countries,  at  different  periods,  as  written  by  men  of 
highly  individual  gifts. 

The  technique  of  any  dramatist  may  be  defined,  roughly, 
as  his  ways,  methods,  and  devices  for  getting  his  desirecj 
ends.  No  dramatist  has  this  technique  as  a  gift  at  birth, 
nor  does  he  acquire  it  merely  by  writing  plays.  He  reads 
and  sees  past  and  present  plays,  probably  in  large  numbers. 
If  he  is  like  most  young  dramatists,  for  example  Shakespeare 
on  the  one  hand  and  Ibsen  on  the  other,  he  works  imitatively 
at  first.  He,  too,  has  his  Love's  Labor's  Lost,  or  Feast  at 
Solhaug.  Even  if  his  choice  of  topic  be  fresh,  the  young 
dramatist  inevitably  studies  the  dramatic  practice  just  pre- 
ceding his  time,  or  that  of  some  remoter  period  which  at- 
tracts him,  for  models  on  which  to  shape  the  play  he  has  in 
mind.  Often,  in  whole-hearted  admiration,  he  gives  him- 
self to  close  imitation  of  Shakespeare,  one  of  the  great  Greek 
dramatists,  Ibsen,  Shaw,  or  Brieux.  For  the  moment  the 
better  the  imitation,  the  better  he  is  satisfied;  but  shortly 
he  discovers  that  somehow  the  managers  or  the  public,  if 


2  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

his  play  gets  by  the  managers,  seem  to  have  very  little 
taste  for  great  dramatists  at  second  hand.  Yet  the  history 
of  the  drama  has  shown  again  and  again  that  a  dramatist  may 
owe  something  to  the  plays  of  a  preceding  period  and  achieve 
success.  The  influence  of  the  Greek  drama  on  The  Servant 
in  the  House  is  unmistakable.  Kismet,  Mr.  Knobloch  frankly 
states,  was  modeled  on  the  loosely  constructed  Elizabethan 
plays  intended  primarily  to  tell  a  story  of  varied  and  ex- 
citing incident.  Where  lies  the  difficulty?  Just  here.  Too 
many  people  do  not  recognize  that  dramatic  technique  — 
methods  and  devices  for  gaining  in  the  theatre  a  drama- 
tist's desired  ends — is  historically  of  three  kinds:  universal, 
special,  and  individual.  First  there  are  certain  essentials 
which  all  good  plays,  from  ^Eschylus  to  Lord  Dunsany,  share 
at  least  in  part.  They  are  the  qualities  which  make  a  play 
a  play.  These  the  tyro  must  study  and  may  copy.  To  the 
discussion  and  illustration  of  them  the  larger  part  of  this 
book  is  devoted.  Secondly,  there  is  the  special  technique  of  a 
period,  such  as  the  Elizabethan,  the  Restoration,  the  period 
of  Scribe  and  his  influence,  etc.  A  good  illustration  of  this 
kind  of  technique  is  the  difference  in  treatment  of  the  An- 
tony and  Cleopatra  story  by  Shakespeare  in  his  play  of 
that  name,  and  by  John  Dryden  in  All  For  Love.  Each 
dramatist  worked  sincerely,  believing  the  technique  that 
he  used  would  give  him  best,  with  the  public  he  had  in  mind, 
his  desired  effects.  The  public  of  Shakespeare  would  not 
have  cared  for  Dry  den's  treatment:  the  Restoration  fourd 
Shakespeare  barbaric  until  reshaped  by  dramatists  whose 
touch  today  often  seems  that  of  a  vandal  facing  work  the 
real  beauty  of  which  he  does  not  understand.  The  technique 
of  the  plays  of  Corneille  and  Racine,  even  though  they  base 
their  dramatic  theory  on  classical  practice,  differs  from  the 
Greek  and  from  Seneca.  In  turn  the  drama  which  aimed  to 
copy  them,  the  so-called  Heroic  Plays  of  England  from  1660 


TECHNIQUE  IN  DRAMA  3 

to  1700,  differed.  That  is,  a  story  dramatized  before  when 
re-presented  to  the  stage  must  share  with  the  drama  of  the 
past  certain  characteristics  if  it  is  to  be  a  play  at  all,  but  to 
some  extent  it  must  be  presented  differently.  Why?  Be- 
cause, first,  the  dramatist  is  using  a  stage  different  from  that 
of  his  forebears,  and,  secondly,  because  he  is  writing  for  a 
ublic  of  different  standards  in  morals  and  art.  Comparison 
for  a  moment  of  the  stage  of  the  Greeks  with  the  stage  of 
the  Elizabethans,  the  Restoration,  or  of  today  shows  the 
truth  of  the  first  statement.  Comparison  of  the  religious  and 
social  ideals  of  the  Greeks  with  those  of  Shakespeare's  au- 
dience, Congreve's  public,  Tom  Robertson's,  or  the  public 
^oT  today  shows  the  truth  of  the  second.  That  is,  the  drama 
of  any  past  time,  if  studied  carefully,  must  reveal  the  essen- 
tials of  the  drama  throughout  time.  It  must  reveal,  too, 
methods  and  devices  effective  for  the  public  of  its  time,  but 
not  effective  at  present.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  usually  a 
young  dramatist  may  gain  most  light  as  to  the  technique  of 
the  period  on  which  he  is  entering  from  the  practice  of  the 
playwrights  just  preceding  him,  but  this  does  not  always  fol- 
low. Witness  the  sharp  revolt,  particularly  in  France  and 
Germany,  in  the  early  nineteenth  century,  from  Classicism 
to  Romanticism.  Witness,  too,  the  change  late  in  that  cen- 
tury from  the  widespread  influence  of  Scribe  to  the  almost  ^ 
equally  widespread  influence  of  Ibsen. 

The  chief  gift  of  the  drama  of  the  past  to  the  young  play- 
wright, then,  is  illustration  of  what  is  essential  in  drama. 
This  he  safely  copies.  Study  of  the  technique  of  a  special 
period,  if  the  temper  of  his  public  closely  resembles  the  inter- 
ests, prejudices,  and  ideals  of  the  period  he  studies,  may  give 
him  even  larger  results.  Such  close  resemblance,  however,  is 
rare.  Each  period  demands  in  part  its  own  technique.  What 
in  that  technique  is  added  to  the  basal  practice  of  the  past 
may  even  be  to  some  extent  the  contribution  of  the  young 


4  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

dramatist  in  question.  Resting  on  what  he  knows  of  the  ele- 
ments common  to  all  good  drama,  alert  to  the  significance 
of  the  hints  which  the  special  practice  of  any  period  may  give 
him,  he  thinks  his  way  to  new  methods  and  devices  for  get- 
ting with  his  public  his  desired  effects.  Many  or  most  of  these 
the  other  dramatists  of  his  day  discover  with  him.  These, 
which  make  the  special  usage  of  his  time,  become  the  tech- 
nique of  his  period. 

Perhaps,  however,  he  has  added  something  in  technique 
J    particularly  his  own,  to  be  found  in  the  plays  of  no  other 
^man.   This,  the  third  sort  of  technique,  is  to  be  seen  spe- 
cially in  the  work  of  the  great  dramatists.    Usually,  it  is 
peculiarly  inimitable  and  elusive  because  the  result  of  a 
particular  temperament  working  on  problems  of  the  drama 
peculiar  to  a  special  time.    Imitation  of  this  individual 
.     technique  in  most  instances  results,  like  wearing  the  tailor- 
made  clothes  of  a  friend,  in  a  palpable  misfit. 

It  is  just  because  the  enthusiast  copies,  not  simply  what  is 
of  universal  significance  in  the  practice  of  some  past  period, 
but  with  equal  closeness  what  is  special  to  the  time  and  indi- 
vidual to  the  dramatist,  that  his  play  fails.  He  has  produced 
something  stamped  as  not  of  his  time  nor  by  him,  but  as  at 
best  a  successful  literary  exercise  in  imitation.  Of  the  three 
kinds  of  technique,  then,  —  universal,  special,  and  individual, 
—  a  would-be  dramatist  should  know  the  first  thoroughly. 
Recognizing  the  limitations  of  the  second  and  third,  he  should 
study  them  for  suggestions  rather  than  for  models.  When  he 
has  mastered  the  first  technique,  and  from  the  second  has 
made  his  own  what  he  finds  useful  in  it,  he  is  likely  to  pass 
to  the  third,  his  individual  additions. 

Why,  however,  should  men  or  women  who  have  already 
written  stories  long  or  short  declared  by  competent  people 
to  be  "dramatic,"  make  any  special  study  of  the  technique 
of  plays?   Like  the  dramatist,  they  must  understand  char- 


TECHNIQUE  IN  DRAMA  5 

acterization  and  dialogue  or  they  could  not  have  written  suc- 
cessful stories.  Evidently,  too,  they  must  know  something 
about  structure.  Above  all,  they  must  have  shown  ability  so 
to  represent  people  in  emotion  as  to  arouse  emotional  re- 
sponse in  their  readers,  or  their  work  would  not  be  called  dra- 
matic.  Why,  then,  should  they  not  write  at  will  either  in  the 
form  of  stories  or  of  plays?  It  is  certainly  undeniable  that 
many  novels  seem  in  material  and  at  moments  in  treatment, 
as  dramatic  as  plays  on  similar  subjects.  In  each,  something 
is  said  or  done  which  moves  the  reader  or  hearer  as  the 
author  wishes.  These  facts  account  for  the  widespread  and 
deeply-rooted  belief  that  any  novelist  or  writer  of  short  sto- 
ries should  write  successful  plays  if  he  wishes,  particularly 
if  adapting  his  own  work  for  the  stage.  The  facts  account, 
too,  for  the  repeated  efforts  in  the  past  to  put  popular  novels 
on  the  stage  as  little  changed  as  possible.  Is  it  not  odd  that 
most  adaptations  of  successful  stories  and  most  noveliza- 
tions  of  successful  plays  are  failures?  The  fact  that  the  drama~ 
had  had  for  centuries  in  England  and  elsewhere  a  fecund  his- 
tory before  the  novel  as  a  form  took  shape  at  all  would  in- 
timate that  the  drama  is  a  different  and  independent  art 
from  that  of  the  novel  or  the  short  story.  When  novelists 
and  would-be  playwrights  recognize  that  it  is,  has  been,  and 
ought  to  be  an  independent  art,  we  shall  be  spared  many 
bad  plays. 

It  is  undeniable  that  the  novelist  and  the  dramatist  start 
with  common  elements  —  the  story,  the  characters,  and  the 
dialogue.  If  their  common  ability  to  discern  in  their  story 
or  characters  possible  emotional  interests  for  other  people, 
their  so-called  "dramatic  sense,"  is  "to  achieve  success  on 
the  stage  it  must  be  developed  into  theatrical  talent  by  hard 
study  and  generally  by  long  practice.  For  theatrical  talent 
consists  in  the  power  of  making  your  characters  not  only  tell 
a  story  by  means  of  dialogue  but  tell  it  in  such  skilfully  de- 


6  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

vised  form  and  order  as  shall,  within  the  limits  of  an  ordi- 
nary theatrical  representation,  give  rise  to  the  greatest  pos- 
sible amount  of  that  peculiar  kind  of  emotional  effect,  the 
production  of  which  is  the  one  great  function  of  the  theatre."1 
Certain  underlying  differences  between  the  relation  of  the 
novelist  to  his  reader  and  that  of  the  dramatist  to  his  au- 
dience reveal  why  the  art  of  each  must  be  different. 

The  relative  space  granted  novelist  and  dramatist  is  the 
first  condition  which  differentiates  their  technique.  A  play 
of  three  acts,  say  forty  pages  each  of  ordinary  typewriter 
paper,  will  take  in  action  approximately  a  hundred  and  fifty 
minutes,  or  two  hours  and  a  half.  When  allowance  is  made 
for  waits  between  the  acts,  the  manuscript  should  probably 
be  somewhat  shorter.  A  novel  runs  from  two  hundred  and 
fifty  to  six  hundred  pages.  Obviously  such  difference  be- 
tween the  length  of  play  and  novel  means  different  methods 
of  handling  material.  The  dramatist,  if  he  tries  for  the  same 
results  as  the  novelist,  must  work  more  concisely.  This  de- 
mands very  skilful  selection  among  his  materials  to  gain 
his  desired  effects  in  the  quickest  possible  ways. 

A  novel  we  read  at  one  or  a  half-dozen  sittings,  as  we 
please.  When  we  so  wish,  we  can  pause  to  consider  what  we 
have  just  read,  or  can  re-read  it.  In  the  theatre,  a  play  must 
be  seen  as  a  whole  and  at  once.  Listening  to  it,  we  cannot 
turn  back,  we  cannot  pause  to  reflect,  for  the  play  pushes 
steadily  on  to  the  close  of  each  act.  Evidently,  then,  here  is 
another  reason  why  a  play  must  make  its  effects  more  swiftly 
than  a  novel.  This  needed  swiftness  requires  methods  of 
making  effects  more  obviously  and  more  emphatically  than 
in  the  novel.  In  a  play,  then,  while  moving  much  more 
swiftly  than  in  a  novel,  we  must  at  any  given  moment  be  even 
clearer  than  in  the  novel.  What  the  dramatist  selects  for 
presentation  must  be  more  productive  of  immediate  effect 

1  Robert  Louis  Stevenson:  The  Dramatist,  p.  7.  Sir  A.  Pinero.  Chiswick  Press,  London. 


TECHNIQUE  IN  DRAMA  J) 

than  is  the  case  with  the  novelist,  for  one  swingeing  blow 
must,  with  him,  replace  repeated  strokes  by  the  novelist. 

In  most  novels,  the  reader  is,  so  to  speak,  personally  con- 
ducted, the  author  is  our  guide.  In  the  drama,  so  far  as  the 
dramatist  is  concerned,  we  must  travel  alone.  In  the  novel, 
the  author  describes,  narrates,  analyzes,  and  makes  his  per- 
sonal comment  on  circumstance  and  character.  We  rather 
expect  a  novelist  to  reveal  himself  in  his  work.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  greatest  dramatists,  such  as  Shakespeare  and 
Moliere,  in  their  plays  reveal  singularly  little  of  themselves. 
It  is  the  poorer  dramatists  —  Dry  den,  Jonson,  Chapman  — 
who,  using  their  characters  as  mouthpieces,  reveal  their 
^own  personalities.  Now  that  soliloquy  and  the  aside  have 
nearly  gone  out  of  use,  the  dramatist,  when  compared  with 
the  novelist,  seems,  at  first  thought,  greatly  hampered  in  his 
expression.  He  never  can  use  description,  narration,  analy- 
sis, and  personal  comment  as  his  own.  He  may  use  them 
only  in  the  comparatively  rare  instances  when  they  befit 
the  character  speaking.  His  mainstay  is  illustrative  action 
appropriate  to  his  characters,  real  or  fictitious.  Surely  so 
great  a  difference  will  affect  the  technique  of  his  art.  The 
novel,  then,  may  be,  and  often  is,  highly  personal;  the  best 
drama  is  impersonal. 

The  theatre  in  which  the  play  is  presented  also  produces 
differences  between  the  practice  of  the  dramatist  and  that 
of  the  novelist.  No  matter  how  small  the  theatre  or  its  stage, 
it  cannot  permit  the  intimacy  of  relation  which  exists  be- 
tween reader  and  book.  A  person  reads  a  book  to  himself 
or  to  a  small  group.  In  most  cases,  he  may  choose  the  condi- 
tions under  which  he  will  read  it,  indoors  or  out,  alone  or 
with  people  about  him,  etc.  In  the  theatre,  according  to  the 
size  of  the  auditorium,  from  one  hundred  to  two  thousand 
people  watch  the  play,  and  under  given  conditions  of  light, 
heat,  and  ventilation.  They  are  at  a  distance,  in  most  cases, 


8  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

from  the  stage.  It  is  shut  off  from  them  more  than  once  in 
the  performance  by  the  fall  of  the  curtain.  The  novel  appeals 
to  the  mind  and  the  emotions  through  the  eye.  The  stage 
appeals  to  both  eye  and  ear.  Scenery,  lighting,  and  cos- 
tuming render  unnecessary  many  descriptions  absolutely 
required  in  the  novel.  The  human  voice  quickens  the  imagi- 
nation as  the  mere  printed  page  cannot  in  most  cases.  These 
unlike  conditions  are  bound  to  create  differences  in  the  pre- 
sentation of  the  same  material. 

It  is  just  this  greater  concreteness  and  consequent  greater 
vividness  of  the  staged  play  which  makes  us  object  to  see- 
ing and  hearing  in  the  theatre  that  of  which  we  have  read 
with  comparative  calmness  in  the  newspaper,  the  magazine, 
cr  the  novel.  Daily  we  read  in  the  newspapers  with  un- 
quickened  pulse  of  horror  after  horror.  Merely  to  see  a 
fatal  runaway  or  automobile  accident  sends  us  home  sick- 
ened or  unnerved.  We  read  to  the  end,  though  horrified,  the 
Red  Laugh  of  Andreiev.  Reproduce  accurately  on  the  stage 
the  terrors  of  the  book  and  some  persons  in  the  audience 
would  probably  go  as  mad  as  did  people  in  the  story.  This 
difference  applies  in  our  attitude  toward  moral  questions 
as  treated  in  books  or  on  the  stage.  "Let  us  instance  the 
Matron  of  Ephesus.  This  acrid  fable  is  well  known;  it  is  un- 
questionably the  bitterest  satire  that  was  ever  made  on  fe- 
male frivolity.  It  has  been  recounted  a  thousand  times  after 
Petronius,  and  since  it  pleased  even  in  the  worst  copy,  it  was 
thought  that  the  subject  must  be  an  equally  happy  one  for 
the  stage.  .  .  .  The  character  of  the  matron  in  the  story  pro- 
vokes a  not  unpleasant  sarcastic  smile  at  the  audacity  of 
wedded  love;  in  the  drama  this  becomes  repulsive,  horrible. 
In  the  drama,  the  soldier's  persuasions  do  not  seem  nearly 
so  subtle,  importunate,  triumphant,  as  in  the  story.  In  the 
story  we  picture  to  ourselves  a  sensitive  little  woman  who  is 
really  in  earnest  in  her  grief,  but  succumbs  to  temptation 


TECHNIQUE  IN  DRAMA  g 

and  to  her  temperament,  her  weakness  seems  the  weakness 
of  her  sex,  we  therefore  conceive  no  especial  hatred  towards 
her,  we  deem  thai  what  she  does  nearly  every  woman  would 
have  done.  Even  her  suggestion  to  save  her  living  lover  by 
means  of  her  dead  husband  we  think  we  can  forgive  her  be- 
cause of  its  ingenuity  and  presence  of  mind;  or  rather  its 
very  ingenuity  leads  us  to  imagine  that  this  suggestion  may 
have  been  appended  by  the  malicious  narrator  who  desired 
to  end  his  tale  with  some  right  poisonous  sting.  Now  in  the 
drama  we  cannot  harbour  this  suggestion;  what  we  hear  has 
happened  in  the  story,  we  see  really  occur;  what  we  would 
doubt  of  in  the  story,  in  the  drama  the  evidence  of  our  own 
eyes  settles  incontrovertibly.  The  mere  possibility  of  such 
an  action  diverted  us;  its  reality  shows  it  in  all  its  atrocity; 
the  suggestion  amused  our  fancy,  the  execution  revolts  our 
feelings,  we  turn  our  backs  to  the  stage  and  say  with  the 
Lykas  of  Petronius,  without  being  in  Lykas's  peculiar  posi- 
tion : '  Had  the  emperor  been  just,  he  would  have  restored  the 
body  of  the  father  to  its  tomb  and  crucified  the  woman.' 
And  she  seems  to  us  the  more  to  deserve  this  punishment, 
the  less  art  the  poet  has  expended  on  her  seduction,  for  we 
do  not  then  condemn  in  her  weak  woman  in  general,  but  an 
especially  volatile,  worthless  female  in  particular."  l 

As  Lessing  points  out,  in  the  printed  page  we  can  stand  a 
free  treatment  of  social  question  after  social  question  which 
on  the  stage  we  should  find  revolting.  Imagine  the  horror  and 
outcry  if  we  were  to  put  upon  the  stage  a  dramatized  news- 
paper or  popular  magazine.  Just  in  this  intense  vividness,  this 
great  reality  of  effect,  lies  a  large  part  of  the  power  of  the  stage. 
On  the  other  hand,  this  very  vividness  may  create  difficulties.. 
For  instance,  the  novelist  can  say,  "So,  in  a  silence,  almost 
unbroken,  the  long  hours  passed."  But  we  watching,  on  the 
stage,  the  scene  described  in  the  novel,  know  perfectly  that 

1  Hamburg  Dramaturgy,  pp.  S2&-330.  Lessing.  Bohn  ed. 


io  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

only  a  few  minutes  have  elapsed.  From  this  difficulty  have 
arisen,  to  create  a  sense  of  time,  the  Elizabethan  use  of  the 
Chorus,  our  entr'acte  pauses,  interpolated  scenes  which  draw 
off  our  attention  from  the  main  story,  and  many  other  de- 
vices. But  even  with  all  the  devices  of  the  past,  it  is  well- 
nigh  impossible  in  a  one-act  play  or  in  an  act  of  one  setting 
to  create  the  feeling  that  much  time  has  passed.  Many  an 
attempt  has  been  made  to  dramatize  in  one  act  Stevenson's 
delightful  story,  The  Sire  de  Maletroit's  Door,  but  all  have 
come  to  grief  because  the  greater  vividness  of  the  stage  makes 
the  necessary  lapse  of  considerable  time  too  apparent.  It  is 
not  difficult  for  the  story-teller  to  make  us  believe  that,  be- 
tween a  time  late  one  evening  and  early  the  next  morning, 
Blanche  de  Maletroit  lost  completely  her  liking  for  one  man 
and  became  more  than  ready  to  marry  Denis  de  Beaulieu, 

__who  entered  the  house  for  the  first  time  on  this  same  evening. 
On  the  stage,  motivation  and  dialogue  must  be  such  as  to 
make  so  swift  a  change  entirely  convincing  even  though  it 

-occur  merely  in  the  time  of  the  acting.  The  motivation 
that  was  easy  for  the  novelist  as  he  explained  how  profoundly 
Blanche  was  moved  by  winning  words  or  persuasive  action 
of  Denis,  becomes  almost  impossible  unless  the  words  and 
action  when  seen  and  heard  are  for  us  equally  winning  and 
persuasive.  The  time  difficulty  in  this  story  has  led  to  all 
sorts  of  amusing  expedients  to  account  for  Blanche's  com- 
plete change  of  feeling.  One  young  author  went  so  far  as  to 
make  the  first  lover  of  Blanche  flirt  so  desperately  with  a 
maid-servant  off  stage  that  the  report  of  his  conduct  by  a 
jealous  man-servant  was  the  last  straw  to  bring  about  the 
change  in  Blanche's  feelings.  Though  aiming  at  a  real  diffi- 
culty, this  device  missed  because  it  so  vulgarized  the  original. 
When  all  is  said  and  done,  this  time  difficulty  caused  by 

J  the  greater  vividness  of  stage  presentation  remains  the  chief 

\  obstacle  in  the  way  of  the  dramatist  who  would  write  of 


Ci 


TECHNIQUE  IN  DRAMA  n 

a  sequence  of  historical  events  or  of  evolution  or  devolution 
in  character.  Again  we  foresee  probable  differences  in  tech- 
nique, this  time  caused  by  the  theatre,  the  stage,  and  the 
intense  vividness  of  the  latter. 

The  novel  is,  so  to  speak,  the  work  of  an  individual;  a  play 
is  a  cooperative  effort — of  author,  actor,  producer,  and  even 
audience.  Though  the  author  writes  the  play,  it  cannot  be 
properly  judged  till  the  producer  stages  it,  the  players  act  it, 
and  the  audience  approves  or  disapproves  of  it.  Undeniably 
the  dialogue  of  a  play  must  be  very  different  from  that  of  a 
novel  because  the  gesture,  facial  expression,  intonation,  and 
general  movement  of  the  actor  may  in  large  part  replace 
description,  narration,  and  even  parts  of  the  dialogue  of  a 
novel.  We  have  good  dialogue  for  a  novel  when  Cleopatra 
says,  " I  '11  seem  the  thing  1  am  not;  Antony  will  be  himself." 
The  fact  and  the  characterization  are  what  count  here.  In 
the  same  scene,  Antony,  absorbed  in  adoration  of  Cleopatra, 
cries,  when  interrupted  by  a  messenger  from  Rome,  "  Grates 
me ;  the  sum."  Here  we  need  the  action  of  the  speaker,  his  in- 
tonation, and  his  facial  expression,  if  the  speech  is  to  have  its 
full  value.  In  its  context,  however,  it  is  as  dramatic  dialogue 
perfect.  In  a  story  or  novel,  mere  clearness  would  demand 
more  because  the  author  could  not  be  sure  that  the  reader 
would  hit  the  right  intonation  or  feel  the  gesture  which  must 
accompany  the  words.  It  is  in  large  part  just  because  dra- 
matic dialogue  is  a  kind  of  shorthand  written  by  the  dramatist 
for  the  actor  to  fill  out  that  most  persons  find  plays  more  dif- 
ficult reading  than  novels.  Few  untrained  imaginations 
respond  quickly  enough  to  feel  the  full  significance  of  the 
printed  page  of  the  play.  On  the  other  hand,  any  one  ac- 
customed to  read  plays  often  finds  novels  irritating  because 
they  tell  so  much  more  than  is  necessary  for  him  who  re- 
sponds quickly  to  emotionalized  speech  properly  recorded. 

Just  as  dialogue  for  the  stage  is  incomplete  without  the 


12  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

actor,  so,  too,  the  stage  direction  needs  filling  out.  Made  as 
concise  as  possible  by  the  dramatist,  it  is  meant  to  be  packed 
with  meaning,  not  only  for  the  actor,  but  for  the  producer. 
The  latter  is  trusted  to  fill  out,  in  as  full  detail  as  his  means  or 
4  his  desires  permit,  the  hints  of  stage  directions  as  to  setting 
.  and  atmosphere.  On  the  producer  depends  wholly  the  scen- 
ery, lighting,  and  properties  used.  All  of  this  the  novelist 
supplies  in  full  detail  for  himself.  An  intelligent  producer 
who  reads  the  play  with  comprehension  but  follows  only  the 
letter  of  the  stage  directions  gives  a  production  no  more  than 
adequate  at  best.  An  uncomprehending  and  self-willed  pro- 
ducer may  easily  so  confuse  the  values  of  a  well- written  play 
as  to  ruin  its  chances.  A  thoroughly  sympathetic  and  finely 
imaginative  producer  may,  like  an  equally  endowed  actor, 
reveal  genuine  values  in  the  play  unsuspected  even  by  the 
dramatist  himself.  Surely  writing  stage  directions  will  differ 
from  the  narration  and  description  of  a  novel. 

The  novelist,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  deals  with  the  indi- 
vidual reader,  or  through  one  reader  with  a  small  group. 
What  has  just  been  said  makes  obvious  that  the  dramatist 
never  works  directly,  but  through  intermediaries,  the  actors 
and  the  producer.  More  than  that,  he  seeks  to  stir  the  in- 
dividual, not  for  his  own  sake  as  does  the  novelist,  but  be- 
cause he  is  a  unit  in  the  large  group  filling  the  theatre.  The 
novelist  —  to  make  a  rough  generalization  —  works  through 
the  individual,  the  dramatist  through  the  group.  This  is  not 
the  place  to  discuss  in  detail  the  relation  of  a  dramatist  to 
his  audience,  but  it  is  undeniable  that  the  psychology  of  the 
crowd  in  a  theatre  is  not  exactly  the  same  thing  as  the  sum 
total  of  the  emotional  responses  of  each  individual  in  it  to 
some  given  dramatic  incident.  The  psychology  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  the  psychology  of  the  crowd  are  not  one  and  the 
same.  The  reputation  of  the  novelist  rests  very  largely  on 
the  verdict  of  his  individual  readers.    The  dramatist  must 


TECHNIQUE  IN  DRAMA  13 

move,  not  a  considerable  number  of  individuals,  but  at  least 
the  great  majority  of  his  audience.  He  must  move  his  audi- 
ence, too,  not  by  emotions  individual  to  a  considerable  num« 
ber,  but  by  emotions  they  naturally  share  in  common  or  by 
his  art  can  be  made  to  share.  The  dramatist  who  under- 
stands only  the  psychology  of  the  individual  or  the  small 
group  may  write  a  play  well  characterized,  but  he  cannot 
write  a  successful  play  till  he  has  studied  deeply  the  psy- 
chology of  the  crowd  and  has  thus  learned  so  to  present  his 
chosen  subject  as  to  gain  from  the  group  which  makes  the 
theatrical  public  the  emotional  response  he  desires. 

Obviously,  then,  from  many  different  points  of  view,  the 
great  art  of  the  novelist  and  the  equally  great  art  of  the 
dramatist  are  not  the  same.  It  is  the  unwise  holding  of  an 
opposite  opinion  which  has  led  many  a  successful  novelist 
into  disastrous  play-writing.  It  is  the  attempt  to  reproduce 
exactly  on  the  stage  the  most  popular  parts  of  successful 
novels  which  has  -  ide  many  an  adaptation  a  failure  sur- 
prising to  author  and  adapter.  The  whole  situation  is  ad- 
mirably summed  up  in  a  letter  of  Edward  Knobloch,  au- 
thor of  Kismet.  "I  have  found  it  very  useful,  when  asked  to 
dramatize  a  novel,  not  to  read  it  myself,  but  to  get  some  one 
else  to  read  it  and  tell  me  about  it.  At  once,  all  the  stuffing 
drops  away,  and  the  vital  active  part,  the  verb  of  the  novel 
comes  to  the  fore.  If  the  story  of  a  novel  cannot  be  told  by 
some  one  in  a  hundred  words  or  so,  there  is  apt  to  be  no 
drama  in  it.  If  I  were  to  write  a  play  on  Hamilton,  I  would 
look  up  an  article  in  an  encyclopaedia;  then  make  a  scenario; 
then  read  detailed  biographies.  Too  much  knowledge  ham- 
pers. It  is  just  for  that  reason  that  short  stories  are  easier 
dramatized  than  long  novels.  The  stories  that  Shakespeare 
chose  for  his  plays  are  practically  summaries.  As  long  as 
they  stirred  his  imagination,  that  was  all  he  asked  of  them. 
Then  he  added  his  magic.    Once  the  novel  has  been  told, 


14  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

make  the  scenario.  Then  read  the  novel  after.  There  will  be 
very  little  to  alter  and  only  a  certain  amount  of  touches  to 
add."  If,  in  accordance  with  this  suggestion,  an  adapter 
would  plan  out  in  scenario  the  mere  story  of  the  novel  he 
wishes  to  adapt  for  the  stage,  would  then  transfer  to  his 
scenario  only  so  much  of  the  novel  as  perfectly  fits  the  needs 
of  the  stage;  and  finally  with  the  aid  of  the  original  author, 
would  rewrite  the  portions  which  can  be  used  only  in  part, 
and  with  him  compose  certain  parts  entirely  anew,  we  should 
have  a  much  larger  proportion  of  permanently  successful 
adaptations. 

Though  it  is  true,  then,  that  the  novelist  and  the  drama- 
tist work  with  common  elements  of  story,  characterization 
and  dialogue,  the  differing  conditions  under  which  they  work 
affect  their  story-telling,  their  characterization,  and  their  dia- 
logue. The  differences  brought  about  by  the  greater  speed, 
greater  compactness,  and  greater  vividness  of  the  drama,  with 
its  impersonality,  its  cooperative  nature,  its  appeal  to  the 
group  rather  than  to  the  individual,  create  the  fundamental 
technique  which  distinguishes  the  drama  from  the  novel. 
This  is  the  technique  possessed  in  common  by  the  dramatists 
of  all  periods.  The  art  of  the  playwright  is  not,  then,  the  art 
of  the  novelist.  Throughout  the  centuries  a  very  different 
technique  has  distinguished  them. 

"But,"  it  may  be  urged,  "all  that  has  been  said  of  the  dif- 
ferences between  the  play  and  the  novel  shows  that  the  play 
cramps  truthful  presentation  of  life.  Is  not  play-writirg 
an  art  of  falsification  rather  than  truth?"  A  living  French 
novelist  once  exclaimed,  "I  have  written  novels  for  many 
years,  with  some  returns  in  reputation  but  little  return  in 
money.  Now,  when  a  young  actor  helps  me,  I  adapt  one  of 
my  novels  to  the  stage  and  this  bastard  art  immediately 
makes  it  possible  for  me  to  buy  automobiles."  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  wrote,  toward  the  end  of  his  life,  to  Mr.  Sidney 


TECHNIQUE  IN  DRAMA  15 

Colvin,  "No,  I  will  not  write  a  play  for  Irving  nor  for  the 
devil.  Can  you  not  see  that  the  work  of  falsification,  which 
a  play  demands  is,  of  all  tasks,  the  most  ungrateful?  And  I 
have  done  it  a  long  while,  —  and  nothing  ever  came  of  it."  * 
The  trouble  with  both  these  critics  of  the  drama  was  that  they 
held  a  view  of  the  stage  which  makes  it  necessary  to  shape,  to 
twist,  and  to  contort  life  when  represented  on  it.  While  it 
is  true  that  selection  and  compression  underlie  all  dramatic 
art,  as  they  underlie  all  of  the  pictorial  arts,  it  is  no  longer 
true,  as  it  was  in  the  mid-nineteenth  century,  that  drama- 
tists believe  that  we  should  shape  life  to  fit  hampering  con- 
ditions of  the  stage,  accepted  as  inevitably  rigid.  Today  we 
regard  the  stage,  as  we  should,  as  plastic.  If  the  stage  of  the 
moment  forbids  in  any  way  the  just  representation  of  life, 
so  much  the  worse  for  that  stage;  it  must  yield.  The  inge- 
nuity of  author,  producer,  scenic  artist,  and  stage  mecha- 
nician must  labor  until  the  stage  is  fitted  to  represent  life  as 
the  author  sees  it.  For  many  years  now,  the  cry  of  the  drama- 
tist has  been,  not  "  Let  us  adapt  life  to  the  stage,"  but  rather : 
"  Let  us  adapt  the  stage,  at  any  cost  for  it,  at  any  cost  of  im- 
aginative effort  or  mechanical  labor,  to  adequate  and  truth- 
ful representation  of  life."  The  art  of  the  playwright  may 
be  the  art  of  fantasy  or  of  realism,  but  for  him  who  under- 
stands it  rightly,  not  mistaking  it  for  another  art,  and  labor- 
ing till  he  grasps  and  understands  its  seeming  mysteries,  it 
can  nevor  be  an  art  of  falsification.  Instead,  it  is  the  art  that, 
drawing  to  its  aid  all  its  sister  fine  arts,  in  splendid  coopera- 
tion, moves  the  masses  of  men  as  does  no  other  art.  As  Sir 
Arthur  Pinero  has  said,  "The  art  —  the  great  and  fasci- 
nating and  most  difficult  art  —  of  the  modern  dramatist  is* 
nothing  else  than  to  achieve  that  compression  of  life  which 
the  stage  undoubtedly  demands,  without  falsification."  2 

1  Robert  Louis  Stevenson :  the  Dramatist,  p.  SO.  Sir  A.  Pinero.  Chiswick  Press,  London. 

•  Urn. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA:  ACTION  AND  EMOTION 

/ — What  is  the  common  aim  of  all  dramatists?  Twofold:  first 
as  promptly  as  possible  to  win  the  attention  of  the  audience; 
secondly,  to  hold  that  interest  steady  or,  better,  to  increase 

V^  it  till  the  final  curtain  falls.  It  is  the  time  limit  to  which  all 
dramatists  are  subject  which  makes  the  immediate  winning 
of  attention  necessary.  The  dramatist  has  no  time  to  waste. 

CHow  is  he  to  win  this  attention?  By  what  is  done  in  the  play; 
by  characterization;  by  the  language  the  people  of  his  play 
speak;  or  by  a  combination  of  two  or  more  of  these.  Today 
we  hear  much  discussion  whether  it  is  what  is  done,  i.e. 
action,  or  characterization,  or  dialogue  which  most  interests 
a  public.  Which  is  the  chief  essential  in  good  drama?  His- 
tory shows  indisputably  that  the  drama  in  its  beginnings, 
no  matter  where  we  look,  depended  most  on  action.  The 
earliest  extant  specimen  of  drama  in  England,  circa  967, 
shows  clearly  the  essential  relations  of  action,  characteriza- 
tion, and  dialogue  in  drama  at  its  outset.  The  italics  in  the 
following  show  the  action;  the  roman  type  the  dialogue. 

While  the  third  lesson  is  being  chanted,  let  four  brotliers  vest  them- 
selves, one  of  whom,  vested  in  an  alb,  enters  as  if  to  do  something, 
and,  in  an  inconspicuous  way,  approaches  the  place  where  the  sep- 
ulchre is,  and  there  holding  a  palm  in  his  hand,  sits  quiet.  While  the 
third  respond  is  chanted,  let  the  three  others  approach,  all  alike  vested 
in  copes,  bearing  thuribles  (censers)  with  incense  in  their  hands,  and, 
with  hesitating  steps,  in  the  semblance  of  persons  seeking  something, 
let  them  come  before  the  place  of  the  sepulchre.  These  things  are  done, 
indeed,  in  representation  of  the  angel  sitting  within  the  tomb  and  oj 
the  women  who  came  with  spices  to  anoint  the  body  of  Jesus.  When, 
therefore,  he  who  is  seated  sees  the  three  approaching  as  if  wandering 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA         17 

about  and  seeking  something,  lei  him  begin  to  sing  melodiously  and 
in  a  voice  moderately  loud 

Whom  seek  you  at  the  sepulchre,  O  Christians? 
When  this  has  been  sung  to  the  end,  let  the  three  respond  in  unison, 

Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  crucified,  O  heavenly  one. 

Then  he, 

He  is  not  here;  he  has  risen,  as  was  foretold. 

Go  ye,  announcing  that  he  has  risen  from  the  dead. 

Upon  the  utterance  of  this  command,  let  the  three  turn  to  the  choir  and 
say, 

Alleluia!  the  Lord  is  risen. 

This  said,  let  him,  still  remaining  seated,  say,  as  if  calling  them  back, 
the  antiphon, 

Come,  and  see  the  place  where  the  Lord  lay. 
Alleluia,  Alleluia! 

Having  said  this,  however,  let  him  rise  and  lift  the  veil,  and  show  them 
the  place  empty  of  the  cross,  but  the  clothes,  only,  laid  there  with  which 
the  cross  was  wrapped.  When  they  see  this,  let  them  set  down  the  thu- 
ribles that  they  have  carried  within  that  same  sepulchre,  and  take  up 
the  cloth  and  hold  it  up  before  the  clergy,  and,  as  if  in  testimony  that 
the  Lord  has  risen  and  is  not  now  wrapped  therein,  let  them  sing  this 
antiphon : 

The  Lord  has  risen  from  the  tomb, 
Who  for  us  was  crucified, 

and  let  them  lay  the  cloth  upon  the  altar.  The  antiphon  finished,  let 
the  prior,  rejoicing  with  them  in  the  triumph  of  our  King,  in  that, 
death  vanquislied,  he  has  risen,  begin  the  hymn, 

We  praise  thee,  O  Lord. 

This  begun,  all  the  bells  are  rung  together,  at  the  end  of  which  let  th* 
priest  say  tlie  verse, 

In  thy  resurrection,  O  Christ, 

as  far  as  this  word,  and  let  him  begin  Matins,  saying, 

O  Lord,  hasten  to  my  aid!  x 

1  Early  Plays,  pp.  6-6.  Riverside  Literature  Series.  C.  G.  Child.  Houghton  Mifflin  Co, 
Boston. 


18  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Obviously  in  this  little  play  the  directions  for  imitative 
movement  fill  three  quarters  of  the  space;  dialogue  fills  one 
quarter;  characterization,  except  as  the  accompanying 
_music  may  very  faintly  have  suggested  it,  there  is  none. 
Historically  studied,  the  English  drama  shows  that  char- 
acterization appeared  as  an  added  interest  when  the  inter- 
est of  action  was  already  well  established.  The  value  of 
dialogue  for  its  own  sake  was  recognized  even  later. 

What  is  true  of  the  English  drama  is  of  course  equally 
true  of  all  Continental  drama  which,  like  the  English  drama, 
had  its  origin  in  the  Trope  and  the  Miracle  Play.  Even, 
however,  if  we  go  farther  back,  to  the  origin  of  Greek  Drama 
in  the  Ballad  Dance  we  shall  find  the  same  results.  The 
Ballad  Dance  consisted  "in  the  combination  of  speech, 
music,  and  that  imitative  gesture  which,  for  lack  of  a 
better  word,  we  are  obliged  to  call  dancing.  It  is  very  im- 
portant, however,  to  guard  against  modern  associations 
with  this  term.  Dances  in  which  men  and  women  joined 
are  almost  unknown  to  Greek  antiquity,  and  to  say  of  a 
guest  at  a  banquet  that  he  danced  would  suggest  intoxi- 
cation. The  real  dancing  of  the  Greeks  is  a  lost  art,  of 
which  the  modern  ballet  is  a  corruption,  and  the  orator's 
action  a  faint  survival.  It  was  an  art  which  used  bodily 
motion  to  convey  thought:  as  in  speech  the  tongue  artic- 
ulated words,  so  in  dancing  the  body  swayed  and  gesticu- 
lated into  meaning.  ...  In  epic  poetry,  where  thought 
takes  the  form  of  simple  narrative,  the  speech  (Greek  epos) 
of  the  Ballad  Dance  triumphs  over  the  other  two  elements. 
Lyric  poetry  consists  in  meditation  or  highly  wrought 
description  taking  such  forms  as  odes,  sonnets,  hymns,  — 
poetry  that  lends  itself  to  elaborate  rhythms  and  other 
devices  of  musical  art:  here  the  music  is  the  element  of 
the  Ballad  Dance  which  has  come  to  the  front.  And  the 
imitative  gesture  has  triumphed  over  the  speech  and  the 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA         19 

music  in  the  case  of  the  third  branch  of  poetry;  drama  is 
thought  expressed  in  action."  ■ 

Imitative  movement  is  the  drama  of  the  savage. 

"An  Aleut,  who  was  armed  with  a  bow,  represented  a 
hunter,  another  a  bird.  The  former  expressed  by  gestures 
how  very  glad  he  was  he  had  found  so  fine  a  bird;  neverthe- 
less he  would  not  kill  it.  The  other  imitated  the  motions  of 
a  bird  seeking  to  escape  the  hunter.  He  at  last,  after  a  long 
delay,  pulled  his  bow  and  shot:  the  bird  reeled,  fell,  and  died. 
The  hunter  danced  for  joy;  but  finally  he  became  troubled, 
repented  having  killed  so  fine  a  bird,  and  lamented  it.  Sud- 
denly the  dead  bird  rose,  turned  into  a  beautiful  woman,  and 
fell  into  the  hunter's  arms."  2 

Look  where  we  will,  then,  —  at  the  beginnings  of  drama 
in  Greece,  in  England  centuries  later,  or  among  savage 
peoples  today  —  the  chief  essential  in  winning  and  holding 
the  attention  of  the  spectator  was  imitative  movement  by 
the  actors,  that  is,  physical  action.  Nor,  as  the  drama 
develops,  does  physical  action  cease  to  be  central.  The 
most  elaborate  of  the  Miracle  Plays,  the  Towneley  Second 
Shepherds*  Play  and  the  Brome  Abraham  and  Isaac  3  prove 
this.  In  the  former  we  are  of  course  interested  in  the  char- 
acterization of  the  Shepherds  and  Mak,  but  would  this  hold 
us  without  the  stealing  of  the  sheep  and  the  varied  action 
attending  its  concealment  and  discovery  in 'the  house  of 
Mak?  Undoubtedly  in  the  Abraham  and  Isaac  character- 
ization counts  for  more,  but  we  have  the  journey  to  the 
Mount,  the  preparations  for  the  sacrifice,  the  binding  of  the 
boy's  eyes,  the  repeatedly  upraised  sword,  the  farewell  em- 
bracings,  the  very  dramatic  coming  of  the  Angel,  and  the  joy- 
ful sacrifice  of  the  sheep  when  the  child  is  released.  Without 

1  The  Ancient  Classical  Drama,  pp.  S-4.    R.  G.  Moulton.  Clarendon  Press,  Oxford. 

*  Quoted  in  The  Development  of  the  Drama,  pp.  10-11.  Copyright,  1903,  by  Brander 
Matthews.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 

«  For  these  two  plays  see  Early  Plays.  Riverside  Literature  Series.  C.  G.  Child.  Hough- 
ton Mifflin  Co.,  Boston. 


20  DRAMATIC  TECHNIOUE 

all  this  central  action,  the  fine  characterization  of  the  play 
would  lose  its  significance.  In  Shakespeare's  day,  audiences 
again  and  again,  as  they  watched  plays  of  Dekker,  Heywood, 
and  many  another  dramatist,  willingly  accepted  inadequate 
characterization  and  weak  dialogue  so  long  as  the  action 
was  absorbing.  Just  this  interest  in,  for  instance,  The  Four 
Prentices,  or  the  various  Ages  l  of  Thomas  Heywood,  was 
burlesqued  by  Francis  Beaumont  in  The  Knight  of  the  Burn- 
ing Pestle.  It  may  be  urged  that  the  plays  of  Racine  and 
Corneille,  as  well  as  the  Restoration  Comedy  in  England, 
show  characterization  and  dialogue  predominant.  It  should 
be  remembered,  however,  that  Corneille  and  Racine,  as  well 
as  the  Restoration  writers  of  comedy  wrote  primarily  for  the 
Court  group  and  not  for  the  public  at  large.  Theirs  was  the 
cultivated  audience  of  the  time,  proud  of  its  special  literary 
and  dramatic  standards.  Around  and  about  these  drama- 
tists were  the  writers  of  popular  entertainment,  which  de- 
pended on  action.  In  England,  we  must  remember  that 
Wycherley  and  Vanbrugh,  who  are  by  no  means  without 
action  in  their  plays,  belong  to  Restoration  Comedy  as 
much  as  Etherege  or  Congreve,  and  that  the  Heroic  Drama, 
in  which  action  was  absolutely  central,  divided  the  favor  of 
even  the  Court  public  with  the  Comedy  of  Manners.  The 
fact  is,  the  history  of  the  Drama  shows  that  only  rarely  does 
even  a  group  of  people  for  a  brief  time  care  more  for  plays 
I  of  characterization  and  dialogue  than  for  plays  of  action. 
Throughout  the  ages,  the  great  public,  cultivated  as  well  as 
uncultivated,  have  cared  for  action  first,  then,  as  aids  to  a 
better  understanding  of  the  action  of  the  story,  for  charac- 
terization and  dialogue.  Now,  for  more  than  a  century,  the 
play  of  mere  action  has  been  so  popular  that  it  has  been  rec- 
ognized as  a  special  form,  namely,  melodrama.  This  type 
of  play,  in  which  characterization  and  dialogue  have  usually 

1  Works.  6  vols.  Pearson,  London. 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        21 

been  entirely  subordinated  to  action,  has  been  the  most 
widely  at  tended.  Today  the  motion  picture  show  has  driven 
mere  melodrama  from  our  theatres,  yet  who  will  deny  that 
the  "movie"  in  its  present  form  subordinates  everything 
to  action?  Even  the  most  ambitious  specimens,  such  as 
Cabiria  and  The  Birth  of  a  Nation,  finding  their  audiences 
restless  under  frequent  use  of  the  explanatory  "titles " 
which  make  clear  what  cannot  be  clearly  shown  in  action, 
hasten  to  depict  some  man  hunt,  some  daring  leap  from  a 
high  cliff  into  the  sea,  or  a  wild  onrush  of  galloping  white- 
clad  figures  of  the  Ku  Klux  Klan.  From  the  practice  of  cen- 
turies the  feeling  that  action  is  really  central  in  drama  has 
become  instinctive  with  most  persons  who  write  plays  with- 
out preconceived  theories.  Watch  a  child  making  his  first 
attempt  at  play- writing.  In  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hun- 
dred, the  play  will  contain  little  except  action.  There  will 
be  slight  characterization,  if  any,  and  the  dialogue  will  be 
mediocre  at  best.  The  young  writer  has  depended  almost 
entirely  upon  action  because  instinctively,  when  he  thinks  of 
drama,  he  thinks  of  action. 

Nor,  if  we  paused  to  consider,  is  this  dependence  of  drama 
upon  action  surprising.  "  From  emotions  to  emotions  "  is  the 
formula  for  any  good  play.  To  paraphrase  a  principle  of 
geometry,  "A  play  is  the  shortest  distance  from  emotions  to 
emotions."  The  emotions  to  be  reached  are  those  of  the  au- 
dience. The  emotions  conveyed  are  those  of  the  people  on 
the  stage  or  of  the  dramatist  as  he  has  watched  the  people 

C represented.  Just  herein  lies  the  importance  of  action  for  the 
dramatist :  it  is  his  quickest  means  of  arousing  emotion  in  an 
audience.  Which  is  more  popular  with  the  masses,  the  man 
of  action  or  the  thinker?  The  world  at  large  believes,  and 
rightly  that,  as  a  rule,  "Actions  speak  louder  than  words." 
(  The  dramatist  knows  that  not  what  a  man  thinks  he  thinks, 
^   but  what  at  a  crisis  he  does,  instinctively,  spontaneously, 


22  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

best  shows  his  character.  The  dramatist  knows,  too,  that 
though  we  may  think,  when  discussing  patriotism  in  the  ab- 
stract, that  we  have  firm  ideas  about  it,  what  reveals  our 
real  beliefs  is  our  action  at  a  crisis  in  the  history  of  our  coun- 
try. Many  believed  from  the  talk  of  German  Socialists  that 
they  would  not  support  their  Government  in  the  case  of  war. 
Their  actions  have  shown  far  more  clearly  than  their  words 
their  real  beliefs.  Ulster  sounded  as  hostile  as  possible  to 
England  not  long  ago,  but  when  the  call  upon  her  loyalty 
came  she  did  not  prove  false.  Is  it  any  wonder,  then,  that 
popular  vote  has  declared  action  the  best  revealer  of  feeling 
and,  therefore,  that  the  dramatist,  in  writing  his  plays,  de- 
pends first  of  all  upon  action?  If  any  one  is  disposed  to  cavil 
at  action  as  popular  merely  with  the  masses  and  the  less 
cultivated,  let  him  ask  himself,  "What,  primarily  in  other 
people  interests  me  —  what  these  people  do  or  why  they  do 
it?"  Even  if  he  belong  to  the  group,  relatively  very  small  in 
the  mass  of  humanity,  most  interested  by  "Why  did  these 
people  do  this?"  he  must  admit  that  till  he  knows  clearly 
what  the  people  did,  he  cannot  take  up  the  question  which 
more  interests  him.  For  the  majority  of  auditors,  action  is  of 
first  importance  in  drama:  even  for  the  group  which  cares 
far  more  for  characterization  and  dialogue  it  is  necessary 
as  preparing  the  way  for  that  characterization  and  dialogue 
on  which  they  insist. 

Consider  for  a  moment  the  nature  of  the  attention  which 
a  dramatist  may  arouse.  Of  course  it  may  be  only  of  the  sune 
sort  which  an  audience  gives  a  lecturer  on  a  historical  or 
scientific  subject,  —  a  readiness  to  hear  and  to  try  to  under- 
stand what  he  has  to  present,  —  close  but  unemotional  at- 
tention. Comparatively  few  people,  however,  are  capable 
of  sustained  attention  when  their  emotions  are  not  called 
upon.  How  many  lectures  last  over  an  hour?  Is  not  the 
"popular  lecturer"  popular  largely  because  he  works  into 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA         23 

his  lecture  many  anecdotes  and  dramatic  illustrations  in 
Older  to  avoid  or  to  lighten  the  strain  of  close,  sustained 
at  tent  ion?  There  is,  undoubtedly,  a  public  which  can  listen 
to  ideas  with  the  same  keen  enjoyment  which  most  audi- 
tors feel  when  listening  to  something  which  stirs  them  emo- 
tionally, but  as  compared  with  the  general  public  it  is 
infinitesimal.  Understanding  this,  the  dramatist  stirs  the 
emotions  of  his  hearers  by  the  most  concrete  means  at  his 
command,  his  quickest  communication  from  brain  to  brain, 
—  action  just  for  itself  or  illustrating  character.  The  infe- 
riority to  action  of  mere  exposition  as  a  creator  of  interest 
the  two  following  extracts  show. 

ACT  I.  SCENE  1.  Britain.  The  garden  of  Cymbeline's  palace 
Enter  two  gentlemen 

1.  Gent.  You  do  not  meet  a  man  but  frowns.  Our  bloods 
No  more  obey  the  heavens  than  our  courtiers 

Still  seem  as  does  the  King. 

2.  Gent.  But  what's  the  matter? 

1.  Gent.  His  daughter,  and  the  heir  of's  kingdom,  whom 
He  purpos'd  to  his  wife's  sole  son  —  a  widow 

That  late  he  married  —  hath  referred  herself 
Unto  a  poor  but  worthy  gentleman.  She's  wedded, 
Her  husband  banish'd,  she  imprison'd ;  all 
Is  outward  sorrow;  though  I  think  the  King 
Be  touched  at  very  heart. 

2.  Gent.  None  but  the  King? 

1.  Gent.  He  that  hath  lost  her  too;  so  is  the  Queen, 
That  most  desir'd  the  match :  but  not  a  courtier, 
Although  they  wear  their  faces  to  the  bent 

Of  the  King's  look,  hath  a  heart  that  is  not 
Glad  at  the  thing  they  scowl  at. 

2.  Gent.  And  why  so? 

1.  Gent.  He  that  hath  miss'd  the  Princess  is  a  thing 
Too  bad  for  bad  report;  and  he  that  hath  her  — 
I  mean,  that  married  her,  alack,  good  man! 
And  therefore  banish'd  —  is  a  creature  such 


24  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

As,  to  seek  through  the  regions  of  the  earth 
For  one  his  like,  there  would  be  something  failing 
In  him  that  should  compare.   I  do  not  think 
So  fair  an  outward,  and  such  stuff  within 
Endows  a  man  but  he. 
2.  Gent.  You  speak  him  far. 

1.  Gent.  I  do  extend  him,  sir,  within  himself, 
Crush  him  together  rather  than  unfold 

His  measure  duly. 

2.  Gent.  What's  his  name  and  birth? 

1.  Gent.  I  cannot  delve  him  to  the  root.  His  father 
Was  call'd  Sicilius,  who  did  gain  his  honour 
Against  the  Romans  with  Cassibelan, 

But  had  his  titles  by  Tenantius  whom 

He  serv'd  with  glory  and  admir'd  success, 

So  gain'd  the  sur-addition  Leonatus; 

And  hath,  besides  this  gentleman  in  question, 

Two  other  sons,  who  in  the  wars  o'  the  time 

Died  with  their  swords  in  hand ;  for  which  their  father 

Then  old  and  fond  of  issue,  took  such  sorrow 

That  he  quit  being,  and  his  gentle  lady, 

Big  of  this  gentleman  our  theme,  deceas'd 

As  he  was  born.  The  King  he  takes  the  babe 

To  his  protection,  calls  him  Posthumus  Leonatus, 

Breeds  him  and  makes  him  of  his  bed  chamber, 

Puts  to  him  all  the  learnings  that  his  time 

Could  make  him  the  receiver  of;  which  he  took, 

As  we  do  air,  fast  as  'twas  minist'red, 

And  in's  spring  became  a  harvest;  liv'd  in  court  — ■ 

Which  rare  it  is  to  do  —  most  prais'd,  most  lov'd, 

A  sample  to  the  youngest,  to  the  more  mature 

A  glass  that  feated  them,  and  to  the  graver 

A  child  that  guided  dotards;  to  his  mistress, 

For  whom  he  is  now  banish'd,  —  her  own  price 

Proclaims  how  she  esteem'd  him  and  his  virtue; 

By  her  election  may  be  truly  read 

What  kind  of  man  he  is. 

2.  Gent.  I  honour  him 

Even  out  of  your  report.  But,  pray  you,  tell  me 
Is  she  sole  child  to  the  King? 

1.  Gent.  His  only  child. 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        25 

lit-  had  two  sons,  —  if  this  be  worth  your  hearing, 
Mark  it  —  the  eldest  of  them  at  three  years  old, 
I'  the  swatliing-clothes  the  other,  from  their  nursery 
Wew  stolen,  and  to  this  hour  no  guess  in  knowledge 
Which  way  they  went. 
2.  Gent.  How  long  is  this  ago? 

1.  Gent.  Some  twenty  years. 

2.  Gent.  That  a  King's  children  should  be  so  convey'd, 
So  slackly  guarded  and  the  search  so  slow, 

That  could  not  trace  them! 

1.  Gent.  Howso'er  'tis  strange, 
Or  that  the  negligence  may  well  be  laughed  at, 
Yet  it  is  true,  sir. 

2.  Gent.  I  do  well  believe  you. 

1.  Gent.  We  must  forbear;  here  comes  the  gentleman, 
The  Queen  and  Princess.  {Exeunt.)1 

Here  Shakespeare  trusts  mere  exposition  to  rouse  inter- 
est. His  speakers  merely  question  and  answer,  showing 
little  characterization  and  practically  no  emotion.  Is  this 
extract  as  interesting  as  the  following? 

Fitz  Urse.  {Catches  hold  of  the  last  flying  monk.)  Where  is  the 
traitor  Becket? 

Becket.  Here. 

No  traitor  to  the  King,  but  Priest  of  God, 
Primate  of  England.  {Descending  into  the  transept.) 

I  am  he  ye  seek. 
What  would  ye  have  of  me? 

Fitz  Urse.  Your  life. 

De  Tracy.  Your  life. 

De  Morville.  Save  that  you  will  absolve  the  bishops. 

Becket.  Never,  — 

Except  they  make  submission  to  the  Church. 
You  had  my  answer  to  that  cry  before. 

De  Morville!  W'hy,  then  you  are  a  dead  man;  flee! 

Beckd.  I  will  not 

I  am  readier  to  be  slain  than  thou  to  slay. 
Hugh,  I  know  well  that  thou  hast  but  half  a  heart 

1  Cymbeline,  Act  r,  Scene  1. 


26  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

To  bathe  this  sacred  pavement  with  my  blood. 
God  pardon  thee  and  these,  but  God's  full  curse 
Shatter  you  all  to  pieces  if  ye  harm 
One  of  my  flock! 

Fitz  XJrse.  Seize  him  and  carry  him! 

Come  with  us  —  nay  —  thou  art  our  prisoner  —  come! 

{Fitz  XJrse  lays  hold  of  Archbishop's  pall.) 
Becket.  Down! 

{Throws  him  headlong.) 
De  MorvUle.  Ay,  make  him  prisoner,  do  not  harm  the  man. 
Fitz  XJrse.  {Advances  with  drawn  sword.)  I  told  thee  that  I  should 

remember  thee! 
Becket.  Profligate  pander! 
Fitz  XJrse.  Do  you  hear  that?  Strike,  strike. 

{Strikes  the  Archbishop  and  wounds  him  in  the  forehead.) 
Becket.  {Covers  his  eyes  with  his  hand.)  I  do  commend  my  cause 

to  God. 
Fitz  XJrse.  Strike  him,  Tracy! 

Rosamund.  {Rushing  down  the  steps  from  the  choir.)  No,  no,  no, 
no.  Mercy,  Mercy, 
As  you  would  hope  for  mercy. 

Fitz  XJrse.  Strike,  I  say. 

Grim.  O,  God,  O,  noble  knight,  O,  sacrilege! 

Fitz  XJrse.  Strike!  I  say. 

De  Tracy.  There  is  my  answer  then. 

{Sword  falls  on  Grim's  arm,  and  glances  from  it,  wounding 
Becket.) 
This  last  to  rid  thee  of  a  world  of  brawls! 

Becket.  {Falling  on  his  knees.)  Into  thy  hands,  O  Lord  —  into 
thy  hands — !  {Sinks  prone.) 

De  Brito.  The  traitor's  dead,  and  will  arise  no  more. 

{De  Brito,  De  Tracy,  Fitz  XJrse  rush  out,  crying  "  King's 
men  !  "  De  MorvUle  follows  slowly  Flashes  of  lightning 
through  the  Cathedral.  Rosamund  seen  kneeling  at  the 
body  of  Becket.)1 

The  physical  action  of  this  extract  instantly  grips  atten- 
tion. Interested  at  once  by  this  action,  shortly  we  rush  on  un- 

1  Becket:  A  Tragedy.  Lord  Tennyson.  Arranged  for  the  stage  by  Henry  Irving.  Maemil- 
Ian  &  Co.,  London  and  New  York. 


f. 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        27 

thinking,  but  feeling  more  and  more  intensely.  In  this  ex- 
tract action  is  everywhere.  The  actionless  Cymbeline  is  un- 
dramatic.   This  extract  is  intensely  dramatic. 

Just  what,  however,  is  this  action  which  in  drama  is  so 
essential?  To  most  people  it  means  physical  or  bodily  action 
which  rouses  sympathy  or  dislike  in  an  audience.  The  ac- 
tion of  melodrama  certainly  exists  largely  for  itself.  We  ex- 
pect and  get  little  but  physical  action  for  its  own  sake  when 
a  play  is  announced  as  was  the  well-known  melodrama,  A 
Race  for  Life. 

As  Melodramatically  and  Masterfully  Stirring,  Striking  and  Sen- 
sational as  Phil  Sheridan's  Famous  Ride. 
Superb,  Stupendous  Scenes  in  Sunset  Regions. 
Wilderness  Wooings  Where  Wild  Roses  Grow. 
The  Lights  and  Shades  of  Rugged  Border  Life. 
Chinese  Comedy  to  Make  Confucius  Chuckle. 
The  Realism  of  the  Ranch  and  Race  Track. 
The  Hero  Horse  That  Won  a  Human  Life. 
An  Equine  Beauty  Foils  a  Murderous  Beast. 
Commingled  Gleams  of  Gladness,  Grief,  and  Guilt. 
Dope,  Dynamite  and  Devilish  Treachery  Distanced. 
Continuous  Climaxes  That  Come  Like  Cloudbursts. 

Some  plays  depend  almost  wholly  upon  mere  bustle  and 
rapidly  shifting  movement,  much  of  it  wholly  unnecessary 
to  the  plot.  Large  portions  of  many  recent  musical  comedies 
illustrate  this.  Such  unnecessary  but  crudely  effective  move- 
ment Stevenson  burlesqued  more  than  once  in  the  stage  di- 
rections of  his  Macaire. 

ACT  I.  SCENE  1 

Aline  and  maids;  to  whom  Fiddlers;  aftencards  Dumont  and 
Charles.  As  the  curtain  rises,  the  sound  of  the  violin  is  heard  approach- 
ing. Aline  and  the  inn  servants,  who  are  discovered  laying  the  table, 
dance  up  to  door  L.C.,  to  meet  the  Fiddlers,  who  enter  likewise  danc- 
ing to  their  own  music.  Air;  "Haste  to  the  Wedding."    The  Fiddlers 


28  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

exeunt  playing  into  house,  R.TJ.E.  Aline  and  Maids  dance  bach  to 
table,  which  they  proceed  to  arrange. 

Aline.  Well,  give  me  fiddles:  fiddles  and  a  wedding  feast.  It 
tickles  your  heart  till  your  heels  make  a  runaway  match  of  it.  I 
don't  mind  extra  work,  I  don't,  so  long  as  there's  fun  about  it. 
Hand  me  up  that  pile  of  plates.  The  quinces  there,  before  the 
bride.  Stick  a  pink  in  the  Notary's  glass:  that's  the  girl  he's 
courting. 

Dumont.  (Entering  with  Charles.)  Good  girls,  good  girls !  Charles, 
in  ten  minutes  from  now  what  happy  faces  will  smile  around  that 
board! 

ACT  H.  SCENE  2 

To  these  all  the  former  characters,  less  the  Notary.  The  fiddlers  are 
heard  without,  playing  dolefully.  Air :  "0,  dear,  what  can  the  matter 
be?"  in  time  to  which  the  procession  enters. 

Macaire.  Well,  friends,  what  cheer? 
Aline.  No  wedding,  no  wedding!  Together 

Goriot.  I  told  'ee  he  can't,  and  he  can' 
Dumont.  Dear,  dear  me. 

Ernestine.  They  won't  let  us  marry.  \    Together 

Charles.  No  wife,  no  father,  no  nothing. 
Curate.  The  facts  have  justified  the  worst  anticipations  of  our 
absent  friend,  the  Notary. 

Macaire.  I  perceive  I  must  reveal  myself.1 

If  physical  action  in  and  of  itself  is  so  often  dramatic, 
is  all  physical  action  dramatic?  That  is,  does  it  always? 
create  emotion  in  an  onlooker?  No.  It  goes  for  naught  un* 
less  it  rouses  his  interest.  Of  itself,  or  because  of  the  presen- 
tation given  it  by  the  dramatist,  it  must  rouse  in  the  onlooker 
an  emotional  response.  A  boy  seeing  "Crazy  Mary"  stalk- 
ing the  street  in  bedizened  finery  and  bowing  right  and  left, 
may  see  nothing  interesting  in  her.  More  probably  her 
actions  wTill  move  him  to  jeer  and  jibe  at  her.  Let  some  spec- 
tator, however,  tell  the  boy  of  the  tragedy  in  Crazy  Mary's 

»  Macaire.  By  R.  L.  Stevenson  and  W.  E.  Henley.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 
Copyright,  1895,  by  Stone  &  Kimball,  Chicago. 


J 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        29 

younger  life  which  left  her  unbalanced,  and,  if  he  has  any 
right  feeling,  the  boy's  attitude  will  begin  to  change.  He 
may  even  give  over  the  jeering  he  has  begun.  Reveal  to  him 
exactly  what  is  passing  in  the  crazed  mind  of  the  woman, 
I nd  his  mere  interest  will  probably  turn  to  sympathy.  Char- 
acterization, preceding  and  accompanying  action,  creates 

**  sympathy  or  repulsion  for  the  figure  or  figures  involved. 
This  sympathy  or  repulsion  in  turn  converts  mere  interest 
into  emotional  response  of  the  keenest  kind.  Though  phys- 
ical action  is  undoubtedly  fundamental  in  drama,  no  higher 
form  than  crude  melodrama  or  crude  farce  can  develop  till 
\  characterization  appears  to  explain  and  interpret  action. 
The  following  extracts  from  Robertson's  Home  show  phys- 
ical action,  silly  it  is  true,  yet  developing  characterization 

I  by  illustrative  action.  The  first,  even  as  it  amuses,  char- 
acterizes the  timid  Bertie,  and  the  second  shows  the  mild 
mentality  and  extreme  confusion  of  the  two  central  figures. 

Mr.  Dorrison.  Will  you  give  Mrs.  Pinchbeck  your  arm,  Colonel? 
Dora,  my  dear.  (Taking  Dora's.)  Lucy,  Captain  Mountraffe  will 
—  (Sees  him  asleep.)  Ah,  Lucy,  you  must  follow  by  yourself. 

(Colonel  takes  off  Mrs.  Pinchbeck;  Dorrison,  Dora.  At  that 
moment,  Bertie  enters  window,  R.,  and  runs  to  Lucy, 
kneels  at  her  feet,  and  is  about  to  kiss  her  hand.  Mount- 
raffe yawns,  which  frightens  Bertie.  He  is  running  off 
as  the  drop  falls  quickly.) 

End  of  Act  I 

Colonel.  I'd  always  give  my  eyes  to  be  alone  with  this  girl  for 
five  minutes,  and  whenever  I  am  alone  with  her,  I  haven't  a  word 
to  say  for  myself.  (Aloud.)  That  music,  Miss  Thornhaugh? 

Dora.  (At  piano.)  Yes. 

Col.  (Aside.)  As  if  it  could  be  anything  else.  How  stupid  of  me. 
(Aloud.)  New  music? 

Dora.  Yes. 

Col.  New  laid  —  I  mean,  fresh  from  the  country  —  fresh  from 
London,  or  —  yes  —  I  —  (Dora  sits  on  music  stool  at  piano.    This 


30  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

scene  is  played  with  great  constraint  on  both  sides.  Colonel  bends  over 
Dora  at  piano.)  Going  to  play  any  of  it  now? 

Dora.  No.  I  must  practise  it  first.  I  can't  play  at  sight. 
Col.  Can't  you  really?  Don't  you  believe  in  —  music  —  at  first 
sight? 

(Dora  drops  a  music  book.  Colonel  picks  it  up.  Dora  tries 
to  pick  it  up.  They  knock  their  heads  together;  mutual 
confusion.  As  they  rise,  each  has  hold  of  the  book.) 

n  1  '  \l  beg  your  pardon.  (Both  trembling.) 

Dora.  It's  nothing. 

Col.  Nothing,  quite  so. 

(Dora  sits  on  music  stool.  As  she  does  so,  both  leave  hold  of 
the  book  and  it  falls  again.) 

Dora.  I  thought  you  had  the  book. 

Col.  (Picking  it  up.)  And  I  thought  you  had  it,  and  it  appears 
that  neither  of  us  had  it.  Ha!  ha!  (Aside.)  Fool  that  I  am!  (Dora 
sits  thoughtfully,  Colonel  bending  over  her;  a  pause.)  Won't  you 
play  something? 

Dora.  I  don't  know  how  to  play. 

Col.  Oh,  well,  play  the  other  one.  (They  resume  their  attitudes; 
a  pause.)  The  weather  has  been  very  warm  today,  has  it  not? 

Dora.  Very. 

Col.  Looks  like  thunder  to  me. 

Dora.  Does  it? 

Col.  Are  you  fond  of  thunder  —  I  mean  fond  of  music?  I  should 
say  are  you  fond  of  lightning?  (Dora  touches  keys  of  piano  mechani- 
cally.) Do  play  something. 

Dora.  No,  I  —  I  didn't  think  of  what  I  was  doing.  What  were 
you  talking  about? 

Col.  About?  You  —  me  —  no!  About  thunder  —  music  —  I 
mean  lightning. 

Dora.  I'm  afraid  of  lightning.  (Act  II.;  l 

The  first  scene  of  Act  I  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  is  full  of  inter- 
esting physical  action  —  quarrels,  fighting,  and  the  halting 
of  the  fight  by  the  angry  Prince.  The  physical  action,  how- 
ever, characterizes  in  every  instance,  from  the  servants  of 
the  two  factions  to  Tybalt,  Benvolio,  the  Capulets,  the  Mon- 

»  B.  M.  DeWitt,  New  York  City. 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        31 

tagnes,  and  the  Prince.  Moreover,  this  interesting  physical 
action,  which  is  all  the  more  interesting  because  it  charac- 
terizes, is  interesting  in  the  third  place  because  in  every  in- 
stance it  helps  to  an  understanding  of  the  story.  It  shows 
so  intense  an  enmity  between  the  two  houses  that  even  the 
servants  cannot  meet  in  the  streets  without  quarreling.  By 
its  characterization  it  prepares  for  the  parts  Benvolio  and 
Tybalt  are  to  play  in  later  scenes.  It  motivates  the  edict  of 
banishment  which  is  essential  if  the  tragedy  of  the  play  is  to 
occur. 

SCENE  1.    Verona.  A  public  place 

Enter  Sampson  and  Gregory,  of  the  house  of  Capulet,  with  swords 
and  bucklers 

Sampson.  Gregory,  on  my  word,  we'll  not  carry  coals. 

Gregory.  No,  for  then  we  should  be  colliers. 

Sam.  I  mean,  an  we  be  in  choler,  we'll  draw. 

Gre.  Ay,  while  you  live,  draw  your  neck  out  o'  the  collar. 

Sam.  I  strike  quickly,  being  mov'd. 

Gre.  But  thou  art  not  quickly  mov'd  to  strike. 

Sam.  A  dog  of  the  house  of  Montague  moves  me. 

Draw  thy  tool;  here  comes  two  of  the  house  of  Montague. 
Enter  two  other  serving-men.  (Abraham  and  BaUhasar.) 

Sam.  My  naked  weapon  is  out.  Quarrel,  I  will  back  thee. 
Gre.  How!  turn  thy  back  and  run? 
Sam.  Fear  me  not. 
Gre.  No,  marry;  I  fear  thee! 

Sam.  Let  us  take  the  law  of  our  sides;  let  them  begin. 
Gre.  I  will  frown  as  I  pass  by,  and  let  them  take  it  as  they  list. 
Sam.  Nay,  as  they  dare.  I  will  bite  my  thumb  at  them;  which 
is  disgrace  to  them  if  they  bare  it. 

Abraham.  Do  you  bite  your  thumb  at  us,  sir? 

Sam.  I  do  bite  my  thumb,  sir. 

Abr.  Do  you  bite  your  thumb  at  us,  sir? 

Sam.  (Aside  to  Gre.)  Is  the  law  of  our  side,  if  I  say  ay? 


32  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Gre.  No. 

Sam.  No,  sir,  I  do  not  bite  my  thumb  at  you,  sir;  but  I  bite  my 
thumb,  sir. 

Gre.  Do  you  quarrel,  sir? 

Abr.  Quarrel,  sir?  No,  sir. 

Sam.  But  if  you  do,  sir,  I  am  for  you.  I  serve  as  good  a  man  as 
you. 

Abr.  No  better. 

Sam.  Well,  sir. 

Enter  Benvolio. 

Ger.  Say  "better";  here  comes  one  of  my  master's  kinsmen. 

Sam.  Yes,  better,  sir. 

Abr.  You  lie. 

Sam.  Draw,  if  you  be  men.  Gregory,  remember  thy  swashing 
blow.  {Theyfight.) 

Benvolio.  Part,  fools! 
Put  up  your  swords;  you  know  not  what  you  do. 

(Beats  down  their  swords.) 

Enter  Tybal 

Tybalt.  What,  art  thou  drawn  among  these  heartless  hinds? 
Turn  thee,  Benvolio,  look  upon  thy  death. 

Ben.  I  do  but  keep  the  peace.  Put  up  thy  sword, 
Or  manage  it  to  part  these  men  with  me. 

Tyb.  What,  drawn,  and  talk  of  peace!  I  hate  the  word 
As  I  hate  hell,  all  Montagues,  and  thee. 
Have  at  thee,  coward !  ( They  fight.) 

Enter  three  or  four  citizens,  and  officers,  with  clubs  or  partisans 

Officer.  Clubs,  bills,  and  partisans!  Strike!  Beat  them  down! 
Down  with  the  Capulets!  down  with  the  Montagues! 

Enter  Capulet  in  his  gown  and  Lady  Capulet 

Capulet.  What  noise  is  this?  Give  me  my  long  sword,  ho! 
Lady  Capulet.  A  crutch,  a  crutch!  Why  call  you  for  a  sword? 
Cap,  My  sword,  I  say!  Old  Montague  is  come, 
And  nourishes  his  blade  in  spite  of  me. 

Enter  Montague  and  Lady  Montague 

Montague.  Thou  villain,  Capulet,  —  Hold  me  not,  let  me  go. 
Lady  Montague.  Thou  shalt  not  stir  one  foot  to  seek  a  foe. 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        33 

Enter  Prince,  with  his  train 

Prince.  Rebellious  subjects,  enemies  to  peace, 
Profaners  of  this  neighbour-stained  steel,  — 
WiD  they  not  hear?  —  What,  ho!  you  men,  you  beasts, 
That  quench  the  fire  of  your  pernicious  rage 
With  purple  fountains  issuing  from  your  veins, 
On  pain  of  torture,  from  those  bloody  hands 
Throw  your  mistemper'd  weapons  to  the  ground, 
And  hear  the  sentence  of  your  moved  prince. 
Three  civil  brawls,  bred  of  an  airy  word, 
By  thee,  old  Capulet,  and  Montague, 
Have  thrice  disturb'd  the  quiet  of  our  streets, 
And  made  Verona's  ancient  citizens 
Cast  by  their  grave  beseeming  ornaments, 
To  wield  old  partisans,  in  hands  as  old, 
Cank'red  with  peace,  to  part  your  cank'red  hate; 
If  ever  you  disturb  our  streets  again 
Your  lives  shall  pay  the  forfeit  of  the  peace. 
For  this  time,  all  the  rest  depart  away. 
You,  Capulet,  shall  go  along  with  me; 
And  Montague,  come  you  this  afternoon, 
To  know  our  farther  pleasure  in  this  case, 
To  old  Free-town,  our  common  judgement  place, 
Once  more,  on  pain  of  death,  all  men  depart. 

(Exeunt  all  but  Montague,  Lady  Montague,  and  Benvolio.) 

Even  physical  action,  then,  may  interest  for  itself,  or  be- 
cause it  characterizes,  or  because  it  helps  on  the  story,  or  for 
two  or  more  of  these  reasons. 

If  we  examine  other  extracts  from  famous  plays  we  shall, 
however,  find  ourselves  wondering  whether  action  in  drama 
must  not  mean  something  besides  mere  physical  action.  In 
the  opening  scene  of  La  Princesse  Georges,  by  Dumas  fils,  the 
physical  action  is  neither  large  in  amount  nor  varied,  but 
the  scene  is  undeniably  dramatic,  for  emotions  represented 
create  prompt  emotional  response  in  us. 


34  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

ACT  I.  SCENE  1 

A  Drawing  Room 

Severine,  watching  near  the  window,  with  the  curtain  drawn  a 
little  aside,  then  Rosalie 

Severine.  Rosalie!  At  last!  What  a  night  I  have  gone  through! 
Sixteen  hours  of  waiting!  (To  Rosalie,  who  enters.)  Well? 

Rosalie.  Madame,  the  Princess  must  be  calm. 

Severine.  Don't  call  me  Princess.  That's  wasting  time. 

Rosalie.  Madame  has  not  slept? 

Severine.  No. 

Rosalie.  I  suspected  as  much. 

Severine,  Tell  me,  is  it  true? 

Rosalie.  Yes. 

Severine.  The  details,  then. 

Rosalie.  Well,  then,  last  evening  I  followed  the  Prince,  who 
went  to  the  Western  Railway,  as  he  had  told  Madame  that  he  would 
do,  to  take  the  train  at  half  past  nine;  only,  instead  of  buying  a 
ticket  for  Versailles,  he  took  one  for  Rouen. 

Severine.  But  he  was  alone? 

Rosalie.  Yes.  But  five  minutes  after  he  arrived,  she  came. 

Severine.  Who  was  the  woman? 

Rosalie.  Alas,  Madame  knows  her  better  than  I! 

Severine.  It  is  some  one  whom  I  know? 

Rosalie.  Yes. 

Severine.  Not  one  of  those  women?  — 

Rosalie.  It  is  one  of  your  intimate  friends,  of  the  best  social 
position. 

Severine.  Valentine?  Bertha?  No.  —  The  Baroness? 

Rosalie.  The  Countess  Sylvanie. 

Severine.  She?  Impossible!  She  stayed  here,  with  me,  until  at 
least  nine  o'clock.  We  dined  alone  together. 

Rosalie.  She  was  making  sure  that  you  didn't  suspect  anything. 

Severine.  Indeed,  nothing.  And  she  came  to  the  train  at  what 
hour? 

Rosalie.  At  twenty-five  minutes  past  nine. 

Severine.  So,  in  twenty-five  minutes  — 

Rosalie.  She  went  home;  she  changed  her  dress  (she  arrived  all 
in  black) ;  she  went  to  the  St.  Lazare  Station.  It  is  true  that  only 
your  garden  and  hers  separate  her  house  from  yours;  that  she  has 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        35 

the  best  horses  in  Paris;  and  that  she  is  accustomed  to  doing  this 
sort  of  thing,  if  I  may  believe  what  I  have  heard. 

Severine.  To  what  a  pass  we  have  come!  My  most  intimate 
friend!  Did  they  speak  to  each  other? 1 

This  scene  wins  our  attention  because  it  reveals  in  Sever- 
ine a  mental  state  which  in  itself  interests  and  moves  us  far 
more  than  the  mere  physical  action. 

What  has  been  said  of  La  Princesse  Georges  is  even  more 
true  of  the  ending  of  Marlowe's  Faustus. 

Faustus.  Ah,  Faustus: 
Now  hast  thou  but  one  bare  hour  to  live, 
And  then  thou  must  be  damn'd  perpetually! 
Stand  still,  you  ever-moving  spheres  of  heaven, 
That  time  may  cease,  and  midnight  never  come; 
Fair  Nature's  eye,  rise,  rise  again  and  make 
Perpetual  day ;  or  let  this  hour  be  but 
A  year,  a  month,  a  week,  a  natural  day, 
That  Faustus  may  repent  and  save  his  soul! 
0  lente,  lente  currite,  noctis  equi  I 
The  stars  move  still,  time  runs,  the  clock  will  strike, 
The  devil  will  come,  and  Faustus  will  be  damn'd. 

All  beasts  are  happy, 

For  when  they  die, 

Their  souls  are  soon  dissolv'd  in  elements; 
But  mine  must  live  still  to  be  plagu'd  in  hell. 
Curs'd  be  the  parents  that  engender'd  me! 
No,  Faustus,  curse  thyself,  curse  Lucifer 
That  hath  deprived  thee  of  the  joys  of  heaven. 

{The  clock  strikes  twelve.) 
O,  it  strikes,  it  strikes!  Now  body,  turn  to  air, 
Or  Lucifer  will  bear  thee  quick  to  hell! 

{Thunder  and  lightning.) 
0,  soul,  be  chang'd  into  little  water-drops, 
And  fall  into  the  ocean,  ne'er  be  found! 

Enter  Devils 
My  God,  my  God,  look  not  so  fierce  on  me! 
Adders  and  serpents,  let  me  breathe  a  while! 

1  Thidtre  ComvUt,  vol.  v.  Dumas  fib.  Calmann  L6vy,  Pari*. 


36  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Ugly  hell,  gape  not!  come  not,  Lucifer! 
I'll  burn  my  books!  —  Ah,  Mephistophilis! 

(Exeunt  Devils  with  Faustus.)1 

Though  this  scene  doubtless  requires  physical  action  as 
the  tortured  Faustus  flings  himself  about  the  stage,  would 
^hat  action  be  clear  enough  to  move  us  greatly  were  it  not 
/for  the  characterization  of  the  preceding  scenes  and  the  mas- 
terly phrasing  which  exactly  reveals  the  tortured  soul?  Is  it 
not  a  mental  state  rather  than  physical  action  which  moves 
us  here?  Surely. 

The  fact  is,  the  greatest  drama  of  all  time,  and  the  larger 
part  of  the  drama  of  the  past  twenty  years,  uses  action  much 
less  for  its  own  sake  than  to  reveal  mental  states  which  are 
to  rouse  sympathy  or  repulsion  in  an  audience.  In  brief, 
•marked  mental  activity  may  be  quite  as  dramatic  as  mere 
physical  action.  Hamlet  may  sit  quietly  by  his  fire  as  he 
speaks  the  soliloquy  "To  be,  or  not  to  be,"  yet  by  what  we 
^lready  know  of  him  and  what  the  lines  reveal  we  are  moved 
I to  the  deepest  sympathy  for  his  tortured  state.  There  is  al- 
most no  physical  movement  as  Percinet  reads  to  Sylvette 
from  Romeo  and  Juliet  in  the  opening  pages  of  Rostand's 
Romancers,  yet  we  are  amused  and  pleased  by  their  excited 
delight. 

ACT  I 

The  stage  is  cut  in  two  by  an  old  wall,  mossy  and  garlanded  by  luxu- 
rious vines.  To  the  right,  a  corner  of  Bergamiris  park;  to  the  left  a 
corner  of  Pasquinofs.   On  each  side,  against  the  wall,  a  bench. 

SCENE  1.  Sylvette.  Percinet.  When  the  curtain  rises,  Percinet 
is  seated  on  the  wall,  with  a  book  on  his  knees,  from  which  he  is  read- 
ing to  Sylvette.  She  stands  on  the  bench  in  her  father's  park,  her  chin 
in  her  hands,  her  elbows  against  the  wall,  listening  attentively. 

Sylvette.  O  Monsieur  Percinet,  how  beautiful  it  is! 
Percinet.  Isn't  it?   Hear  Romeo's  reply!  (He  reads.) 

1  Marlowe's  Faustus,  Act  v.  Mermaid  Series  or  Everyman's  Library. 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        37 

"It  was  the  lark,  the  herald  of  the  morn, 
No  nightingale;  look,  love,  what  envious  streaks 
Do  lace  the  severing  clouds  in  yonder  east: 
Night's  candles  are  burnt  out  and  jocund  day 
Stands  tiptoe  on  the  misty  mountain  tops: 
I  must  be  gone.  .  .  ." 
Si/lvrttc.  (Alert,  with  animation.)  Sh! 

Percinet.  (Listens  a  moment,  then)    No  one!  So,  mademoiselle, 
don't  have  the  air  of  an  affrighted  birdling  on   a  branch,  ready 
to  spread  wing  at  the  slightest  sound.  Hear  the  immortal  lovers 
talking: 
She.  "Yon  light  is  not  day-light,  I  know  it,  I: 

It  is  some  meteor  that  the  sun  exhales, 
To  be  to  thee  this  night  a  torch  bearer." 
Be.  "Let  me  be  ta'en,  let  me  be  put  to  death; 

I  am  content,  so  thou  wilt  have  it  so. 
I'll  say  yon  gray  is  not  the  morning's  eye; 
Tis  but  the  pale  reflex  of  Cynthia's  brow; 
Nor  that  is  not  the  lark,  whose  notes  do  beat 
The  vaulty  heaven  so  high  above  our  heads; 
I  have  more  care  to  stay  than  will  to  go : 
Come,  death,  and  welcome!  Juliet  wills  it  so." 
Sylvette.  Oh,  no!  I  won't  have  him  talk  of  that;  if  he  does,  I  shall 
cry. 

Percinet.  Then  we'll  shut  our  book  till  tomorrow,  and,  since  you 
wish  it,  let  sweet  Romeo  live. 

(He  closes  the  book  and  looks  about  him.) 
What  an  adorable  spot!  It  seems  made  for  lulling  one's  self  with 
the  lines  of  the  great  William.1 


. 


Here  is  great  activity,  but  it  is  mental  rather  than  physi- 
cal action.  To  make  it  rouse  us  to  the  desired  emotional  re- 
sponse, good  characterization  and  wisely  chosen  words  are 
necessary. 

Examine  also  the  opening  scene  of  Maeterlinck's  The  Blind. 
A  group  of  sightless  people  have  been  deserted  in  a  wood  by 
their  guide,  and  consequently  are  so  bewildered  and  timor- 
ous that  they  hardly  dare  move.  Yet  all  their  trepidation, 

1  The  Romancers.  Translated  by  Mary  Hendee.  Doubleday  &  McClure  Co.,  New  York. 


38  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

doubt,  and  awe  are  clearly  conveyed  to  us,  with  a  very  small 
amount  of  physical  action,  through  skilful  characterization, 
and  words  specially  chosen  and  ordered  to  create  and  in- 
tensify emotion  in  us. 

An  ancient  Norland  forest,  with  an  eternal  look,  under  a  sky  of  deep 
stars. 

In  the  centre  and  in  the  deep  of  the  night,  a  very  old  priest  is  sitting, 
wrapped  in  a  great  black  cloak.  The  chest  and  the  head,  gently  up- 
turned and  deathly  motionless,  rest  against  the  trunk  of  a  giant  hollow 
oak.  The  face  is  fearsome  pale  and  of  an  immovable  waxen  lividness, 
in  which  the  purple  lips  fall  slightly  apart.  The  dumb,  fixed  eyes  no 
longer  look  out  from  the  visible  side  of  Eternity  and  seem  to  bleed  with 
immemorial  sorrows  and  with  tears.  The  hair,  of  a  solemn  whiteness, 
falls  in  stringy  locks,  stiff  and  few,  over  a  face  more  illuminated  and 
more  weary  than  all  that  surrounds  it  in  the  watchful  stillness  of  that 
melancholy  wood.  The  hands,  pitifully  thin,  are  clasped  rigidly  over 
the  thighs. 

On  the  right,  six  old  men,  all  blind,  are  sitting  on  stones,  stumps, 
and  dead  leaves. 

On  the  left,  separated  from  them  by  an  uprooted  tree  and  fragments 
of  rock,  six  women,  also  blind,  are  sitting  opposite  the  old  men.  Three 
among  them  pray  and  mourn  without  ceasing,  in  a  muffled  voice. 
Another  is  old  in  the  extreme.  The  fifth,  in  an  attitude  of  mute  insan- 
ity, holds  on  her  knees  a  little  sleeping  child.  The  sixth  is  strangely 
young  and  her  whole  body  is  drenched  with  her  beautiful  hair.  They, 
as  well  as  the  old  men,  are  all  clad  in  the  same  ample  and  sombre  gar- 
ments. Most  of  them  are  waiting,  with  their  elbows  on  their  knees  and 
their  faces  in  their  hands;  and  all  seem  to  have  lost  the  habit  of  inef- 
fectual gesture  and  no  longer  turn  their  heads  at  the  stifled  and  un- 
easy noises  of  the  Island.  Tall  funereal  trees,  —  yews,  weeping-wil- 
lows, cypresses,  —  cover  them  with  their  faithful  shadows.  A  cluster 
of  long,  sickly  asphodels  is  in  bloom,  not  far  from  the  priest,  in  the 
night.  It  is  unusually  oppressive,  despite  the  moonlight  that  here  and 
there  struggles  to  pierce  for  an  instant  the  glooms  of  the  foliage. 

First  Blind  Man.  {Who  was  born  blind.)  He  hasn't  come  back  yet? 
Second  Blind  Man.  {Who  also  was  born  blind.)  You  have  awak- 
ened me. 

First  Blind  Man.  I  was  sleeping,  too. 

Third  Blind  Man.  {Also  born  blind.)  I  was  sleeping,  too. 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        39 

First  Blind  Man.  He  hasn't'come  yet? 

Second  Blind  Man.  I  hear  something  coming. 

Third  Blind  Man.  It  is  time  to  go  back  to  the  Asylum. 

First  Blind  Man.  We  ought  to  find  out  where  we  are. 

Secovxl  Blind  Man.  It  has  grown  cold  since  he  left. 

First  Blind  Man.  We  ought  to  find  out  where  we  are! 

The  Very  Old  Blind  Man.  Does  any  one  know  where  we  are? 

The  Very  Old  Blind  Woman.  We  were  walking  a  very  long  while; 
we  must  be  a  long  way  from  the  Asylum. 

First  Blind  Man.  Oh!  the  women  are  opposite  us? 

The  Very  Old  Blind  Woman.  We  are  sitting  opposite  you. 

First  Blind  Man.  Wait,  I  am  coming  over  where  you  are.  {He 
rises  and  gropes  in  the  dark.)  WThere  are  you?  —  Speak!  let  me  hear 
where  you  are! 

The  Very  Old  Blind  Woman.  Here;  we  are  sitting  on  stones. 

First  Blind  Man.  {Advances  and  stumbles  against  the  fallen  tree 
and  the  rocks.)  There  is  something  between  us. 

Second  Blind  Man.  We  had  better  keep  our  places. 

Third  Blind  Man.  Where  are  you  sitting?  —  Will  you  come  over 
by  us? 

The  Very  Old  Blind  Woman.  We  dare  not  rise! 

Third  Blind  Man.  Why  did  he  separate  us? 

First  Blind  Man.  I  hear  praying  on  the  women's  side. 

Second  Blind  Man.  Yes;  the  three  old  women  are  praying. 

First  Blind  Man.  This  is  no  time  for  prayer! 

Second  Blind  Man.  You  will  pray  soon  enough,  in  the  dormitory! 
{The  three  old  women  continue  their  prayers.) 

Third  Blind  Man.  I  should  like  to  know  who  it  is  I  am  sitting 
by. 

Second  Blind  Man.  I  think  I  am  next  to  you. 

{They  feel  about  tJiem.) 

Third  Blind  Man.  W7e  can't  reach  each  other. 

First  Blind  Man.  Nevertheless,  we  are  not  far  apart.  {He  feels 
abmd  him  and  strikes  with  his  staff  the  fifth  blind  man,  who  utters  a 
muffled  groan.)  The  one  who  cannot  hear  is  beside  us. 

Second  Blind  Man.  I  don't  hear  anybody;  we  were  six  just  now. 

First  Blind  Man.  I  am  going  to  count.  Let  us  question  the 
women,  too;  we  must  know  what  to  depend  upon.  I  hear  the  three 
old  women  praying  all  the  time;  are  they  together? 

The  Very  Old  Blind  Woman.  They  are  sitting  beside  me,  on  a 
rock. 


40  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

First  Blind  Man.  I  am  sitting  on  dead  leaves. 

Third  Blind  Man.  And  the  beautiful  blind  girl,  where  is  she? 

The  Very  Old  Blind  Woman.  She  is  near  them  that  pray. 

Second  Blind  Man.  Where  is  the  mad  woman,  and  her  child? 

The  Young  Blind  Girl.  He  sleeps;  do  not  awaken  him! 

First  Blind  Man.  Oh!  How  far  away  you  are  from  us !  I  thought 
you  were  opposite  me! 

Third  Blind  Man.  We  know  —  nearly  —  all  we  need  to  know. 
Let  us  chat  a  little,  while  we  wait  for  the  priest  to  come  back.1 

Many  an  inexperienced  dramatist  fails  to  see  the  force  of 
these  words  of  Maeterlinck:  "An  old  man,  seated  in  his  arm- 
chair, waiting  patiently,  with  his  lamp  beside  him  —  sub- 
mitting with  bent  head  to  the  presence  of  his  soul  and  his 
destiny  — motionless  as  he  is  does  yet  live  in  reality  a  deeper, 
more  human,  and  more  universal  life  than  the  lover  who 
strangles  his  mistress,  the  captain  wTho  conquers  in  battle,  or 
the  husband  who  *  avenges  his  honor.,"  If  an  audience  can 
be  made  to  feel  and  understand  the  strong  but  contained 
emotion  of  this  motionless  figure,  he  is  rich  dramatic  ma- 
terial. 

In  the  extracts  from  La  Princesse  Georges,  Faustus,  The 
Romancers,  The  Blind,  in  the  soliloquy  of  Hamlet  referred  to, 
and  the  illustration  quoted  from  Maeterlinck,  it  is  not  physi- 
cal outward  expression  but  the  vivid  picture  we  get  of  a 
state  of  mind  which  stirs  us.  Surely  all  these  cases  prove  that 
we  must  include  mental  as  well  as  physical  activity  in  any 
definition  of  the  word  dramatic.  Provided  a  writer  can  con- 
vey to  his  audience  the  excited  mental  state  of  one  or  more 
of  his  characters,  then  this  mental  activity  is  thoroughly 
dramatic.  That  is,  neither  physical  nor  mental  activity  is 
in  itself  dramatic;  all  depends  on  whether  it  naturally  arouses, 
or  can  be  made  by  the  author  to  arouse,  emotion  in  an  audi- 
ence. Just  as  we  had  to  add  to  physical  action  wrhich  arouses 
emotional  response  of  itself,  physical  action  which  is  made 

»  The  Blind.  Translated  by  Richard  Hovey.  Copyright,  1894  and  1896,  by  Stone  k 
Kimball,  Chicago. 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        41 

to  arouse  response  because  it  develops  the  story  or  illustrates 
character,  we  must  now  add  action  which  is  not  physical,  but 
mental. 

There  is  even  another  chance  for  confusion.  A  figure  sit- 
ting motionless  not  because  he  is  thinking  hard  but  because 
blank  in  mind  may  yet  be  dramatic.  Utter  inaction,  both 
physical  and  mental,  of  a  figure  represented  on  the  stage  does 
not  mean  that  it  is  necessarily  un dramatic.  If  the  drama- 
tist can  make  an  audience  feel  the  terrible  tragedy  of  the 
contrast  between  what  might  have  been  and  what  is  for  this 
perfectly  quiet  unthinking  figure,  he  rouses  emotion  in  his 
hearers,  and  in  so  doing  makes  his  material  dramatic.  Sup- 
pose, too,  that  the  expressionless  figure  is  an  aged  father  or 
mother  very  dear  to  some  one  in  the  play  who  has  strongly 
won  the  sympathy  of  the  audience.  The  house  takes  fire. 
The  flames  draw  nearer  and  nearer  the  unconscious  figure. 
We  are  made  to  look  at  the  situation  through  the  eyes  of  the 
character  —  some  child  or  relative  —  to  whom  the  scene, 
were  he  present,  would  mean  torture.  Instantly  the  figure, 
because  of  the  way  in  which  it  is  represented,  becomes  dra- 
matic. Here  again,  however,  the  emotion  of  the  audience 
could  hardly  be  aroused  except  through  characterization  of 
the  figure  as  it  was  or  might  have  been,  or  of  the  child  or 
relative  who  has  won  our  sympathy.  Again,  too,  character- 
ization so  successful  must  depend  a  good  deal  on  well-chosen 
words. 

This  somewhat  elaborate  analysis  should  have  made  three 
points  clear.  First,  we  may  arouse  emotion  in  an  audience 
by  mere  physical  action;  by  physical  action  which  also  de- 
velops the  story,  or  illustrates  character,  or  does  both;  by 
mental  rather  than  physical  action,  if  clearly  and  accurately 
conveyed  to  the  audience;  and  even  by  inaction,  if  charac- 
terization and  dialogue  by  means  of  other  figures  are  of  high 
order.    Secondly,  as  the  various  illustrations  have  been  ex- 


42  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

amined,  it  must  have  become  steadily  more  clear  that  while 
action  is  popularly  held  to  be  central  in  drama,  emotion 
is  really  the  essential.  Because  it  is  the  easiest  expression 
of  emotion  to  understand,  physical  action,  which  without 
illuminating  characterization  and  dialogue  can  express  only 
a  part  of  the  world  of  emotion,  has  been  too  often  ac- 
cepted as  expressing  all  the  emotion  the  stage  can  present. 
Thirdly,  it  should  be  clear  that  a  statement  one  meets  too 
frequently  in  books  on  the  drama,  that  certain  stories  or 
characters,  above  all  certain  well-known  books,  are  essen- 
tially undramatic  material  is  at  least  dubious.  The  belief 
arises  from  the  fact  that  the  story,  character,  or  idea,  as 
usually  presented,  seems  to  demand  much  analysis  and 
description,  and  almost  to  preclude  illustrative  action.  In 
the  past  few  years,  however,  the  drama  of  mental  states  and 
the  drama  which  has  revealed  emotional  significance  in  seem- 
ing or  real  inaction,  has  been  proving  that "  nothing  human 
is  foreign ' '  to  the  drama.  A  dramatist  may  see  in  the  so-called 
undramatic  material  emotional  values.  If  so,  he  will  develop 
a  technique  which  will  create  in  his  public  a  satisfaction 
equal  to  that  which  the  so-called  undramatic  story,  char- 
acter, or  idea  could  give  in  story  form.  Of  course  he  will 
treat  it  differently  in  many  respects  because  he  is  writing  not 
to  be  read  but  to  be  heard,  and  to  affect  the  emotions,  not 
of  the  individual,  but  of  a  large  group  taken  as  a  group.  He 
will  prove  that  till  careful  analysis  has  shown  in  a  given  story, 
character,  or  idea,  no  possibility  of  arousing  the  same  or 
dissimilar  emotions  in  an  audience,  we  cannot  say  that  this 
or  that  is  dramatic  or  undramatic,  but  only:  "This  material 
will  require  totally  different  presentation  if  it  is  to  be  dra- 
matic on  the  stage,  and  only  a  person  of  acumen,  experi- 
ence with  audiences,  and  inventive  technique  can  present  it 
effectively." 

The  misapprehension  just  analyzed  rests  not  only  on  the 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        43 

misconception  that  action  rather  than  emotion  is  the  essen- 
tial in  drama,  but  also  largely  on  a  careless  use  of  the  word 
dramatic.  In  popular  use  this  word  means  material  for 
drama,  or  creative  of  emotional  response,  or  perfectly  fitted  for 
production  under  the  conditions  of  the  theatre.  If  we  examine 
a  little,  in  the  light  of  this  chapter,  the  nature  and  purpose 
of  a  play,  we  shall  see  that  dramatic  should  stand  only  for 
the  first  two  definitions,  and  that  theatric  must  be  used  for 
the  third.  Avoiding  the  vague  definition  material  for  drama, 
use  dramatic  only  as  creative  of  emotional  response  and  the 
confusion  will  disappear. 

f  A  play  exists  to  create  emotional  response  in  an  audience. 

( The  response  may  be  to  the  emotions  of  the  people  in  the 
play  or  the  emotions  of  tjie  author  as  he  watches  these  people. 
Where  would  satirical  cQX^edy  be  if,  instead  of  sharing  the 
amusement,  disdain,  contempt  or  moral  anger  of  the  drama- 
tist caused  by  his  figures,  we  responded  exactly  to  their 
follies  or  evil  moods?  All  ethical  drama  gets  its  force  by 
creating  in  an  audience  the  feelings  toward  the  people  in 
the  play  held  by  the  author.  Dumas  fils,  Ibsen,  Brieux  prove 
the  truth  of  this  statement.  The  writer  of  the  satirical  or 
the  ethical  play,  obtruding  his  own  personality  as  in  the  case 
of  Ben  Jonson,  or  with  fine  impersonality  as  in  the  case  of 
Congreve  or  Moliere,  makes  his  feelings  ours.  It  is  an  ob- 
vious corollary  of  this  statement  that  the  emotions  aroused 
in  an  audience  need  not  be  the  same  as  those  felt  by  the 

^people  on  the  stage.  They  may  be  in  the  sharpest  contrast 
Any  one  experienced  in  drama  knows  that  the  most  intensely 
comic  effects  often  come  from  people  acting  very  seriously. 
In  Le  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme  (Act  I,  Scene  2),  the  morning 
reception  of  M.  Jourdain  affords  an  instance  of  this  in  his 
trying  on  of  costumes,  fencing,  and  lessons  in  dancing  and 
language.  Serious  entirely  for  M.  Jourdain  they  are  as  pre- 
sented by  Moliere,  exquisitely  comic  for  us.    tn^brigLthej 


44  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

dramatic  may  rouse  thp  samp.  all^,  ™  A^m  n^^rfl|^jnrT 

emotions  in  an  onlooker. 

NojL-nee44fee  emotion  rougcd-m-aa  audience-by-actor  or 
author  be  exactly  the  same  in  amount.  The  actress  who  aban- 
dons herself  to  the  emotions  of  the  part  she  is  playing  soon 
exhausts  her  nervous  vitality.  It  would  be  the  same  if  au- 
diences listening  to  the  tragic  were  permitted  to  feel  the 
scenes  as  keenly  as  the  figures  of  the  story.  On  the  other 
hand,  in  some  cases,  if  the  comic  figure  on  the  stage  felt  his 
comicality  as  strongly  as  the  audience  which  is  speechless 
with  laughter,  he  could  not  go  on,  and  the  scene  would  fail. 
Evidently,  an  audience  may  be  made,  as  the  dramatist  wills, 
to  feel  more  or  less  emotion  than  the  characters  of  the  play. 

That  it  is  duplication  of  emotion  to  the  same,  a  less,  or  a 
greater  extent  or  the  creation  of  contrasting  emotion  which 
underlies  all  drama,  from  melodrama,  riotous  farce  and 
even  burlesque  to  high-comedy  and  tragedy,  must  be  firmly 
grasped  if  a  would-be  dramatist  is  to  steer  his  way  clearly 
through  the  many  existing  and  confusing  definitions  of  dra- 
matic. For  instance,  Brunetiere  said,  "Drama  is  the  repre- 
sentation of  the  will  of  man  in  contrast  to  the  mysterious 
powers  of  natural  forces  which  limit  and  belittle  us;  it  is  one 
of  us  thrown  living  upon  the  stage,  there  to  struggle  against 
fatality,  against  social  law,  against  one  of  his  fellow  mortals, 
against  himself,  if  need  be,  against  the  emotions,  the  inter- 
ests, the  prejudices,  the  folly,  the  malevolence  of  those 
around  him."  l  That  is,  by  this  definition,  conflict  is  central 
in  drama.  But  we  know  that  in  recent  drama  particularly, 
the  moral  drifter  has  many  a  time  aroused  our  sympathy. 
Surely  inertness,  supineness,  stupidity,  and  even  torpor  may 
be  made  to  excite  emotion  in  an  audience.  Conflict  covers 
a  large  part  of  drama  but  not  all  of  it. 

Mr.  William  Archer,  in  his  Play-Making,  declares  that 

1  Etudet  Critiques,  vol.  vn,  p.  207. 


THE  ESSENTIALS  OF  DRAMA        45 

"a  crisis'*  is  the  central  matter  in  drama,  but  one  immedi- 
ately wishes  to  know  what  constitutes  a  crisis,  and  we  have 
defined  without  defining.  When  he  says  elsewhere  that  that  is 
dramatic  which  "by  representation  of  imaginary  personages 
is  capable  of  interesting  an  average  audience  assembled  in 
a  theatre,"  !  he  almost  hits  the  truth.  If  we  rephrase  this 
definition:  "That  is  dramatic  which  by  representation  of 
imaginary  personages  interests,  through  its  emotions,  an 
average  audience  assembled  in  a  theatre,"  we  have  a  defini- 
tion which  will  letter  stand  testing. 

Is  all  dramatic  material,  theatric?  No,  for  theatric  does 
not  necessarily  mean  sensational,  melodramatic,  artificial.  It 
should  mean,  and  it  will  be  so  used  in  this  book,  adafj^Jpr 
the  jmrjjosc  vj  the  tlieatre.  Certainly  all  dramatic  material, 
that  is,  material  which  arouses  or  may  be  made  to  arouse 
emotion,  is  not  fitted  for  use  in  the  theatre  when  first  it 
comes  to  the  hand  of  the  dramatist.  Undeniably,  the  famous 
revivalists,  Moody,  J.  B.  Gough,  Billy  Sunday,  have  worked 
from  emotions  to  emotions;  that  is,  they  have  been  dra- 
matic. Intentionally,  feeling  themselves  justified  by  the  ends 
obtained,  they  have,  too,  been  theatric  in  the  poor  and  popu- 
lar sense  of  the  word,  namely,  exaggerated,  melodramatic, 
sensational.  Yet  theatric  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word  these 
highly  emotional  speakers,  who  have  swept  audiences  out  of 
all  self-control,  have  not  been.  They  worked  as  speakers, 
not  as  playwrights.  Though  they  sometimes  acted  admirably, 
what  they  presented  was  in  no  sense  a  play.  To  accomplish 
in  play  form  what  they  accomplished  as  speakers,  that  is, 
to  make  the  material  properly  theatric,  would  have  required 
an  entire  reworking.  From  all  this  it  follows  that  even  ma- 
terial so  emotional  in  its  nature  as  to  be  genuinely  dramatic 
may  need  careful  reworking  if  it  is  to  succeed  as  a  play,  that 
is,  if  it  is  to  become  properly  theatric.   Drama,  then,  is  pres- 

»  Plau-Making,  p.  48.  William  Archer.  Small,  Maynard  &  Co.,  Boston. 


46  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

entation  of  an  individual  or  group  of  individuals  so  as  to 
V  move  an  audience  to  responsive  emotion  of  the  kind  desired 
by  the  dramatist  and  to  the  amount  required.  This  response 
must  be  gained  under  the  conditions  which  a  dramatist 
finds  or  develops  in  a  theatre;  that  is,  dramatic  material 
must  be  made  theatric  in  the  right  sense  of  the  word  before 
it  can  become  drama. 
Is  To  summarize :  accurately  conveyed  emotion  is  the  great 
I  [fundamental  in  all  good  drama.  It  is  conveyed  by  action, 
1  vcharacterization,  and  dialogue.  It  must  be  conveyed  in  a 
space  of  time,  usually  not  exceeding  two  hours  and  a  half, 
and  under  the  existing  physical  conditions  of  the  stage,  or 
with  such  changes  as  the  dramatist  may  bring  about  in  them. 
It  must  be  conveyed,  not  directly  through  the  author,  but 
indirectly  through  the  actors.  In  order  that  the  dramatic 
may  become  theatric  in  the  right  sense  of  the  word,  the 
dramatic  must  be  made  to  meet  all  these  conditions  success- 
fully. These  conditions  affect  action,  characterization,  and 
dialogue.  A  dramatist  must  study  the  ways  in  which  the 
dramatic  has  been  and  may  be  made  theatric:  that  is  what 
technique  means. 


CHAPTER  III 
FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT.  CLEARING  THE  WAY 

A  plat  may  start  from  almost  anything:  a  detached  thought 
that  flashes  through  the  mind;  a  theory  of  conduct  or  of  art 
which  one  firmly  believes  or  wishes  only  to  examine;  a  bit 
of  dialogue  overheard  or  imagined;  a  setting,  real  or  imag- 
ined, which  creates  emotion  in  the  observer;  a  perfectly 
detached  scene,  the  antecedents  and  consequences  of  which 
are  as  yet  unknown;  a  figure  glimpsed  in  a  crowd  which  for 
some  reason  arrests  the  attention  of  the  dramatist,  or  a  figure 
closely  studied;  a  contrast  or  similarity  between  two  people 
or  conditions  of  life;  a  mere  incident  —  noted  in  a  newspaper 
or  book,  heard  in  idle  talk,  or  observed;  or  a  story,  told  only 
in  the  barest  outlines  or  with  the  utmost  detail.  "How  do 
the  ideas  underlying  plays  come  into  being?  Under  the  most 
varying  conditions.  Most  often  you  cannot  tell  exactly  how. 
At  the  outset  you  waste  much  time  hunting  for  a  subject, 
then  suddenly  one  day,  when  you  are  in  your  study  or  even 
in  the  street,  you  bring  up  with  a  start,  for  you  have  found 
something.  The  piece  is  in  sight.  At  first  there  is  only  an 
impression,  an  image  of  the  brain  that  wholly  defies  words. 
If  you  were  to  write  out  exactly  what  you  feel  at  the  moment 
—  provided  that  were  at  all  possible  —  it  wrould  be  exceed- 
ingly difficult  to  indicate  its  attractiveness.  The  situation  is 
similar  to  that  when  you  dream  that  you  have  discovered 
an  idea  of  profound  significance;  on  awaking  you  write 
it  down;  and  on  rereading  perceive  that  it  is  commonplace  or 
stale.  Then  you  follow  up  the  idea;  it  tries  to  escape,  and 
when  captured  at  last,  still  resists,  ceaselessly  changing  form. 
You  wish  to  write  a  comedy;  the  idea  cries,  'Make  a  tragedy 


48  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

of  me,  or  a  story-play.'  At  last,  after  a  struggle  you  master 
the  idea."  1 

Back  of  La  Haine  of  Sardou  was  the  detached  thought  or 
query:  "Under  what  circumstances  will  the  profound  char- 
ity of  woman  show  itself  in  the  most  striking  manner?  In 
the  preface  to  La  Haine,  Sardou  has  told  how  his  plays  re- 
vealed themselves  to  him.  'The  problem  is  invariable.  It 
appears  as  a  kind  of  equation  from  which  the  unknown  quan- 
tity must  be  found.  The  problem  gives  me  no  peace  till  I 
have  found  the  answer.' " 2  Maeterlinck  wrote  several  of  his 
earlier  plays,  The  Intruder,  Princess  Maleine,  The  Blind,  to 
demonstrate  the  truth  of  two  artistic  theories  of  his:  that 
what  would  seem  to  most  theatre-goers  of  the  time  inaction 
might  be  made  highly  dramatic,  and  that  partial  or  complete 
repetition  of  a  phrase  may  have  great  emotional  effect. 
Magda  (Heimat)  of  Sudermann  was  written  to  illustrate  the 
possible  inherent  tragedy  of  Magda's  words:  "Show  them 
[people  thoroughly  sincere  and  honest  but  limited  in  experi- 
ence and  outlook]  that  beyond  their  narrow  virtues  there 
may  be  something  true  and  good."  In  Le  Fits  Naturel  of 
Dumas  the  younger,  the  illegitimate  son,  till  late  in  the  play, 
believes  his  father  to  be  his  uncle.  "The  logical  development 
would  seem  to  be  obvious :  father  and  son  falling  into  each 
other's  arms.  Dumas,  on  the  contrary,  arranged  that  the 
son  should  not  take  the  family  name,  and  that  the  play 
should  end  with  the  following  dialogue : 

The  Father.  You  will  surely  permit  me,  when  we  are  alone  to- 
gether, to  call  you  my  son. 
The  Son.  Yes,  uncle. 

It  seems  that  Montigny,  Director  of  the  Gymnase  Theatre, 
was  shocked  by  the  frigidity  of  this  denouement.  He  said  to 

1  Aufeurs  Dramatiques,  Pailleron.   A.  Binet  and  J.  Passey.  L'AnnSe  Psychologique,  1894, 
pp.  98-99. 

*  Sardou  and  the  Sardou  Plays,  p.  127.  Jerome  A.  Hart.  J.  B.  Lippincott  Co.,  Philadelphia. 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  49 

Dumas,  'Make  thorn  embrace  each  other;  the  play,  in  that 
.  will  have  at  least  thirty  additional  performances. '  Du- 
mas answered,  'I  can't  suppress  the  last  word.  It  is  for  that 
I  wrote  the  piece/"1  One  suspects  that  Lord  Dunsany  feels 
the  same  about  the  last  words  of  his  King  Argimenes.  The 
whole  play  apparently  illustrates  the  almost  irresistible  ef- 
fect of  habit  and  environment.  At  the  opening  of  the  play, 
Kin^  Argimenes  is  the  hungry,  overworked  slave  of  the  cap- 
tors who  deprived  him  of  his  kingship.  He  talks  eagerly  with 
his  fellow  slaves  of  the  King's  sick  dog,  who  will  make  a  rich 
feast  for  them  if  he  dies.  At  the  end,  Argimenes,  completely 
successful  in  his  revolt,  is  lord  of  all  he  surveys.  Surprised  by 
the  news  of  the  incoming  messenger,  he  suddenly  reverts  to 
a  powerful  desire  of  his  slavehood,  speaking  instinctively 
as  did  Lefils  of  Dumas. 

Enter  running,  a  Man  of  the  household  of  King  Darniak.   He  starts 
and  stares  aghast  on  seeing  King  Argimenes 

King  Argimenes.  Who  are  you? 
Man,  I  am  the  servant  of  the  King's  dog. 
King  Argimenes.  Why  do  you  come  here? 
Man.  The  King's  dog  is  dead. 

King  Argimenes  and  His  Men.  (Savagely  and  hungrily.)  Bones! 
King  Argimenes.  (Remembering  suddenly  what  has  happened  and 
where  he  is.)  Let  him  be  buried  with  the  late  King. 
Zarb.  (In  a  voice  of  protest.)  Majesty! 

Curtain* 

John  G.  Whittier's  poem,  Barbara  Frietchie,  provided  the 
picture  or  incident  which  started  Clyde  Fitch  on  his  play 
of  the  same  name.  In  Cyrano  de  Bergerac  ;  in  the  numerous 
adaptations  of  Vanity  Fair  usually  known  as  Becky  Sharp ; 
in  Peg  0'  My  Hearty  Rip  Van  Winkle,  and  Louis  XI,  it  is 
characterization  of  a  central  figure  which  was  probably  the 

1  Auleurt  Dramatiquet.  Dumas  fill,  p.  77. 

»  Five  Piays,  p.  86.  Lord  Dunsany.   Mitchell  Kennerley,  New  York. 


5o  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

point  of  departure  for  the  play.  Whether  the  source  was  an 
observed  or  an  imagined  figure,  a  character  from  history  or 
fiction,  the  problem  of  the  dramatist  was  like  that  of  Sardou 
in  Rabagas,  —  to  find  the  story  which  will  best  illustrate  the 
facets  of  character  of  the  leading  figure.  Sometimes,  as  in 
Nos  Bons  Villageoisy  by  the  same  author,  the  point  of  de- 
parture is  a  group  of  country  people  whose  manners  and 
customs  must  be  portrayed,  —  in  this  case  to  illustrate  the 
reception  these  rapacious  peasants  give  pleasure-seeking  Pa- 
risians, whom  they  detest  and  seek  to  turn  to  monetary  ad- 
vantage.1 Mr.  William  Archer  points  out  that  Strife  "arose 
in  Mr.  Galsworthy's  mind  from  his  actually  having  seen  in 
conflict  the  two  men  who  were  the  prototypes  of  Anthony 
and  Roberts,  and  thus  noted  the  waste  and  inefficacy  arising 
from  the  clash  of  strong  characters  unaccompanied  by  bal- 
ance. It  was  accident  that  led  him  to  place  the  two  men  in  an 
environment  of  capital  and  labour.  In  reality,  both  of  them 
were,  if  not  capitalists,  at  any  rate,  on  the  side  of  capital."  2 
In  Theodora,  Sardou  tried  to  reconstitute  an  historical  epoch 
which  interested  him.3  Still  another  source  is  this:  "The 
point  of  departure  of  the  plays  of  M.  de  Curel  is  psychologi- 
cal. What  allures  him  is  a  curious  situation  which  raises 
some  problem.  He  asks  himself,  *  What,  under  such  circum- 
stances, can  have  been  going  on  in  our  minds? '  This  was  the 
case  with  VEnvers  oVune  Sainte.  M.  de  Curel  was  thinking 
of  this :  A  woman  was  arrested  for  murder;  thanks  to  protec- 
tion in  high  places,  the  action  of  the  courts  was  held  up.  The 
woman  was  represented  to  be  insane  and  shut  up  in  an  asy- 
lum. Years  pass  by;  the  woman  succeeds  in  escaping,  and 
returning  home  secretly ,  suddenly  opens  the  door  of  the  room 
where  her  children  are  playing.  It  is  in  this  picture-like  form 
that  the  idea  of  the  piece  came  to  him,  a  picture  so  detailed 

1  Auteurs  Drama!ique8,  Sardou.   U  Annie  Psychologique,  1894,  p.  66. 

«  Play-Making,  pp.  18-19,  note.   William  Archer.  Small,  Maynard  &Co.,  Boston. 

9  Auteurs  Dramatiques,  Sardou,  p.  66. 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  51 

and  concrete  that  in  imagination  he  saw  the  astonishment 
of  the  children,  the  terror  of  the  nurse  calling  for  aid,  and 
the  husband  hurrying  to  prevent  his  wife  from  stepping  into 
the  room."1  The  origin  of  A  DoWs  House,  of  Ibsen,  we  have 
in  those,  his  first,  "Notes  for  the  Modern  Tragedy": 

Rome,  19.10,  78. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  spiritual  law,  two  kinds  of  conscience, 
one  in  man,  and  another,  altogether  different,  in  woman.  They  do 
not  understand  each  other;  but  in  practical  life  the  woman  is  judged 
by  man's  law,  as  though  she  were  not  a  woman  but  a  man. 

The  wife  in  the  play  ends  by  having  no  idea  of  what  is  right  or 
wrong;  natural  feeling  on  the  one  hand  and  belief  in  authority 
on  the  other  have  altogether  bewildered  her. 

A  woman  cannot  be  herself  in  the  society  of  the  present  day, 
which  is  an  exclusively  masculine  society,  with  laws  framed  by 
nun  and  with  a  judicial  system  that  judges  feminine  conduct  from 
a  masculine  point  of  view. 

She  has  committed  forgery  and  she  is  proud  of  it;  for  she  did 
it  out  of  love  for  her  husband,  to  save  his  life.  But  this  husband 
with  his  commonplace  principles  of  honour  is  on  the  side  of  the  law 
and  regards  the  question  with  masculine  eyes. 

Spiritual  conflicts.  Oppressed  and  bewildered  by  the  belief  in 
authority,  she  loses  faith  in  her  moral  right  and  ability  to  bring 
up  her  children.  Bitterness.  A  mother  in  modern  society,  like  cer- 
tain insects  who  go  away  and  die  when  she  has  done  her  duty  in  the 
propagation  of  the  race.  Love  of  life,  of  husband  and  children  and 
family.  Here  and  there  a  womanly  shaking  off  of  her  thoughts. 
Sudden  return  of  anxiety  and  terror.  She  must  bear  it  all  alone. 
The  catastrophe  approaches,  inexorably,  inevitably.  Despair,  con- 
flict, and  destruction 

(Krogstad  has  acted  dishonourably  and  thereby  become  well-to- 
do;  now  his  prosperity  does  not  help  him,  he  cannot  recover  his 
honour.)2 

It  is  a  truism,  first,  that  Shakespeare  wrote  story  plays, 
and  secondly  that  he  did  not  endeavor  to  imagine  a  new 
story.  Instead,  he  made  over  plays  grown  out  of  date  in  his 

*  AuUurs  Dramatique*,  M.  de  Curel,  p.  121. 

*  From  Ibsen's  Workshop.  Works,  vol.  x,  pp.  91-92.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


52  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

time,  or  adapted  to  the  stage  what  today  we  should  call 
novelettes  which  came  to  him  in  the  original  or  translation 
from  Italy,  Spain,  or  France.  Never  did  he  find  a  story  which 
seemed  to  him  fully  shaped  and  ready  for  the  stage.1  The 
tales  may  be  verbose  and  redundant;  they  may  be  mere  bare 
outlines  of  the  action,  little  if  at  all  characterized,  with  un- 
real dialogue;  or  they  may  provide  Shakespeare  with  only  a 
part  of  the  story  he  uses,  the  rest  coming  from  other  tales 
or  from  his  own  imagination.  Widely  different  as  they  are, 
however,  one  and  all  they  were  points  of  departure  for 
Shakespeare's  plays. 

No  matter  which  one  of  the  numerous  starting  points 
noted  may  be  that  of  the  dramatist,  he  must  end  in  story 
even  if  he  does  not  begin  with  it.  Suppose  that  he  starts  with 
a  character.  He  cannot  merely  talk  about  the  figure.  This 
might  produce  a  kind  of  history;  it  cannot  produce  drama. 
Inevitably,  he  will  try  to  illustrate,  by  means  of  action, 
some  one  dominant  characteristic,  or  group  of  characteristics, 
or  to  the  full,  the  many-sided  nature  of  the  man.  Very  nearly 
the  same  thing  may  be  said  of  any  attempt  to  dramatize 
an  historical  epoch.  Its  chief  characteristic  or  characteristics 
must  be  illustrated  in  action.  Some  story  is  inevitable.  Sup- 
pose, for  the  moment,  that  as  in  Morose  of  Ben  Jonson's 
Silent  Woman?  the  dramatist  is  stressing  one  characteristic, 
in  this  instance  morbid  sensitiveness  to  noise  of  any  kind. 
It  is  well  known  that  Jonson  cared  more  for  character  and 
less  for  story  than  most  dramatists  of  his  day.  Yet  ever  in 
this  play  we  find  the  story  of  the  tricking  of  Morose  by  his 
nephew,  Dauphine,  resulting  in  the  marriage  of  Morose  to 
Dauphine's  page.  The  reason  why  the  three  parts  of  Henry 
VI  of  Shakespeare  are  little  read  and  very  rarely  acted  is  not 
merely  that  they  are  somewhat  crude  early  work,  but  that 

'    l  Consult  the  pages  of  W.  C.  Hazlitt's  Shakespeare  Library,  a  source  book  of  his  plays 
for  proof  of  this. 
*  Belles-Lettres  Series.  F.  E.  Schelling,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  New  York. 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  53 

crowding  incident  of  all  kinds  lacks  the  massing  needed  to 
give  it  clearness  of  total  effect  to  round  it  out  into  a  well-told 
story.  Illustrative  incidents,  unrelated  except  that  histori- 
cally tlicy  happen  to  the  same  person,  and  that  historically 
they  arc  given  in  proper  sequence,  are  likely  to  be  confusing. 
We  need  the  Baedeker  of  a  biographer  or  an  historian  to 
emphasize  the  incidents  so  that  the  meaning  they  have  for 
him  may  be  clear  to  us.  The  first  part  of  Marlowe's  Tam- 
burlaine,1 when  quickly  read,  seems  but  a  succession  of  con- 
quests, not  greatly  unlike,  leading  to  his  control  of  the  world 
of  his  day.  He  who  sees  no  deeper  into  the  play  than  this 
praises  certain  scenes  or  passages,  but  finds  the  whole  rep- 
etitious and  confusing.  Closer  examination  shows,  however, 
that  behind  these  many  incidents  of  war  and  slaughter  is  an 
interest  of  Marlowe's  own  creation  which  keeps  us  waiting 
for,  anticipating  the  final  scene  —  the  desire  of  Zenocrate, 
at  first  captive  of  Tamburlaine,  and  later  his  devoted  wife, 
to  reconcile  her  father,  the  Soldan,  and  her  husband.  The 
satisfaction  of  her  desire  makes  the  spectacular  ending  of 
Part  I.  This  thread  of  interest  gives  a  certain  unity  to  the 
material  presented,  creates  a  slight  story  in  the  mass  of  in- 
cident, —  that  is,  something  with  a  beginning,  a  middle,  and 
an  end.  What  gives  unity  to  the  Second  Part  of  Tambur- 
laine is  the  idea  that,  even  as  Tamburlaine  declares  himself 
all-conquering,  he  faces  unseen  forces  against  which  he  can- 
not stand  —  the  physical  cowardice  of  his  son,  so  incompre- 
hensible to  him  that  he  kills  the  boy;  the  illness  and  death 
of  his  beloved  Zenocrate,  though  he  spares  nothing  to  save 
her;  his  own  growing  physical  weakness,  his  breakdown  and 
death  even  as  the  generals  he  has  never  called  on  in  vain 
before  prove  unable  to  aid  him.  Again  we  find  an  element  of 
story  to  unify  the  material. 

A  moment's  thought  will  show  that  if,  beginning  with 

1  Mermaid  Scries  or  Everyman's  Library. 


j-4  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

character  we  must  ultimately  reach  some  story,  however 
slight,  this  is  just  as  true  of  a  play  which  begins  with  an 
idea,  a  bit  of  dialogue,  a  detached  scene,  or  a  mere  setting. 
The  setting  must  be  the  background  of  some  incident.  This, 
in  turn,  must  be  part  of  a  story  or  we  shall  have  the  episodic 
form  already  found  undesirable.  Similarly,  a  detached  scene 
must  become  part  of  a  series  of  scenes.  Get  rid  of  the  effect 
of  episodic  scenes,  that  is,  give  them  unity,  and  lo,  we  have 
story  of  some  sort.  The  bit  of  dialogue  must  become  part  of 
a  larger  dialogue  belonging  to  characters  of  the  play;  and 
characterization,  as  we  have  seen,  results  in  some  story. 
The  artistic  or  moral  idea  of  the  dramatist  can  be  made  clear 
only  by  human  figures,  the  pawns  with  which  he  makes 
his  emotional  moves.  At  once  we  are  on  the  way  to  story. 
The  Red  Robe  1  of  Brieux  aims  to  illustrate  the  idea  that  in 
France  the  administration  of  justice  has  been  confused  by 
personal  ambition  and  personal  intrigue.  Is  it  without  story? 
Surely  we  have  the  story  of  Mouzon,  —  his  hopes,  his  con- 
sequent intrigues  for  advancement,  and  his  resulting  death. 
Here  is  a  group  of  incidents  developing  something  from  a  be- 
ginning to  an  end,  that  is,  providing  story.  The  play  con- 
tains, too,  the  story  of  Yanetta  and  Etchepare.  May  we  not 
say  that  the  Vagret  family  provides  a  third  story? 

A  play,  then,  may  begin  in  almost  anything  seen  or  thought. 
Speaking  broadly,  there  is  no  reason  why  one  source  is  bet- 
ter than  another.  The  important  point  is  that  something 
seen  or  thought  should  so  stir  the  emotions  of  the  drama- 
tist that  the  desire  to  convey  his  own  emotion  or  the  emo- 
tions of  characters  who  become  connected  with  what  he  has 
seen  or  thought,  forces  him  to  write  till  he  has  worked  out 
his  purpose.  Undoubtedly,  however,  he  who  begins  with  a 
story  is  nearer  his  goal  than  he  who  begins  with  an  idea  or 

1  Published  in  translation  by  Brentano;  also  in  Chief  Contemporary  Dramatists.  Thomas 
H.  Dickinson.  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  Boston. 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  55 

a  character.  Disconnected  episodes,  then,  may  possibly  make 
a  vaudeville  sketch  or  the  libretto  of  a  lower  order  of  musical 
comedy.  Unless  unified  in  story,  even  though  it  be  very  slight, 
tlu.v  cannot  make  a  play. 

This  point  needs  emphasis  for  two  reasons :  because  lately 
there  has  been  some  attempt  to  maintain  that  a  newer  type 
of  play  has  no  story,  and  because  many  a  beginnner  in 
dramatic  writing  seems  to  agree  with  Bayes  in  The  Rehearsal. 
"  What  the  devil's  a  plot  except  to  stuff  in  fine  things?"  In 
good  play-writing  it  is  not  a  question  of  bringing  together  as 
many  incidents  or  as  many  illustrations  of  character  as  you 
can  crowd  together  in  a  given  number  of  acts,  but  of  select- 
ing the  illustrative  incidents,  which,  when  properly  devel- 
oped will  produce  in  an  audience  the  largest  amount  of  the 
emotional  response  desired.  Later  this  error  will  be  consid- 
ered in  detail. 

Nor  will  the  recent  attempt  to  maintain  that  there  is  a 
new  type  of  play  with  "  absolutely  no  story  in  it "  stand  close 
analysis.  The  story  may  be  very  slight,  but  story  is  present 
in  all  such  plays.  Take  two  cases.  Mr.  William  Archer,  in 
his  excellent  book  on  Play-Making,1  sums  up  Miss  Elizabeth 
Baker's  Chains  2  as  follows:  "A  city  clerk,  oppressed  by  the 
deadly  monotony  of  his  life,  thinks  of  going  to  Australia  — 
and  doesn't  go :  that  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  the  action. 
Also,  by  way  of  underplot,  a  shopgirl,  oppressed  by  the 
deadly  monotony  and  narrowness  of  her  life,  thinks  of  es- 
caping from  it  by  marrying  a  middle-aged  widower  —  and 
doesn't  do  it."  He  then  declares  that  the  play  has  "abso- 
lutely no  story."  Does  any  reader  believe  that  this  play 
could  have  succeeded,  as  it  has,  if  the  audience  had  been 
left  in  any  doubt  as  to  why  the  city  clerk  and  the  shopgirl 
did  not  do  what  they  had  planned?  Yet  surely,  if  this  play 
makes  clear,  as  it  does,  why  these  two  people  changed  their 

1  Note,  p.  49.  »  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston;  Sidgwick  &  Jackson,  Ltd.,  London. 


56  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

minds,  it  must  have  story,  for  it  shows  us  people  thinking 
of  escaping  from  conditions  they  find  irksome,  and  explains 
why  they  give  up  the  idea.  If  that  isn't  story,  what  is  it? 

The  Weavers  of  Hauptmann,1  giving  us  somewhat  loosely 
connected  pictures  of  social  conditions  among  the  weavers 
of  Germany  in  the  forties  of  the  nineteenth  century,  is  said 
to  be  another  specimen  of  these  plays  without  story.  Now 
such  plays  as  The  Weavers  have  one  of  two  results :  they  rouse 
us  to  thought  on  the  social  conditions  represented,  or  they 
do  not.  To  succeed  they  must  rouse  us;  but  if  our  stirred 
feelings  are  to  lead  anywhere,  we  must  be  not  only  stirred 
but  clear  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  play.  There  have  been 
many  who  have  thought  that  The  Weavers,  though  it  stirs 
us  to  sympathy,  leaves  us  nowhere  because  not  clear.  Be 
this  as  it  may,  even  The  Weavers  has  some  story,  for  it  tells 
us  of  the  rise  and  development  of  a  revolt  of  the  weavers 
against  their  employers. 

Confusion  as  to  "  story  "  results  from  two  causes.  First, 
story  in  drama  is  often  taken  to  imply  only  complicated 
story.  To  say  that  every  play  must  have  complicated  story 
is  absurd.  To  say  that  every  play  must  have  some  story, 
though  it  may  be  very  slight,  is  undeniable.  Secondly,  story 
is  frequently  used  to  mean  plot,  and  plot  of  the  older  type, 
namely  a  play  of  skilfully  arranged  suspense  and  climax  in 
a  story  of  complicated  and  extreme  emotion.  It  is  the  second 
cause  which  underlies  Mr.  Archer's  curious  statement  about 
Chains.  He  says  that  the  play  has  no  "emotional  tendon 
worth  speaking  of,"  and  assumes  that  where  there  is  no 
emotional  tension  there  cannot  be  story.  Tension  in  the  sense 
of  suspense  the  play  has  little,  but  Mr.  Archer  states  that  it 
held  "an  audience  absorbed  through  four  acts"  and  stirred 
"them  to  real  enthusiasm."  In  these  words  he  grants  the 
emotional  response  of  the  audience.  Miss  Baker  substitutes 

1  Dramatic  Works,  vol.  i.    Ed.  Ludwig  Lewisohn.    B.  Huebsch.,  New  York. 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  57 

sympathy  for  the  characters  and  deft  dealing  with  ironic 
values  (see  the  ends  of  Act  II  and  Act  III)  for  complicated 
plot  and  dependence  on  suspense.  One  kind  of  play,  how- 
ever, no  more  precludes  story  than  another. 

What,  then,  is  the  difference  between  story  and  plot?  In 
treating  drama,  what  should  be  meant  by  story  is  what  a 
play  boils  down  to  when  you  try  to  tell  a  friend  as  briefly 
as  possible  what  it  is  about  —  what  Mr.  Knobloch  calls  the 
vital  active  part,  the  "verb"  of  the  play.  Here  is  the  story 
of  the  play,  Barbara  Frietchie,  as  it  re-shaped  itself  in  Clyde 
Fitch's  mind  from  Whittier's  poem:1   "A  Northern  man 

1  For  purposes  of  useful  comparison  the  lines  of  Whittier  which  suggested  the  subject  to 
Mr.  Fitch  are  appended. 

On  that  pleasant  morn  of  the  early  fall 
When  Lee  marched  over  the  mountain  wall; 

Over  the  mountains  winding  down. 
Horse  and  foot,  into  Frederick  town. 

Forty  flags  with  their  silver  stars, 
Forty  flags  with  their  crimson  bars, 

Flapped  in  the  moming  wind:  the  sun 
Of  noon  looked  down  and  saw  not  one. 

Up  rose  old  Barbara  Frietchie  then, 
Bowed  with  her  fourscore  years  and  ten; 

Bravest  of  all  in  Frederick  town, 

She  took  up  the  flag  the  men  hauled  down 

In  her  attic  window  the  staff  she  set. 
To  show  that  one  heart  was  loyal  yet. 

Up  the  street  came  the  rebel  tread, 
Stonewall  Jackson  riding  ahead. 

Under  his  slouched  hat  left  and  right 
He  glanced;  the  old  flag  met  his  sight.  . 

"Halt!"  —  the  dust-brown  ranks  stood  fast. 
"Fire!"  —  out  blazed  the  rifle-blast. 

It  shivered  the  window,  pane  and  sash; 
It  rent  the  banner  with  seam  and  gash. 

Quick,  as  it  fell  from  the  broken  staff 
Dame  Barbara  snatched  the  silken  scarf. 


58  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

loves  a  Southern  girl.  She  defies  her  father  and  runs  away  to 
marry  him.  By  a  sudden  battle  the  ceremony  is  prevented. 
The  minister's  house  is  seized  by  the  rebels,  and  soldiers 
stationed  there.  Barbara,  who  has  remained,  seeing  a  Con- 
federate sharpshooter  about  to  fire  on  her  lover  passing  with 
his  regiment,  drops  on  her  knees,  slowly  levels  a  gun  she 
has  seized,  and  shoots  the  Southerner.  Her  lover  is  wounded 
and  she  struggles  to  protect  him  from  her  father,  brother, 
and  rebel  suitor,  and  from  every  little  noise  which  might  cost 
his  life.  He  dies,  and  she,  now  wholly  wedded  to  the  North- 
ern cause,  waves  the  flag,  as  does  the  old  woman  in  Whittier's 
poem,  in  defiance  of  the  Southern  army,  and  is  shot  by  her 
crazy  rebel  lover."  1  Note  that  this  summary,  though  it 
makes  the  story  clear,  in  no  way  presents  the  scenes  of  the 
play  as  to  order,  suspense,  or  climax.  This  is  the  story,  not 
the  plot  of  Barbara  Frietchie.  Plot,  dramatically  speaking, 
is  the  story  so  moulded  by  the  dramatist  as  to  gain  for  him 
in  the  theatre  the  emotional  response  he  desires.  In  order 
to  create  and  maintain  interest,  he  gives  his  story,  as  seems 
to  him  wise,  simple  or  complex  structure;  and  discerning 
elements  in  it  of  suspense,  surprise,  and  climax,  he  reveals 

She  leaned  far  out  on  the  window-sill, 
And  shook  it  forth  with  a  royal  will. 

"Shoot,  if  you  must,  this  old  gray  head, 
But  spare  your  country's  flag,"  she  said. 

A  shade  of  sadness,  a  blush  of  shame, 
Over  the  face  of  the  leader  came; 

The  nobler  nature  within  him  stirred 
To  life  at  that  woman's  deed  and  word: 

"Who  touches  a  hair  of  yon  gray  head 
Dies  like  a  dog!  March  on!"  he  said. 

All  day  long  through  Frederick  street 
Sounded  the  tread  of  marching  feet: 

All  day  long  that  free  flag  tost 
Over  the  heads  of  the  rebel  host. 

*  The  Stage  in  America,  p.  90.   Norman  Hapgood.  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York. 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  59 

them  to  just  the  extent  necessary  for  his  purposes.  Plot  is 
story  proportioned  and  emphasized  so  as  to  accomplish,  un- 
der the  conditions  of  the  theatre,  the  purposes  of  the  drama- 
tist.  Compare  the  plot  of  Barbara  Frietchie  with  its  story. 

Act  I.  The  Frietchies'  front  stoop  facing  on  a  street  in 
the  town  of  Frederick,  which  is  in  the  hands  of  the  hated 
Yankees.  By  the  sentimental  talk  of  the  Southern  girls  sit- 
ting on  the  steps  we  learn  that  Barbara  Frietchie  is  carrying 
on  a  flirtation  with  Captain  Trumbull,  a  Union  officer, 
under  the  noses  of  her  outraged  family,  friends,  and  lover, 
Jack  Xegly.  After  a  short  scene,  Barbara  sends  him  off  re- 
buffed and  incensed.  She  is  then  left  alone  in  the  dusk.  Her 
brother,  Arthur  Frietchie,  steals  round  the  corner  of  the 
house,  wounded.  Barbara  takes  him  in  and  they  are  not  yet 
out  of  earshot  when  Captain  Trumbull  appears  to  call  on 
Barbara  much  to  the  wrath  of  the  Frietchies'  next-door 
neighbor,  Colonel  Negly.  The  Yankee  lover  summons  Bar- 
bara, and  dismisses  a  Union  searching  party,  swearing  on 
his  honor  that  there  are  no  rebels  in  the  Frietchie  home. 
Her  gratitude  for  this  leads  them  into  a  love  scene,  turbu- 
lent from  the  clash  of  sectional  sympathies,  terminating  in 
her  promise  to  become  his  wife.  No  sooner  has  the  be- 
trothal been  spoken  than  Barbara's  father,  incensed  to  it 
by  old  Colonel  Negly,  forbids  the  Union  man  his  house  and 
his  daughter.  To  complete  their  separation,  an  Orderly 
rushes  on,  announcing  the  departure  of  Captain  Trumbull's 
Company  for  Hagerstown  in  the  early  morning.  Leaning 
over  the  second-floor  balcony,  Barbara  tells  her  lover  that 
she  will  be  at  the  minister's  house  at  Hagerstown  the  next 
day  at  noon. 

Act  II.  The  Lutheran  minister's  house  at  Hagerstown. 
Barbara  and  her  friend,  Sue  Royce,  appear  all  aflutter  and, 
with  the  minister's  wife,  Mrs.  Hunter,  await  the  arrival  of 
the  bridegroom  and  the  divine.  News  comes  that  the  Con- 


60  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

federates  are  swooping  into  the  town,  and  Captain  Trum- 
bull bursts  into  the  room.  An  impassioned  love  scene  follows 
in  which  we  learn  that  Barbara's  sympathies  are  changing, 
so  much  so  that  she  presents  her  lover  with  an  old  Union  flag 
to  wear  next  his  heart.  Orders  for  the  soldier  to  join  his 
Company  part  Barbara  and  Trumbull.  The  Confederates 
are  heard  coming  down  the  street  as  he  leaves  the  house. 
Barbara's  brother  Arthur  breaks  into  the  house  and  sta- 
tions two  sharpshooters,  angered  deserters  from  Captain 
Trumbull's  Company,  at  the  windows,  Barbara  protesting. 
Arthur  goes  about  his  business  and  she  learns  that  Gelwex, 
the  deserter  with  the  greatest  grudge  against  her  lover,  is 
to  have  the  honor  of  picking  him  off  as  he  comes  down  the 
street.  She  gets  a  gun  for  herself.  Captain  Trumbull's  ex- 
cited voice  is  heard  outside  the  window.  The  deserter  takes 
careful  aim,  puts  his  finger  to  the  trigger,  and  is  shot  from 
behind  by  Barbara. 

Act  III.  Two  days  later.  The  front  hallway  of  the 
Frietchie  house.  The  Confederates  have  re-taken  the  town. 
Barbara  is  in  despair,  her  father  exultant,  not  speaking  to 
her  until  she  tells  him  that  she  is  not  married  to  the  Union 
officer.  She  pleads  for  news  of  her  beloved,  but  her  father 
gives  her  little  satisfaction.  He  has  just  gone  upstairs  when 
Arthur  comes  in,  supporting  a  wounded  and  fever-stricken 
man  whom  he  has  shot.  It  is  Captain  Trumbull.  Barbara 
takes  him  to  her  room,  and  when  her  father,  hearing  who 
the  wounded  man  is,  orders  him  thrown  into  the  street,  she 
pleads  with  all  her  strength  to  be  allowed  to  keep  him  with 
her.  The  old  man  yields,  and  when  the  Confederate  search- 
ing party  invades  the  house,  gives  his  word  for  its  loyalty. 
Barbara  has  placed  herself  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  deter- 
mined to  hold  the  fort  against  the  enemies  of  her  lover.  The 
doctor  has  insisted  on  absolute  quiet  for  him;  noise  may  kill 
him.   When  the  searching  party  has  been  turned  back,  she 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  61 

summons  new  strength  to  quiet  crazy  JackrNegly,  who  has 
icm  1  howling  his  victory.  He  insists  that  she  shall  marry 
him,  and  tries,  pistol  in  hand,  to  force  his  way  past  Barbara 
to  the  bedside  of  his  enemy  in  love  and  war.  By  sheer  force 
of  will  she  conquers  Negly  and  rushes  past  him  to  the  door 
of  the  room  where  her  lover  lies. 

Act  IV.  Scene  1.  The  next  morning.  Barbara's  room. 
Captain  Trumbull  lies  peacefully  on  the  bed.  Mammy  Lu, 
the  colored  nurse,  is  dozing  as  Barbara  enters.  They  listen 
for  the  invalid's  breathing,  hear  none,  and  find  that  he  is 
dead.  Half  crazed,  Barbara  snatches  the  bloody  flag  from 
his  bosom.   The  scene  changes. 

Scene  2.  The  balconied  stoop  in  front  of  the  house.  The 
Confederate  soldiers,  headed  by  Stonewall  Jackson,  are 
heralded  by  a  large  crowd !  Barbara,  hanging  the  Union  flag 
out  on  the  balcony,  is  discovered  by  the  mob,  who  begin 
to  stone  her,  urging  somebody  to  shoot.  The  lines  of  Whit- 
tier's  poem,  to  fit  the  circumstances  which  Clyde  Fitch  has 
made,  now  become: 

Shoot!  You've  taken  a  life  already  dearer  to  me  than  my  own. 
Shoot,  and  I'll  thank  you!  but  spare  your  flag!  l 

General  Jackson  orders  that  no  shot  be  fired  on  penalty  of 
death.  Her  crazed  lover,  Negly,  shoots  her  down  from  the 
street,  and  his  own  father  orders  the  execution  of  the  penalty. 

"In  many  cases,  no  doubt,  it  is  the  plain  and  literal  fact 
that  the  impulse  to  write  some  play  —  any  play  —  exists, 
so  to  speak,  in  the  abstract,  unassociated  with  any  particu- 
lar subject,  and  that  the  would-be  playwright  proceeds,  as 
he  thinks,  to  set  his  imagination  to  work  and  invent  a  story. 
But  this  frame  of  mind  is  to  be  regarded  with  suspicion. 
Few  plays  of  much  value,  one  may  guess,  have  resulted  from 
such  an  abstract  impulse.  Invention  in  these  cases  is  apt  to 

»  Barbara  Frietchie,  p.  126.  Clyde  Fitch.   Life  Publishing  Co.,  New  York. 


62  DRAMATIC  TECHNIOUE 

be  nothing  but  recollection  in  disguise,  the  shaking  of  a  ka- 
leidoscope formed  of  fragmentary  reminiscences.  I  remem- 
ber once  in  some  momentary  access  of  ambition,  trying  to 
invent  a  play.  I  occupied  several  hours  of  a  long  country 
walk,  in,  as  I  believed,  creating  out  of  nothing  at  all  a  dra- 
matic story.  When  at  last  I  had  modelled  it  into  some  sort 
of  coherency,  I  stepped  back  from  it  in  my  mind  as  it  were, 
and  contemplated  it  as  a  whole.  No  sooner  had  I  done  so 
than  it  began  to  seem  vaguely  familiar.  *  Where  have  I  seen 
this  story  before?'  I  asked  myself;  and  it  was  only  after 
cudgelling  my  brains  for  several  minutes  that  I  found  I  had 
re-invented  Ibsen's  Hedda  Gabler.  Thus,  when  we  think  we 
are  choosing  a  plot  out  of  the  void,  we  are  very  apt  to  be,  in 
fact,  ransacking  the  storehouse  of  memory."1 

There  is,  of  course,  another  group  of  would-be  playwrights 
who  care  nothing  for  freshness  of  subject  but  are  perfectly 
content  to  imitate  the  latest  success,  hoping  thereby  to  win 
immediate  notoriety,  or  what  interests  them  even  more, 
immediate  money  return.  Undoubtedly  a  man  may  take  a 
subject  just  presented  in  a  successful  play  and  so  re-shape  it 
by  the  force  of  his  own  personality  as  to  make  it  an  original 
work  of  power.  Ordinarily,  however,  these  imitators  should 
remember  the  old  adage  about  the  crock  which  goes  so  often 
to  the  well  that  at  last  it  comes  back  broken.  He  who  merely 
imitates  may  have  some  temporary  vogue,  and  dramatic 
technique  may  help  him  to  win  it,  but  whatever  is  very  pop- 
ular soon  gives  way  to  something  else,  for  the  fundamental 
law  of  art,  as  of  life,  is  change.  He  who  is  content  merely 
to  imitate  must  be  content  with  impermanency.  It  is  the 
creator  and  perfecter  whom  we  most  remember.  Even  the 
creator  or  the  perfecter  we  remember.  The  mere  imitators 
have  their  brief  day  and  pass.  Today  we  still  read  the  work 
of  the  initiators,  Lyly,  Greene,  Kyd.  With  pleasure  we  turn 

*  Play-Making,  pp.  24-25.  William  Archer.  Small,  Maynard  &  Co.,  Boston. 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  63 

the  pages  of  Marlowe,  Jonson,  and  Fletcher,  not  to  mention 
Shakespeare.  The  dozens  of  mere  imitators  who  had  their 
little  day  are  known  only  as  names. 

The  ambitious  but  inexperienced  writer  of  plays  worries 
himself  much  in  hunting  a  novel  subject,  —  and  in  vain.  Far 
afield  he  goes,  seeking  the  sensational,  the  bizarre,  the  occult, 
for  new  emotions  and  situations,  failing  to  recognize  that 
the  emotional  life  of  yesterday,  today,  and  tomorrow  can  dif- 
fer little  fundamentally.  Civilization  refines  or  deteriorates, 
kingdoms  rise  and  fall,  languages  develop  and  pass,  but  love 
of  man  and  woman,  of  friend  for  friend,  ambition,  jealousy, 
envy,  selfishness,  —  these  emotions  abide.  A  book  has  been 
published  to  show  that  there  are  but  thirty-six  possible  dra- 
matic situations.  It  is  based  on  the  dictum  of  the  Italian 
dramatist,  Gozzi,  that  "there  could  be  only  thirty-six  tragic 
situations.  Schiller  gave  himself  much  trouble  to  find  more, 
but  was  unable  to  find  as  many."  l  The  very  chapter  head- 
ings of  the  book  mentioned  prove  that  the  number  of  pos- 
sible dramatic  situations  is  a  mere  matter  of  subdivision: 
"Vengeance  Pursuing  Crime";  "Madness";  "Fatal  Impru- 
dence " ;  " Loss  of  Property  " ;  "Ambition."  Obviously,  there 
are  many  different  kinds  of  vengeance,  as  the  person  pur- 
suing the  crime  is  a  hired  detective,  a  wronged  person,  an 
officer  of  state,  etc.  Moreover,  differing  conditions  surround- 
ing the  crime,  as  well  as  the  character  of  the  avenger,  would 
make  the  vengeance  sought  different.  The  same  may  be 
said  of  the  other  chapter-headings.  It  may  be  possible  to 
a^ree  on  the  smallest  number  of  dramatic  situations  possi- 
ble, but  disagreement  surely  lies  beyond  that,  for,  accord- 
ing to  our  natures,  we  shall  wish  to  subdivide  and  increase 
the  number.  Just  what  that  smallest  number  is,  here  is  un- 
important. The  important  fact  is:  keen  thinkers  about  the 
drama  agree  that  the  stuff  from  which  it  is  made  may  be  put 

1  Let  36  Situation  Dramatiquet.   Georges  Polti.  Edition  du  Mercure  de  France,  1895,  p.  1. 


64  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

into  a  small  number  of  categories.  This  rests  on  the  belief 
that  the  emotions  we  feel  today  are  the  same  old  emotions, 
though  we  may  feel  them  in  greater  or  less  degree  because 
of  differences  in  climate,  civilization  or  ideals.  Modern  in- 
vention, of  course,  affects  our  emotional  life.  It  is  now  a 
commonplace  that  invention  has  quite  changed  the  heroism 
of  warfare  from  what  it  was  even  a  generation  ago.  It  is  still 
heroism,  but  under  conditions  so  different  that  it  needs 
wholly  different  treatment  dramatically.  In  Restoration 
Comedy  the  rake  was  the  hero.  The  audience,  viewing  life 
through  his  eyes  saw  the  victims  of  his  selfishness  as  fools 
or  as  people  who,  in  any  combat  of  wits  with  the  hero,  de- 
servedly came  off  defeated.  Interest  in  one's  fellow  man,  a 
more  just  sense  of  life  had  developed  in  the  early  years  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  This  wholly  changed  the  emphasis, 
and  gave  birth  to  the  Sentimental  Comedy.  The  characters, 
even  the  story,  of  this  newer  comedy  are  almost  identical 
with  the  Restoration  Comedy,  but  the  material  is  so  treated 
that  our  sympathies  go  to  the  unfortunate  wife  of  The  Care- 
less Husband,  not  to  the  man  himself,  as  they  would  have 
a  generation  before.  In  The  Provoked  Husband  l  it  is  the 
point  of  view  of  that  husband  as  to  Lady  Townley,  though 
she  is  presented  in  all  her  charm  and  gaiety,  with  which 
we  are  left. 

The  sentimentality  of  the  present  day  is  not  the  sentimen- 
tality of  1850  to  1870.  The  higher  education  of  women,  the 
growth  of  suffrage,  the  prevailing  wide  discussion  of  sci  m- 
tific  matters  have  not  taken  sentimentality  from  us,  but  have 
changed  its  look.  Because  of  changes  in  costume  and  custom 
it  even  appears  more  different  than  it  really  is.  A  perfect 
illustration  of  the  point  is  Milestones,2  of  Mr.  Edward  Knob- 
loch.  Three  generations  live  before  our  eyes  the  same  story, 

1  For  texts  of  The  Careless  Husband  and  The  Provoked  Husband,  both  plays  by  Colley 
Cibber,  see  Works,  vols,  n  and  iv,  1777. 
*  Methuen  &  Co.,  Ltd.,  London. 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  65 

but  how  differently  because  of  changed  costumes,  ideas,  and 
immediate  surroundings.  In  French  drama,  the  wet-nurse 
is  no  new  figure  as  one  employee  in  a  household  where  we 
arc  watching  the  comedy  or  the  tragedy  of  the  employers. 
Brieux  was  the  first,  however,  to  study  the  emotions  of  such 
a  household  through  the  nurse,  making  her  feelings  of  prime 
consequence.  Hence,  Les  Remplagantes.1  The  whole  situa- 
tion is  summed  up  by  William  Sharp  (Fiona  Macleod)  in  his 
Introduction  to  The  House  of  Usna  : 

The  tradition  of  accursed  families  is  not  the  fantasy  of  one  drama- 
tist,  or  of  one  country  or  of  one  time.  .  .  . 

Whether  the  poet  turn  to  the  tragedy  of  the  Theban  dynasty,  or 
to  the  tragedy  of  the  Achaian  dynasty,  or  to  the  tragedy  of  Lear, 
or  to  the  Celtic  tragedy  of  the  House  of  Fionn,  or  to  the  other  and 
less  familiar  Gaelic  tragedy  of  the  House  of  Usna  —  whether  one 
turn  to  these  or  to  the  doom  of  the  House  of  Malatesta,  or  to  the 
doom  of  the  House  of  Macbeth,  or  to  the  doom  of  the  House  of 
Ravenswood,  one  turns  in  vain  if  he  be  blind  and  deaf  to  the  same 
elemental  forces  as  they  move  in  their  eternal  ichor  through  the 
blood  that  has  today's  warmth  in  it,  that  are  the  same  powers 
though  they  be  known  of  the  obscure  and  the  silent,  and  are  com- 
mitted like  wandering  flame  to  the  torch  of  a  ballad  as  well  as 
to  the  starry  march  of  the  compelling  words  of  genius;  are  of  the 
same  dominion,  though  that  be  in  the  shaken  hearts  of  islesfolk  and 
mountaineers,  and  not  with  kings  in  Mykenai,  or  by  the  thrones 
of  Tamburlaine  and  Aurungzebe,  or  with  great  lords  and  broken 
nobles  and  thanes.  .  .  . 

...  I  know  one  who  can  evoke  modern  dramatic  scenes  by  the 
mere  iterance  of  the  great  musical  names  of  the  imagination. 
Menelaos,  Helen,  Klytemaistra,  Andromache,  Kassandra,  Orestes, 
Blind  Oidipus,  Elektra,  Kreusa,  and  the  like.  This  is  not  because 
these  names  are  in  themselves  esoteric  symbols.  My  friend  has  not 
seen  any  representation  of  the  Agamemnon  or  the  Choephoroi,  of 
Aias  or  Oidipus  at  Kolonos,  of  Elektra  or  Ion,  or  indeed  of  any 
Greek  play.  But  he  knows  the  story  of  every  name  mentioned  in 
each  of  the  dramas  of  the  three  kings  of  Greek  Tragedy.  .  .  .  And 
here,  he  says,  is  his  delight.    "For  I  do  not  live  only  in  the  past 

*  Not  translated.  Edition  in  French,  P.  V.  Stock,  Paris. 


66  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

but  in  the  present,  in  these  dramas  of  the  mind.  The  names  stand 
for  the  elemental  passions,  and  I  can  come  to  them  through  my  own 
gates  of  today  a£  well  as  through  the  ancient  portals  of  Aischylos 
or  Sophocles  or  Euripides."  .  .  . 

It  is  no  doubt  in  this  attitude  that  Racine,  so  French  in  the  accent 
of  his  classical  genius,  looked  at  the  old  drama  which  was  his  inspira- 
tion: that  Mr.  Swinburne  and  Mr.  Bridges,  so  English  in  the  ac- 
cent of  their  genius,  have  looked  at  it;  that  Echegaray  in  Spain, 
looked  at  it  before  he  produced  his  troubled  modern  Elektra  which 
is  so  remote  in  shapen  thought  and  coloured  semblance  from  the 
colour  and  idea  of  its  prototype;  that  Gabriele  D'Annunzio  looked 
at  it  before  he  became  obsessed  with  the  old  terrible  idea  of  the 
tangled  feet  of  Destiny,  so  that  a  tuft  of  grass  might  withhold  or  a 
breath  from  stirred  dust  empoison,  and  wrote  that  most  perturbing 
of  all  modern  dramas,  La  Citta  Morta.1 

The  drama  must,  then,  go  on  treating  over  and  over  emo- 
tions the  same  in  kind.  Real  novelty  comes  in  presenting 
them  as  they  affect  men  and  women  who  are  in  ideas,  hab- 
its, costume,  speech,  and  environment  distinctly  of  their 
time.  Their  expression  of  the  old  elemental  emotions 
brings  genuine  novelty.  Usually  it  is  not  through  an  in- 
cident or  an  episode  obviously  dramatic,  but  through  the 
characters  involved  that  one  understands  and  presents 
what  is  novel  in  the  dramatic.  Feeling  this  strongly,  Mr. 
Galsworthy  asserts  "Character  is  plot."  2 

So  long  as  characters,  ideas,  and  treatment  seem  to  the 
public  fresh,  they  even  have  a  weakness  for  a  story  they  have 
heard  before.  Recall  the  drama  of  iEschylus,  Sophocles,  and 
Euripides  in  which  the  dramatists  shared  wTith  their  audi- 
ences a  knowledge  of  the  stories  of  the  gods  which  was  theirs 
by  education  and  from  repeated  treatment  by  the  dramatists 
of  the  day.  That  public  asked,  not  new  stories,  but  newness 
of  effect  because  old  stories  which  were  almost  fixed  subjects 

1  Foreword  to  The  House  of  Uma.  Fiona  Macleod.  Published  by  Thomas  B.  Mosher, 
Portland,  Maine,  1903. 

2  Some  Platitildes  Concerning  Drama.  John  Galsworthy.  Atlantic  Monthly,  December, 
1909. 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  67 

for  their  dramatists  were  given  individuality  of  treatment.  In 
a  modified  sense  this  was  true  of  the  Elizabethan  public. 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  Lear,  probably  Titus  Andronicus,  and 
possibly  Julius  Caesar  Londoners  had  known  as  plays  just 
passing  from  popularity  when  Shakespeare  made  them  over. 
litre  again,  it  was  freshness  of  treatment  through  better 
characterization,  richer  poetry,  and  finer  technique,  not 
creative  story,  which  won  the  public  to  Shakespeare.  Nor 
is  this  attitude  a  thing  of  the  past.  Think  of  the  delight  with 
which  the  public  today  watches  the  rejuggling  of  old  ele- 
ments of  plot  in  the  rapid  succession  of  popular  musical 
comedies,  grateful  for  whatever  element  of  freshness  they 
may  find  in  the  total  product.  Was  it  the  story,  or  the 
characterization  and  setting,  indeed  all  that  went  with 
the  treatment  of  the  story,  which  in  Peg  o'  My  Heart  and 
Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings  won  these  plays  popularity?  Seek 
for  novelty,  then,  not  by  trying  to  invent  some  new  story, 
but  in  an  idea,  the  setting  of  the  play,  the  technical  treat- 
ment given  it,  above  all  the  characters.  The  last,  when 
studied,  are  likely  so  to  reshape  the  story  which  first  pre- 
sents itself  to  the  imagination  as  to  make  it  really  novel. 
Does  the  freshness  of  the  story  of  the  Duke,  Olivia,  and 
Viola  in  Twelfth  Night  rest  on  the  story  as  Shakespeare 
found  it  in  Barnabe  Riche's  book,1  or  on  the  characteriza- 
tion Shakespeare  gave  these  suggested  figures  and  the  ef- 
fect of  their  developed  characters  on  the  story  as  he  found 
it?  Surely  the  latter. 

Another  common  fallacy  of  young  dramatists  is  that  what 
has  happened  is  better  dramatic  material  than  what  is 
imagined.  Among  the  trite  maxims  a  dramatist  should 
remember,  however,  is:  "Truth  is  often  stranger  than  fic- 
tion." The  test  for  a  would-be  writer  of  plays,  choosing 
among  several  starting  points,  should  be,  not,  "  Is  this  true?  " 

»  Shakespeare  Library,  vol  i,  pp.  387-412.  Ed.  W.  C.  Hazlitt. 


68  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

but  "Will  my  audience  believe  it  true  on  sight  or  because  of 
the  treatment  I  can  give  it?"  "Aristotle  long  ago  decided 
how  far  the  tragic  poet  need  regard  historical  accuracy.  He 
does  not  make  use  of  an  event  because  it  really  happened, 
but  because  it  happened  so  convincingly  that  for  his  present 
purpose  he  cannot  invent  conditions  more  convincing. "  1 
Any  reader  of  manuscript  plays  knows  that  again  and  again, 
when  he  has  objected  to  something  as  entirely  improbable, 
he  has  been  told  indignantly:  "Why,  you  must  accept  that, 
for  it  happened  exactly  like  that  to  my  friend,  Smith."  On 
the  other  hand,  who  refuses  to  see  The  Merchant  of  Venice 
because  of  the  inherent  improbability  of  the  exaction  of  the 
pound  of  flesh  by  Shy  lock?  Highly  improbable  it  is,  but 
Shakespeare  makes  this  demand  come  from  a  figure  so  hu- 
man in  all  other  respects  that  we  accept  it.  A  subject  is  not 
to  be  rejected  because  true  or  false.  Every  dramatic  subject 
must  be  presented  with  the  probable  human  experience,  the 
ethical  ideas,  and  the  imaginativeness  of  the  public  in  mind. 
To  a  dramatist  all  subjects  are  possible  till,  after  long  wres- 
tling with  the  subject  chosen,  he  is  forced  to  admit  that, 
whether  originally  true  or  false,  he  cannot  make  it  seem 
probable  to  an  audience.  Facts  are,  of  course,  of  very  great 
value  in  drama,  but  if  they  are  to  convince  a  theatrical  pub- 
lic, the  dramatist  must  so  present  them  that  they  shall  not 
run  completely  counter  to  what  an  audience  thinks  it  knows 
about  life. 

Nor  should  a  person  who  knows  absolutely  nothing  of  the 
theatre  attempt  to  write  plays.  He  should  go  to  see  plays 
enough  to  know  how  long  a  performance  usually  lasts,  waits 
between  the  acts  included,  say  two  hours  and  a  half  to  two 
hours  and  three  quarters;  to  know  about  how  long  an  act 
usually  takes  in  playing;  to  gain  some  idea  of  the  relation  in 
time  between  the  written  or  printed  page  and  the  time  in 

*  Hamburg  Dramaturgy,  p.  270.    Leasing.   Bohn  ed. 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  69 

acting;  to  understand  that,  in  general,  a  small  cast  is  pref- 
erable to  a  large  one;  to  know  that  the  limited  space  of  the 
e  makes  some  effects  so  difficult  as  to  be  undesirable. 
This  is  to  have  ordinary  common  sense  about  the  theatre. 
Otherwise,  what  he  puts  on  paper  will  be  practically  sure  of 
immediate  rejection  because  the  manuscript  proves  that  the 
writer  has  either  not  been  in  the  theatre,  or  being  there,  has 
been  wholly  unobservant.  The  following  quotation  seems 
almost  fantastic,  but  the  experience  of  the  writer  in  reading 
dramatic  manuscripts  fully  bears  it  out: 

Many  of  the  manuscripts  that  are  sent  to  the  New  York  mana- 
gers are  such  impossible  oddities  that  few  readers  would  regard  a 
description  of  them  as  really  accurate.  It  was  the  privilege  of  the 
writer  to  look  over  a  collection  of  "plays"  that  have  been  mailed 
recently  to  several  of  the  theatrical  offices,  and,  among  the  num- 
ber, lie  came  across  a  dozen  that  were  each  about  fifteen  to  twenty 
pages  in  length.  This  included  the  scenic  descriptions  and  stage 
directions.  Such  "  plays,"  if  enacted,  would  be  of  about  ten  to 
eleven  minutes'  duration  instead  of  two  and  a  quarter  hours. 
Three  manuscripts  called  for  from  ninety  to  one  hundred  charac- 
ters, and  from  nine  to  fourteen  different  scenes.  Eight  manu- 
scripts were  divided  into  nine  acts  each  and,  judging  from  their 
thickness,  would  have  run  on  for  days,  after  the  fashion  of  a  Chi- 
nese drama.  One  "play"  was  laid  in  the  year  2200  a.d.,  and  called 
for  twelve  actors  to  portray  "  the  new  race  of  men  "  —  each  man  to 
be  at  least  seven  feet  tall.  These  characters  were  to  make  all  their 
entrances  and  exits  in  airships.  Several  manuscripts  that  the 
writer  examined  would  have  required  professional  strong  men  in 
their  enactment,  so  difficult  were  the  physical  feats  outlined  for 
some  of  the  actors.  A  great  number  of  "modern  dramas"  included 
a  ream  of  colloquialisms  and  anachronisms  intermixed  with  Louis 
XV  situations.  And  one  manuscript,  entitled  "Love  in  All  Ages" 
called  for  twelve  different  acts  with  a  new  group  of  nine  differently 
built  actors  in  each.1 

A  stage  direction  which  ran  something  like  this  is  the  most 
naive  in  the  experience  of  the  writer.  "Germs  of  a  loconio- 

*  The  United  State*  qf  PlayvrighU,  Henry  Savage.  The  Bookman,  September,  1909. 


70  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

tive,  a  cathedral,  etc.,  detach  themselves  in  an  unknown 
manner  from  the  walls  and  float  airily,  merrily  about  the 
room."  Impossible?  Possibly  not  for  a  genius  of  a  stage 
manager.  Likely  to  recommend  the  play  to  a  manager  try- 
ing to  judge  from  a  manuscript  the  dramatic  sense  of  its 
unknown  author?  Hardly. 

Granted  then  that  a  would-be  playwright  has  acquired 
ordinary  common  sense  about  the  theatre  and  has  some  point 
of  departure,  how  does  he  move  from  it  to  plot?  First,  by 
taking  time  enough,  by  avoiding  hurry.  Let  any  would-be 
dramatist  get  rid  promptly  of  the  idea  that  good  plays  are 
written  in  a  rush.  It  is  perfectly  true  that  the  mere  writing 
out  of  a  play  has  often  been  done  in  what  seems  an  amazingly 
short  time,  —  a  few  weeks,  days,  or  even  hours.  However,  in 
every  case  of  rapid  composition,  as  for  instance  Sheridan's 
Rivals,  which  was  put  on  paper  in  very  brief  time,  the 
author  has  either  mulled  his  material  for  a  long  time  or  was 
so  thoroughly  conversant  with  it  that  it  required  no  careful 
thinking  out  at  the  moment  of  composition.  In  The  Rivals 
Sheridan  drew  upon  his  intimate  knowledge  for  many  years 
of  the  people  and  the  gossip  of  the  Pump  Room  at  Bath. 
Mr.  H.  A.  Jones  has  more  than  once  testified,  "I  mull  long 
on  my  plot,  sometimes  a  year,  but  when  I  have  it,  the  rest 
(the  mere  writing  out)  is  easy."  Sardou  turned  out  a  very 
large  number  of  plays.  Nor  are  his  plays,  seemingly,  such  as 
to  demand  the  careful  preparation  required  for  the  drama 
of  ideas  or  the  drama  more  dependent  on  characterization 
than  incident.  Yet  he  worked  very  carefully  at  all  stages, 
from  point  of  departure  to  final  draft.  "Whenever  an  idea 
occurred  to  Sardou,  he  immediately  made  a  memorandum 
of  it.  These  notes  he  classified  and  filed.  For  example,  years 
before  the  production  of  Thermidor  he  had  the  thought  of 
one  day  writing  such  a  play.  Gradually  the  character  of 
Fabienne  shaped  itself;  Labussiere  was  devised  later  to  fit 


FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT  71 

uolin.  Everything  that  he  read  about  that  epoch  of  the 
Prench  Revolution,  and  the  ideas  which  hil  reading  inspired, 
he  wrote  down  in  the  form  of  rough  notes.  Engravings,  maps, 
prints,  and  other  documents  of  the  time  he  carefully  col- 
lected. Memoirs  and  histories  he  annotated  and  indexed, 
filing  away  the  index  references  in  his  file  cases,  or  dossiers. 
At  the  time  of  his  death,  Sardou  had  many  hundreds  of  these 
dossiers,  old  and  new.  Some  of  the  older  ones  had  been 
worked  up  into  plays,  while  the  newer  ones  were  merely  raw 
material  for  future  dramas.  When  theideaof  a  play  hadmeas- 
urably  shaped  itself  in  his  mind  he  wrote  out  a  skeleton  plot 
which  he  placed  in  its  dossier.  There  it  might  lie  indefinitely. 
In  this  shape  Thermidor  remained  for  nearly  twenty  years, 
and  Theodora  for  ten.  When  he  considered  that  the  time  was 
ripe  for  one  of  his  embryonic  plays,  Sardou  would  take  out 
that  particular  dossier,  read  over  the  material,  and  lay  it 
aside  again.  After  it  had  fermented  in  his  brain  for  a  time,  he 
would,  if  the  inspiration  seized  him,  write  out  a  scenario. 
After  this,  he  began  the  actual  writing  of  the  play."  1 

Late  in  the  seventeenth  century,  one  of  the  most  prolific 
of  English  playwrights,  John  Dryden,  contracted  to  turn  out 
four  plays  a  year.  He  failed  completely  to  carry  out  his 
promise.  Some  dramatists  of  a  much  more  recent  day  should 
attribute  to  the  speed  with  which  they  have  turned  out  plays 
their  repeated  failures,  or,  after  early  successes,  their  wTaning 
hold  on  the  public.  Every  dramatist  should  keep  steadily  in 
mind  the  words  of  the  old  French  adage:  "Time  spares  not 
that  on  which  time  hath  been  spared."  Time,  again  time, 
and  yet  again  time  is  the  chief  element  in  successful  writing 
of  plays. 

A  wandering,  erratic  career  is  forbidden  the  dramatist. 
Back  in  the  eighteenth  century  Diderot  stated  admirably 
the  qualities  a  dramatist  must  have  if  he  is  to  plot  well. 

»  Sardou  and  the  Sardou  Plays,  p.  125.  J.  A.  Hart  J.  B.  Lippincott  &  Co.,  Philadelphia. 


72  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

"He  must  get  at  the  heart  of  his  material.  He  must  con- 
sider order  and  unity.  He  must  discern  clearly  the  moment 
at  which  the  action  should  begin.  He  must  recognize  the 
situations  which  will  help  his  audience,  and  know  what  it 
is  expedient  to  leave  unsaid.  He  must  not  be  rebuffed  by 
difficult  scenes  or  long  labor.  Throughout  he  must  have 
the  aid  of  a  rich  imagination. "  l  Selection,  Proportion,  Em- 
phasis, Movement,  —  all  making  for  clearness,  —  these  as 
the  words  of  Diderot  suggest,  are  what  the  dramatist 
studies  in  developing  his  play  from  Subject,  through  Story9 
to  Plot. 

>  D$  la  Poltie  Dramatique.  Diderot.    (Euvret,  vol.  vu,  p.  321.  Gamier  Freres.  Paris. 


CHAPTER  IV 

FROM  SUBJECT  THROUGH  STORY  TO  PLOT.   CLEARNESS 
THROUGH  WISE  SELECTION 

Dumas  the  younger,  at  twenty,  wishing  to  write  his  first 
play,  asked  his  father  for  the  secret  of  a  successful  play.  That 
man  of  many  successful  novels  and  plays  replied:  "It's 
very  simple:  First  Act,  clear;  Third  Act,  short;  and  every- 
where, interest."  Though  play- writing  is  not  always  so  easy 
a  matter  as  when  a  man  of  genius  like  Dumas  the  elder  wrote 
the  relatively  simple  romantic  dramas  of  his  day,  he  em- 
phasized one  of  the  fundamentals  of  drama  when  he  called 
for  clearness  in  the  first  act.  He  might  well  have  called  for 
it  everywhere.  First  of  all,  a  dramatist  who  has  found  his 
point  of  departure  must  know  just  what  it  means  to  him, 
what  he  wants  to  do  with  it.  Is  he  merely  telling  a  story  for 
its  own  sake,  satisfied  if  the  incidents  be  increasingly  inter- 
esting till  the  final  curtain  falls?  Is  he  writing  his  play, 
above  all,  for  one  special  scene  in  it,  as  was  Mr.  H.  A. 
Jones,  in  Mrs.  Dane's  Defence,1  in  its  third  act?  Does  he 
merely  wish  to  set  people  thinking  about  conditions  of  to- 
day, to  write  a  drama  of  ideas,  like  Mr.  Galsworthy  in 
The  Pigeon,2  or  M.  Paul  Loyson,  in  The  Apostle  ?  3  Has  he, 
like  Brieux  in  Damaged  Goods  4  or  The  Cradle,5  an  idea  he 
wishes  to  convey,  and  so  must  write  a  problem  play?  Is  his 
setting  significant  for  one  scene  only  or  has  it  symbolic 
values  for  the  whole  play?    As  Dumas  the  younger  well 

i  Samuel  French,  New  York. 

1  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 

1  Drama  League  Series,  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  New  York. 

«  Brentano,  New  York. 

•  Lt  Berceau.    P.  V.  Stock,  Paris. 


74  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

said,  "How  can  you  tell  what  road  to  take  unless  you  know 
where  you  are  going?"1 

The  trouble  with  most  would-be  dramatists  is  that  they 
make  too  much  of  the  mere  act  of  writing,  too  little  of  the 
/  thinking  preliminary  to  composition  and  accompanying  it. 
With  the  point  of  departure  clearly  in  mind,  seeing  some 
characters  who  immediately  connect  themselves  with  the 
subject,  forecasting  some  scenes  and  a  few  bits  of  dialogue, 
they  rush  to  their  desks  before  they  see  with  equal  clearness, 
we  will  not  say  the  plot  but  even  the  story  necessary  for  the 
proposed  play.  What  is  the  result?  "  They  have  a  gen- 
eral view  of  their  subject,  they  know  approximately  the  sit- 
uations, they  have  sketched  out  the  characters,  and  when 
they  have  said  to  themselves,  'This  mother  will  be  a  coquette, 
this  father  will  be  stern,  this  lover  a  libertine,  this  young 
girl  impressionable  and  tender/  the  fury  of  making  their 
scenes  seizes  them.  They  write,  they  write,  they  come  upon 
ideas,  fine,  delicate,  and  even  strong;  they  have  charming 
details  ready  to  hand :  but  when  they  have  worked  much  and 
j/  come  to  plotting,  for  always  one  must  come  to  that,  they 
try  to  find  a  place  for  this  charming  bit;  they  can  never 
make  up  their  minds  to  put  aside  this  delicate  or  strong 
idea,  and  they  will  do  exactly  the  opposite  of  what  they 
should,  — make  the  plot  for  the  sake  of  the  scenes  when 
the  scenes  should  grow  out  of  the  plot.  Consequently  the 
dialogue  will  be  constrained  in  movement  and  much  trouble 
and  time  will  be  lost."  2 

A  modern  play  recently  submitted  to  the  writer  in  manu- 
script showed  just  this  trouble.  Act  I  was  in  itself  good. 
Act  II  was  good  in  one  scene,  bad  in  the  other.  Act  III 
was  in  itself  right.  Yet  at  the  end  of  the  play  one  queried: 
"What  is  the  meaning  of  it  all?"  Nothing  bound  the  parts 

1  Preface,  Au  Public,  to  La  Princesse  Georges.  A.  Dumas  fils.  CEuvres,  vol.  v,  p.  79.  Cal» 
mann  Levy,  Paris. 

*  De  la  Pottie  Dramatique.  Diderot.  (Euvret,  vol.  vn,  pp.  S21-322.  Gamier  Freres,  Pari*. 


CLEARNESS  75 

together.  There  was  no  clear  emphasis  on  some  central  pur- 
pose. The  author,  when  questioned,  admitted  that  with  cer- 
tain characters  in  mind,  he  had  written  the  scenes  as  they 
came  to  him.  When  pressed  to  state  his  exact  subject,  he 
advanced  first  one,  then  another,  at  last  admitting  candidly: 
"  I  guess  I  never  have  been  able  to  get  far  enough  away  from 
the  play  to  see  quite  what  all  of  it  does  mean."  Asked  whether 
there  was  not  underlying  all  his  scenes  irony  of  fate,  in  that 
a  man  trying  his  best  to  do  what  the  world  holds  commend- 
able is  bound  in  such  relationship  to  two  or  three  people  that 
always  they  give  his  career  a  tragic  turn,  he  said,  after  con- 
sideration, "  Yes.  What  if  I  call  my  play  The  Irony  of  Life  f  " 
With  the  purpose  of  making  that  his  meaning  he  reworked 
his  material.  Quickly  the  parts  fell  into  line,  with  a  clear  and 
interesting  play  as  the  result.  Many  and  many  a  play  con- 
taining good  characterization,  good  dialogue  and  some  real 
individuality  of  treatment  has  gone  to  pieces  in  this  way. 
A  recent  play  opened  with  a  well-written  picture  of  the  life 
of  a  group  of  architects'  draughtsmen.  Apparently  we  were 
started  on  a  story  of  their  common  or  conflicting  interests. 
After  that  first  act,  however,  the  play  turned  into  a  story  of 
the  way  in  which  one  of  these  young  draughtsmen,  a  kind 
of  mixture  of  Get-Rich-Quick  Wallingford  and  D'Artagnan, 
forced  his  way  to  professional  and  social  success.  Once  or 
twice,  scenes  seemed  intentional  satire  on  our  social  classes. 
The  fact  is,  the  author  had  in  the  back  of  his  mind  social 
satire,  characterization  of  the  central  figure,  and  a  picture 
6f  the  life  of  young  draughtsmen.  As  material  for  any  one 
of  these  came  to  him  when  he  was  writing,  he  gave  his  at- 
tention wholly  to  it.  Though  this  might  do  for  a  rough  draft, 
it  must  be  rewritten  to  make  the  chief  interest  stand  out  as 
most  important,  and  to  give  the  other  interests  clearly  their 
exact  part  in  a  perfectly  clear  whole.  Left  as  written,  the 
play  seemed  to  have  a  first  act  somewhat  off  the  question, 


76  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

and  a  later  development  going  off  now  and  then  at  a  tan- 
gent. Its  total  effect,  in  spite  of  some  admirable  character- 
ization, considerable  truth  to  life,  and  real  cleverness,  was 
confusion  for  the  audience  and  consequent  dissatisfaction. 

Another  play,  often  extremely  well  characterized,  had,  as 
an  apparent  central  purpose,  study  of  a  mother  who  has  been 
trying  to  give  her  son  such  surroundings  that  he  cannot  go 
the  way  of  his  father  who,  many  years  since,  had  embezzled. 
Yet  almost  as  frequently  the  purpose  seemed  to  be  a  very 
close  study  of  the  son,  who,  although  the  mother,  blinded 
by  her  affection,  does  not  see  it,  is  mentally  and  morally 
almost  the  duplicate  of  his  father.  Moved  with  sympathy, 
now  for  one  and  now  for  the  other,  just  as  the  interest  of  the 
writer  led  him,  the  audience  came  away  confused  and  dis- 
satisfied. How  can  an  audience  be  expected  to  know  what  a 
dramatist  has  not  settled  for  himself,  the  chief  of  his  inter- 
ests among  several? 

When  M.  de  Curel,  with  his  original  idea  or  picture  for 
VEnvers  (Tune  Sainte  sat  down  to  reflect,  "he  noticed  that 
the  interest  in  the  subject  lies  in  the  feelings  a  woman  must 
experience  when  she  returns  after  a  long  absence  to  a  place 
full  of  memories,  and  finds  herself  face  to  face  with  her  past 
life.  There  was  the  psychological  idea  which  seemed  to  him 
alluring,  —  to  paint  a  special  phase  of  emotion."  *  There, 
for  him,  lay  the  heart  of  his  subject.  Bulwer-Lytton,  writing 
to  Macready  in  September,  1838,  of  a  proposed  play  on  the 
life  of  the  Chevalier  de  Marillac,  in  which  Cardinal  Riche- 
lieu must  also  be  an  important  figure,  said:  "Now  look  well 
at  this  story,  you  will  see  that  incident  and  position  are  good. 
But  then  there  is  one  great  objection.  Who  is  to  do  Riche- 
lieu? Marillac  has  the  principal  part  and  requires  you;  but 
a  bad  Richelieu  would  spoil  all.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you 
took  Richelieu,  there  would  be  two  great  acts  without  you, 

»  Avteura  Dramatiquea.  F.  de  Curd.  L'AnrUe  Psychologique,  1874,  p.  121. 


CLEARNESS  77 

which  will  never  do;  and  the  main  interest  of  the  plot  would 
not  fall  on  you.  Tell  me  what  you  propose.  Must  we  give 
up  this  idea?"  l  Bulwer-Lytton  had  not  yet  found  the  dra- 
matic centre  in  his  material.  At  first  the  story  and  charac- 
ter of  Marillac  blinded  him  to  the  fact  that  the  material  was 
best  fitted  for  a  dramatic  study  of  the  great  Cardinal.  When, 
shortly  after  his  letter,  he  came  to  see  that  the  dramatic 
centre  lay  in  Richelieu,  his  famous  play  began  developing. 
With  that  magnet  in  hand,  he  quickly  drew  to  him  the  right 
filaments  of  incident  to  make  a  unified  and  interesting  story. 
Any  dramatist  has  the  right  to  decide  first,  what  is  the 
real  importance  of  his  subject  to  him,  but  before  he  finishes 
he  may  find  that  he  will  discard  what  originally  seemed  to 
him  important,  either  because  something  interests  him  more 
as  he  reflects  or  because  he  comes  to  see  in  his  subject  an 
interest  other  than  his  own  which  will  be  stronger  for  the 
audience.  M.  de  Curel,  thinking  over  his  proposed  play, 
abandoned  his  first  idea  because  "in  ten  minutes  space  it 
transformed  itself.  He  abandoned  his  first  idea  in  order  to 
try  to  paint  the  slightly  analogous  feelings  of  a  nun.  He 
imagined  a  young  girl  who,  at  a  former  time,  in  a  moment  of 
madness,  had  wished  to  kill  the  wife  of  the  man  with  whom 
she  was  infatuated.  To  expiate  her  crime,  she  entered  a  con- 
vent, took  the  vows,  and  lived  in  retirement  for  twenty  years. 
Then  she  learned  that  the  man  whom  she  loved  had  just 
died.  Whereupon,  perhaps  from  desire  for  freedom,  perhaps 
from  curiosity,  she  comes  out  of  her  exile,  returns  to  her 
family  and  finds  herself  in  the  presence  of  the  widow  and  her 
child."  Here  was  the  beginning,  not  of  UEnvers  d'une 
Sainte,2  but  of  another  play,  L' Invitee.  "It  may  happen  — • 
something  certainly  surprising  —  that  the  idea  which  al- 

1  Letters  of  Bulwer-Lytton  to  Macready,  p.  85.  Introduction  by  Brander  Matthews.  Pri- 
vately printed.  The  Carteret  Book  Club,  Newark,  N.J.,  1911. 

>  A  Fd»e  Saint.  F.  de  Curel.  Translated  by  B.  H.  Clark.  Drama  League  Series.  Doublet 
4ay,  Page  &  Co.,  New  York. 


78  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

lured  the  author  into  writing  the  piece  makes  no  part  of  the 
piece  itself.  It  is  excluded  from  it;  no  trace  of  it  remains. 
Note  that  the  point  of  departure  of  Ulnvitee  is  an  idea  of  a 
woman  capable  of  murder  who  is  passed  off  as  insane.  Of 
the  murder  nothing  remains,  and  as  to  the  mother's  madness 
it  is  reduced  to  almost  nothing:  it  is  no  more  than  a  rumor 
that  has  been  going  about,  and  the  mother  has  not  been 
really  insane."1  Not  to  yield  to  such  a  compelling  new  as- 
pect of  the  subject  is  to  find  one's  way  blocked.  The  result- 
ing tragedy,  or  comedy,  for  the  unyielding  playwright,  Mr. 
Archer  states  amusingly.  "'Here,'  says  a  well-known  play- 
wright, 'is  a  common  experience.  You  are  struck  with  an 
idea  with  which  you  fall  in  love.  "Ha!"  you  say.  "What 
a  superb  scene  where  the  man  shall  find  the  will  under  the 
sofa!  If  that  doesn't  make  them  sit  up,  what  will?"  You 
begin  the  play.  The  first  act  goes  all  right,  and  the  second 
act  goes  all  right.  You  come  to  the  third  act  and  somehow 
it  won't  go  at  all.  You  battle  with  it  for  weeks  in  vain;  and 
then  it  suddenly  occurs  to  you,  "Why,  I  see  what's  wrong! 
It's  that  confounded  scene  where  the  man  finds  the  will  un- 
der the  sofa.  Out  it  must  come ! "  You  cut  it  out  and  at  once 
all  goes  smooth  again.  But  you  have  thrown  overboard  the 
great  effect  that  first  tempted  you.' "  2 

The  point  is  not  that  when  a  dramatist  first  begins  to  think 
over  his  subject,  he  must  decide  exactly  what  is  for  him  the 
heart  of  it.  He  may  shift,  reject,  and  change  his  own  inter- 
est again  and  again,  as  attractive  aspects  of  his  subject  sug- 
gest themselves.  The  point  is  that  this  shifting  of  interest 
should  take  place  before  he  begins  to  put  his  play  on  paper. 
Not  to  be  perfectly  clear  with  one's  self  which  of  three  or  four 
possible  interests  offered  by  a  subject  is  the  one  really  in- 
teresting is  to  waste  time.    As  the  play  develops,  a  writer 

»  Auteurs  Dramatiqueg.   F.  de  Curd.   V Annie  Psychologique,  1894,  pp.  121-123. 
I  Play-Making,  pp.  58-59,  note.  William  Archer.   Small,  Maynard  &  Co.,  Boston. 


CLEARNESS  79 

wobbles  from  one  subject  to  another  and  so  leaves  no  clear 
final  impression.  Or  he  is  obliged  to  rewrite  the  play,  plac- 
ing the  emphasis  properly  for  clearness.  In  one  case  he  fails. 
In  the  other  he  does  his  work  twice.  The  present  writer 
has  seen  many  a  manuscript,  after  a  year  or  more  of  jug- 
gling with  shifting  interests,  given  up  in  despair  and  thrown 
into  the  waste  basket. 

Probably  it  is  best  to  leave  till  revision  the  question 
whether  the  interest  presented  will  appeal  to  the  general  au- 
dience just  as  it  does  to  the  writer.  It  certainly  can  do  no 
harm,  however,  and  may  save  labor,  when  an  author  knows 
just  what  he  wants  to  treat  and  how  he  wishes  to  treat  it,  for 
him  to  consider  whether  this  interest  is  likely  to  be  as  im- 
portant for  his  public  as  for  him.  Many  years  ago,  Mr.  A. 
M.  Palmer  produced  The  Parisian  Romance,  a  play  so 
trite  in  subject  and  treatment  that,  as  written,  it  might 
easily  have  failed.  A  young  actor,  seeing  in  a  minor  role 
the  opportunities  for  a  popular  success  built  up  a  fine  piece 
of  characterization  in  the  part  of  Baron  Chevrial.  That  gave 
Richard  Mansfield  his  first  real  start.  The  play  was  re- 
modeled so  that  this  element  of  novelty,  this  fresh  piece  of 
characterization,  became  central.  Thus  re-emphasized  the 
play  became  known  all  over  the  country.1  Not  long  since 
a  play  written  by  its  author  to  be  wholly  amusing,  proved 
so  hilarious  in  the  second  act  that  the  actors  rehearsed  it 
with  difficulty.  When  produced,  however,  the  audience  was 
so  won  by  the  hero  in  Act  I  that  they  took  his  mishaps  in 
the  second  act  with  sympathetic  seriousness.  The  play  had 
to  be  rewritten. 

It  is  at  careful  planning  or  plotting  that  the  inexperienced 
dramatist  balks.  Scenarios,  the  outlines  which  will  show  any 
intelligent  reader  what  plot  the  dramatist  has  in  mind  and 
its  exact  development,  are  none  too  popular.  They  are,  how- 

»  See  chapter  x,  "The  Dramatist  and  His  Public." 


( 


80  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

ever,  the  very  best  means  by  which  a  dramatist  may  force 
himself  to  find  what  for  him  is  the  heart  of  his  subject.1  The 
moment  that  is  clear  to  him,  it  is  the  open  sesame  to  what- 
ever story  his  play  will  demand.  It  is,  too,  the  magnet  which 
draws  to  him  the  bits  of  thought,  character,  action  and  dia- 
logue which  he  shapes  into  plot. 

With  his  purpose  clearly  in  mind,  the  dramatist,  as  he 
passes  from  point  of  departure  through  story  to  plot,  selects, 
and  selects,  and  selects.  Among  all  the  possible  people  who 
might  be  the  main  figure  in  accomplishing  his  purpose,  he 
picks  the  one  most  interesting  him,  or  which  he  believes 
will  most  interest  his  public.  From  all  the  people  who  might 
surround  his  central  figure  he  chooses  the  few  who  will  best 
accomplish  his  purpose.  If  his  people  first  appear  to  him  as 
types,  as  in  the  case  of  The  Country  Boy  to  be  cited  in  a  mo- 
ment, selectively  he  moves  from  type  to  individuals.  Sooner 
or  later  he  must  determine  how  many  of  the  possible  char- 
acteristics of  his  figures  he  cares  to  present.  As  he  writes, 
/he  selects  from  all  that  his  people  might  say,  and  from  all 
(they  might  do  in  the  way  of  illustrative  action,  only  what 
seems  to  him  necessary  for  his  purpose.  No  dramatist  uses 
all  that  occurs  to  him  in  the  way  of  dramatic  incident,  char- 
acters, or  dialogue.  As  he  shapes  his  story;  as  he  reshapes 
his  story  into  plot;  in  many  cases  before  he  touches  pen  to 
paper,  he  has  rejected  much,  always  selecting  what  he  uses 
by  the  touchstone  of  the  definite  purpose  which  knowing  the 
heart  of  his  subject  has  given  him. 

Doubtless  some  writers  see  situation  first,  and  others  char- 
acter, but  sooner  or  later  all  must  come  to  some  story.  Now 
as  story  is  only  incident  so  unified  that  it  has  interesting 
movement  from  a  beginning  to  an  end,  ultimately  the  task 
of  all  dramatists  is  to  find  illustrative  action  which  as  clearly 
and  quickly  as  possible  will  present  the  characters  of  the 

1  See  chapter  nc 


CLEARNESS  81 

story  or  make  clear  the  purpose  of  the  dramatist.  Here  is 
the  selective  process  by  which  Mr.  Selwyn  got  at  the  story 
of  his  ( 'ountry  Boy  : 

It  happened  to  be  just  before  Christmas  of  last  year.  The  season 
some  way  impressed  itself  on  me,  and  I  began  to  think  what  a  des- 
olate place  New  York  must  be  for  a  lot  of  fellows  who  had  come 
here  from  small  towns  and  who  were  thinking  of  the  homes  they  had 
left  there,  and  longing  to  go  back  to  them  for  the  Christmas  season. 
Doubtless  there  are  hundreds  of  them  here  who  came  here  years 
ago  vowing  that  they  would  never  go  back  till  they  had  "made 
good,"  with  the  result  that  they  have  never  since  spent  Christmas 
in  the  old  home.  [The  initial  idea.]  There  is  always  somebody  to 
whom  we  are  always  successful,  and  some  one  to  whom  we  are 
never  successful,  and  many  times,  if  these  fellows  would  go  back 
to  their  old  homes,  among  the  people  who  really  care  for  them,  they 
would  be  regarded  as  successes,  whereas  in  the  great  city  they  are 
looked  upon  as  failures.  [Type  character.] 

It  seemed  to  me  that  a  character  of  that  kind  would  make  a  good 
subject  for  a  play,  and  then  I  began  to  look  around  for  some  one 
tangible  to  work  from.  Suddenly  I  thought  of  a  newspaper  man  I 
used  to  know  when  I  lived  at  a  boarding  house  on  olst  Street, 
here  in  New  York.  He  was  a  free  lance,  and  a  grouchy,  rheumatic, 
envious,  bitter  fellow,  who  had  all  the  "dope"  on  life  —  was  a 
philosopher  and  could  tell  every  one  else  how  to  live,  but  didn't 
seem  to  be  able  to  apply  any  of  his  knowledge  to  himself.  He 
wouldn't  even  speak  to  any  one  in  the  boarding  house  but  me,  and 
why  he  singled  me  out  for  the  honor  I  don't  know.  But  anyway 
he  did,  and  he  used  to  tell  me  all  of  his  troubles  —  how  he  had  come 
from  a  little  town  with  great  ambitions,  and  had  vowed  never  to 
go  back  till  he  had  attained  all  that  he  had  set  out  to  get.  And  yet 
he  had  never  been  back.  He  was  a  failure;  dressed  shabbily  and  had 
given  up  hope  for  himself  —  and  still,  as  I  say,  he  could  tell  every- 
body else  just  what  to  do  to  succeed.  When  I  lived  there  in  the 
boarding  house  and  used  to  see  him,  I  thought  he  was  the  only  one 
of  his  kind  in  town,  but  since  then  I  have  found  that  there  are 
many  others  just  like  him.  [Individual  character.] 

So  it  occurred  to  me  that  he  would  be  a  good  subject  for  The 
Country  Hoy,  and  I  worked  out  his  life  as  it  had  actually  been  lived 
here  in  New  York.  Though  the  character  was  good  I  presently 
discovered  that  it  would  not  do  for  my  central  figure,  for  the  rea- 


82  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

son  that  he  had  been  here  too  long.  He  had  gone  through  the  mill 
and  knew  all  about  it,  and  what  I  really  needed  was  a  boy  who  could 
be  shown  to  come  from  the  country,  and  who  could  be  taken 
through  the  temptations  and  discouragements  that  a  boy  of  that 
sort  would  have  to  endure.  So  I  just  drew  this  younger  character 
from  my  imagination.  [Selection  of  special  figure.] 

I  had  to  have  this  chap  a  bumptious,  conceited  sort  of  youth  so 
as  to  have  the  contrast  stronger  when  he  met  the  hard  knocks  that 
were  to  come  to  him  in  the  city.  There  are  many  boys  of  that  sort 
in  small  towns.  They  do  not  see  the  opportunities  around  them 
but  imagine  nothing  short  of  a  big  city  has  space  enough  for 
them  to  develop  in.  [Purpose  determining  characterization.] ■ 

From  idea  through  type-character  to  the  individual  Mr. 
Selwyn  worked  to  the  life  in  New  York  of  the  older  man, 
and  the  story  of  the  temptations  and  discouragements  of  the 
boy.  When  he  had  reached  these,  Mr.  Selwyn  saw  that  the 
best  story  for  his  purpose  would  be  a  mingling  of  the  two. 
The  boy  "worked,  in  very  well  with  the  character  of  the  old 
newspaper  man,  because  it  allowed  him  to  give  the  youngster 
the  benefit  of  his  experience,  and  to  succeed  eventually  by 
taking  advantage  of  it.  That  brought  a  happy  ending  for 
both  of  them."  2 

Any  one  of  these  stories  as  it  lay  in  the  mind  of  Mr.  Selwyn 
before  he  turned  it  into  plot,  was  a  sequence  of  incidents, 
actions  illustrative  of  one  or  both  of  the  two  characters,  and, 
through  them,  of  the  original  idea.  Just  what  is  meant  by 
this  "illustrative  action"  so  often  mentioned?  In  Les  Oberle, 
by  Rene  Bazin,  is  a  charming  chapter  describing  the  Alsa- 
tian vintage  festival.  At  their  work  the  women  sing  the  song 
of  the  Black  Bow  of  Alsace  —  in  the  novel  but  one  detail  of 
an  interesting  description.  The  account  comes  about  mid- 
way in  the  book.  When  the  novel  was  dramatized  it  became 
necessary  to  make  the  audience  understand,  even  before  the 
hero,  Jean,  enters  in  Act  I,  that  absorbed  in  his  studies  in 

»  My  Bed  Play.    Edgar  Selwyn.  The  Green  Book  Magazine,  March,  1911,  pp.  538-537. 
»  Idem. 


CLEARNESS  83 

Germany,  he  has  been  unaware  of  the  constant  friction  in 
the  home  land  between  the  governing  Germans  and  the 
Alsatians.  Here  is  the  way  the  dramatist,  emotionalizing 
the  description  of  the  novel,  turned  it  into  dramatic  illus- 
tration of  Jean's  ignorance  of  the  condition  of  the  country. 
Uncle  Ulrich,  Bastian,  a  neighbor,  and  his  daughter,  Odile, 
at  sunset  are  waiting  in  a  wood  road  for  Jean,  just  arrived 
from  Germany  and  walking  home  from  the  station. 

(Outside  a  voice  sings  as  it  approaches  in  the  distance.) 

The  Black  Bow  of  the  daughters  of  Alsace 

Is  like  a  bird  with  spreading  icings. 
Ulrich.  Ah,  look  there!  Who  can  be  so  imprudent  as  to  sing  that 
air  of  Alsace? 
The  Voice. 

It  can  overpass  the  mountains. 
Bastian.  If  it  should  be  he! 
The  Voice. 

And  watch  what  goes  on  there, 
Odile.  I  am  sure  it  is  Jean's  voice. 
Ulrich.  Foolhardy!  They  will  hear  him! 
The  Voice.  (Nearer.) 

The  Black  Bow  of  the  daughters  of  Alsace  — 
Ulrich.  Again,  and  louder  than  ever! 
The  Voice. 

Is  like  a  cross  we  carry 

In  memory  of  those  men  and  women 

Whose  souls  were  like  our  own. 
Ulrich.  Jean!  Upon  my  word  that  young  lawyer  cannot  know 
the  laws.  Jean!"  l 

Just  at  the  end  of  the  same  act  it  is  necessary  to  illustrate 
the  constant  presence,  the  activity  and  alertness  of  the  Ger- 
man forces  and  the  irritation  all  this  means  to  the  Alsatians. 
In  a  story  much  of  this  would  be  described  by  the  author. 
In  the  play  we  feel  with  each  of  the  speakers  the  irritating 
presence  of  the  troops,  and  so  have  perfect  dramatic  illus- 
trative action. 

»  Let  Oberli.  Edmond  Haraucourt.  L'lUuttraiion  ThMtraU,  Dec.  9,  1903,  p.  5. 


84  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

{They  are  just  starting  of  when  Bastian  stops  them.) 
Bastian.  Chut! 
Jean.  What? 
Bastian.  (Softly.)  Listen! 
Jean.  (Softly.)  A  rolling  stone  in  the  ravine. 
Ulrich.  Another! 
Jean.  Steps! 
Ulrich.  Of  horses. 
Jean.  Well? 
Ulrich.  A  patrol! 
Jean.  (Moved.)  Ah! 
Bastian.  The  Hussars! 
Jean.  W'hat  are  they  doing? 
Ulrich.  They  are  keeping  watch. 
Bastian.  They  are  drilling. 
Ulrich.  Always! 
Jean.  Ah! 

Bastian.  Day  and  night. 
Ulrich.  Never  resting. 

Bastian.   Perhaps  they  are  trailing  some  deserter. 
Jean.    Ah!  There  are  deserters? 
Bastian.  They  won't  tell  you  so  in  the  town. 
Odile.  But  we  on  the  frontiers  see  them. 
Jean.  Ah! 

Bastian.  They  who  go  out  by  the  Grand'  fontaine  pass  this  way. 
Odile.  (Softly.)  Near  our  farm.  From  our  house  one  can  see  them 
passing. 
Jean.  Ah! 
Ulrich.  Chut! 

Jean.  I  hear  the  breathing  of  their  horses. 
Ulrich.  Be  still. 

Jean.  We  are  doing  nothing  wrong. 
Bastian.  Wait. 

Ulrich.  Down  there  —  wait  —  lean  over. 
Jean.  I  see  — 

Ulrich.  They  are  coming  up. 
Bastian.  They  are  going  by. 
Jean.  They  have  crossed  the  road. 
Ulrich.  We  can  go  down  for  the  moment. 
Bastian.  Ouf! 


CLEARNESS  85 

Jean.  It  is  strange  —  twenty  times,  a  hundred  times  in  Germany 
I  have  met  the  patrols  of  dragoons,  or  hussars,  and  admired  their 
fine  form.  Here  — 

Vlrich.  Here? 

Jean.  Only  to  see  them  gives  me  a  queer  feeling  at  the  heart. 

Ulrich.  Don't  you  understand,  my  dear  Jean?  There  they  were 
in  their  own  country,  here  they  are  in  ours.  ■ 

Early  in  the  first  scene  of  The  Changeling,  by  Thomas 
Middleton,  Beatrice  states  clearly,  and  more  than  once,  the 
physical  repulsion  De  Flores  causes  her.  Knowing  full  well, 
however,  the  dramatic  value  of  illustrative  action,  Middleton 
handled  the  ending  of  the  scene  in  this  way.  Beatrice  turn- 
ing to  leave  the  room,  starts  as  she  finds  De  Flores  close  at 
hand. 

Beatrice.  (Aside.)  Not  this  serpent  gone  yet?     (Drops  a  glove.) 

Vermandero.  Look,  girl,  thy  glove's  fallen, 
Stay,  stay!  De  Flores,  help  a  little. 

(Exeunt  Vermandero,  Alsemero  and  Servant.) 

De  Flores.  Here,  lady.  (Offers  her  glove) 

Beatrice.  Mischief  on  your  officious  forwardness! 
Who  bade  you  stoop?  they  touch  my  hand  no  more: 
There!  for  the  other's  sake  I  part  with  this; 

(Takes  off  and  throws  down  the  other  glove.) 
Take  'em,  and  draw  thine  own  skin  off  with  'em. 

(Exit  with  Diapkanta  and  Servants.) 

De  Flores.  Here's  a  favour  with  a  mischief  now!  I  know 
She  had  rather  wear  my  pelt  tanned  in  a  pair 
Of  dancing  pumps,  than  I  should  thrust  my  fingers 
Into  her  sockets  here.8 

Here  the  dramatist  makes  repulsion  clear  by  illustrative  ac- 
tion so  emotional  that  it  moves  us  to  keenest  sympathy  or 
dislike  for  the  woman  herself.  Dramatically  speaking,  then, 
illustrative  action  is  not  merely  something  which  illustrates 
an  idea  or  character,  but  it  must  be  an  illustration  mirroring 

»  Let  OberlS,  p.  7. 

*  Playt  oj  Thomat  Middleton.  Mermaid  Series.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


86  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

emotion  of  the  persons  in  the  play  or  creating  it  in  the 
observer. 

What  is  the  relation  of  illustrative  action  to  dramatic  situ- 
ation? The  first  is  the  essence  of  the  second.  A  dramatic 
/  episode  presents  an  individual  or  group  of  individuals  so 
Vmoved  as  to  stir  an  audience  to  responsive  emotion.  Illus- 
I  trative  action  by  each  person  in  the  group  or  by  the  group 
as  a  whole  is  basal.  The  glove  incident  in  The  Changeling 
concerns  both  Beatrice  and  De  Flores.  Hers  is  illustrative 
action  when  she  shrinks  from  the  glove  his  hand  has 
touched.  He  shows  it  when  kissing  and  amorously  fondling 
tfye  glove  she  has  refused.  Their  illustrative  actions  make 
together  the  dramatic  episode  of  the  glove,  —  which  is  in 
turn  a  part  of  Scene  1  of  the  first  act  of  the  play.  There  are 
the  divisions :  play,  act,  scene,  episode,  and  illustrative  action. 
Just  as  sometimes  the  development  of  a  single  episode  may 
make  a  scene,  or  there  may  be  but  one  scene  to  an  act,  there 
are  cases  when  an  illustrative  action  is  a  dramatic  episode. 
The  ending  of  Act  II  of  Ostrovsky's  Storm  illustrates  this. 

Varvara,  who  has  just  gone  out,  has  put  into  the  hands  of 
Catherine  the  key  to  a  gate  in  the  garden  hedge.  This  Var- 
vara has  taken  without  the  knowledge  of  her  mother,  who  is 
the  mother-in-law  of  Catherine.  Just  as  Varvara  goes,  she  has 
said  that  if  she  meets  Catherine's  lover,  Boris,  she  will  tell 
him  to  come  to  the  gate.  Catherine,  terrified,  at  first  tries 
to  refuse  the  key,  but  Varvara  insists  on  leaving  it  with  her. 

Catherine.  (Alone,  the  key  in  her  hand.)  Oh,  what  is  she  doing? 
What  hasn't  she  courage  for?  Ah,  she  is  crazy  —  yes,  crazy.  Here 
is  what  will  ruin  me.  That's  the  truth !  I  must  throw  this  key  away, 
throw  it  far  away,  into  the  river,  so  that  it  may  never  be  found 
again.  It  burns  my  hand  like  a  hot  coal.  (Dreamily.)  This  is  how 
we  are  ruined,  people  like  me!  Slavery,  that  isn't  a  gay  business 
for  any  one.  How  many  ideas  it  puts  into  our  heads.  Another  would 
be  enchanted  with  what  has  happened  to  me,  and  would  rush  on 
full  tilt.  How  can  one  act  in  that  way  without  reflection,  without 


CLEARNESS  87 

reason?  Misfortune  comes  so  quickly,  and  afterward  there  is  all 
the  rest  of  one's  life  in  which  to  weep  and  torment  oneself,  and  the 
slavery  will  be  still  more  bitter.  (Silence.)  And  how  bittei  it  is, 
rfavery !  Oh,  bow  bitter  it  is!  Who  would  not  suffer  from  it?  And  we 
Oilier  women  suffer  more  than  all  the  rest.  Here  am  I  at  this  mo- 
ment battling  with  myself  in  vain,  not  seeing  a  ray  of  light,  and  I 
shan't  see  one.  The  further  I  go,  the  worse  it  is.  And  here  is  this 
additional  sin  that  I  am  going  to  take  on  my  conscience.  (She 
dreams  a  moment.)  Were  not  my  mother-in-law  —  she  has  broken 
me:  it  is  she  who  has  made  me  come  to  hate  this  house.  I  hate  its 
very  walls.  (She  looks  pensively  at  the  key.)  Ought  I  to  throw  it 
away?  Of  course  I  ought.  How  did  it  get  into  my  hands?  To  se- 
duce me  to  my  ruin.  (Listening.)  Some  one  is  coming!  My  heart 
fails  me.  (She  puts  the  key  into  her  pocket.)  No!  —  no  one.  Why 
was  I  so  frightened?  And  I  hid  the  key  —  Very  well,  that's  the 
way  it  is  to  be.  It  is  clear  that  fate  wills  it.  And  after  all,  where 
is  the  sin  in  seeing  him  just  once,  if  at  a  distance?  And  if  I  were 
even  to  talk  with  him  a  little,  where  would  the  harm  be?  —  But  my 
husband  —  Very  well,  it  was  he  himself  who  didn't  forbid  it!  Per- 
haps I  shall  never  have  such  another  chance  in  all  my  life.  Then  I 
shall  weep  and  say  to  myself,  "You  had  a  chance  to  see  him  and 
didn't  know  how  to  take  advantage  of  it."  WThat  am  I  saying? 
Why  lie  to  myself?  I  will  die  for  it  if  necessary,  but  see  him  I  will. 
Whom  do  I  want  to  deceive  here?  Throw  away  the  key?  No,  not 
for  anything  in  the  world.  I  keep  it.  Come  what  will,  I  will  see 
Boris.    Ah,  if  the  night  would  only  come  more  quickly! 

Curtain.1 

Sometimes,  even  a  playwright  of  considerable  experience, 
though  his  mind  is  full  of  dramatic  material,  finds  his  plot- 
ting at  a  standstill.  The  trouble  is  that  he  has  not  sifted  his 
material  by  means  of  the  purpose  he  has  in  mind.  When 
he  does,  details  of  setting,  bits  of  characterization  or  even 
characters  as  wholes,  parts  or  all  of  a  scene  and  many  ideas 
good  in  themselves  but  not  necessarily  connected  with  his 
real  subject,  will  drop  out.  Many  plays  of  modern  realism 
have  been  overloaded  with  details  of  setting,  with  figures,  or 

1  Ch^fi-d'iEuvret  Dramatique*  de  A.  N.  Ostromky.  E.  Durand-GrSville.  E.  Plon  Nourrit 
et  Cie,  Paris. 


88  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

even  scenes  really  unessential.  In  a  recent  play  of  Breton  life 
a  prominent  detail  in  the  setting  of  a  cave  was  the  figurehead 
of  a  ship.  Even  if  one  missed  noticing  this  striking  detail,  its 
presence  was  emphasized  by  the  text.  It  turned  out,  how- 
ever, that  the  figurehead  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  story 
or  its  development,  nor  was  it  really  needed  for  any  special 
color  it  gave.  It  should,  therefore,  have  been  omitted.  No 
fault  is  more  common  than  the  use  of  unnecessary  figures. 
When  Lady  Gregory  wrote  her  version  of  The  Workhouse 
Ward,  she  wisely  cut  out  the  matron,  the  doorkeeper,  and  all 
the  inmates  except  two.  With  three  figures  her  play  is  a 
masterpiece.  With  five  actors  and  voices  from  off  stage,  Dr. 
Hyde's  Gaelic  version  is  not.  A  one-act  play  adapted  from 
the  Spanish  showed  some  dozen  or  more  individual  parts  and 
a  mob  of  at  least  forty.  Ultimately,  on  a  small  stage,  the 
plot  was  done  full  justice  with  half  that  number  of  individual 
parts  and  the  crowd  reduced  to  twenty  or  less.  An  amusing 
play  of  mistaken  identity  had  a  delightful  scene  in  which  an 
aunt  of  the  heroine  is  proposed  to  by  a  friend  of  her  youth. 
In  it,  the  dramatist,  with  admirable  characterization,  set 
forth  the  views  on  matrimony  of  many  middle-aged  women. 
Yet  the  whole  scene  had  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  the 
story  of  the  heroine.  Consequently  it  was  ultimately  dropped 
out.  That  dramatic  ideas  must  be  sifted  was  shown  on 
page  75  in  the  play  seemingly  about  architects'  draughts- 
men. 

"  Not  even  when  a  scene,  a  bit  of  dialogue  or  some  other  de- 
tail, is  entirely  in  character  may  it  always  keep  its  position. 
Though  a  detail  or  episode  must  be  in  character  before  it  is 
admitted,  it  can  hold  its  position  only  if  it  is  necessary  for 
the  purpose  of  the  play.  Time  limits  everything  for  the  dram- 
atist. The  final  curtain  impending  inevitably  at  the  end  of 
two  hours  and  a  half  is  the  dramatist's  "sword  of  Damocles." 
It  reminds  him  that  in  a  play,  "whatever  goes  for  nothing, 


CLEARNESS  89 

goes  for  less  than  nothing"  because  it  shuts  out  something 
which,  in  its  place,  might  be  effective.  In  Tennyson's  Becket 
is  a  fine  scene,  the  washing  of  the  beggars'  feet  by  the  Arch- 
bishop.1 It  illustrates  both  customs  of  the  time  and  a  side 
of  Becket's  character,  yet  it  contained  nothing  absolutely 
necessary  to  the  central  purpose  of  the  play.  Consequently, 
as  the  play  must  be  condensed  for  acting  purposes,  Sir  Henry 
Irving  cut  out  the  whole  scene. 

This  time  limit  forces  the  dramatist,  when  choosing  be- 
tween two  episodes  of  equal  value  otherwise,  to  select  that 
which  does  more  in  less  space,  or  to  combine  desirable  parts 
of  the  two  episodes  when  possible.  In  Tennyson's  Becket, 
Scene  1  of  Act  II  and  Scene  1  of  Act  III  take  place  in  Rosa- 
mund's Bower.  Henry  and  Rosamund  are  the  principal 
speakers  in  both.  There  is,  too,  no  marked  lapse  of  time  be- 
tween the  scenes,  though  Tennyson  chose  to  separate  them 
by  the  "Meeting  of  the  Kings"  at  Montmirail.  Very  natu- 
rally, therefore,  when  condensation  was  necessary,  Irving 
by  severe  cutting  brought  these  two  scenes  together  as 
Act  II  of  his  version.  He  not  only  saved  time;  he  gained  in 
unity  of  effect.  Similarly,  Irving  brings  together  the  es- 
sential parts  of  Scene  2,  Act  II,  the  "Meeting  of  the  Kings," 
and  Scene  3,  Act  III,  "Traitor's  Meadow  at  Freteval," 
making  them  the  first  scene  of  the  third  act  in  his  version. 

A  cluttered  play  is  always  a  bad  play.  Such  clutter  usually 
comes  from  including  details  of  setting,  characterization  or 
idea,  and  even  whole  characters  or  scenes,  not  really  neces- 
sary. Selection  with  one's  purpose  clearly  in  mind  is  the 
remedy  for  such  clutter. 

Even,  however,  when  a  writer  has  so  carefully  selected  his 
dramatic  episodes  that  each  is  one  or  more  bits  of  illustrative 
action  bearing  on  the  main  idea  and  entirely  in  character, 
he  may  still  be  short  of  story.  He  cannot  rouse  and  main- 

1  Becket,  Act  i,  Scene  4.  Alfred  Lord  Tennyson.  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York. 


90  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

tain  interest  moving  at  haphazard.  His  central  idea  must 
appear  in  dramatic  episodes  so  ordered  as  to  have  sequence, 
—  a  beginning,  a  middle,  and  an  end,  —  and  so  emphasized 
as  to  have  the  increasing  interest  which  means  movement. 
He  cannot  have  good  story  till  it  has  unity  of  action.  When 
Bulwer-Lytton  wrote  Macready  that  he  had  discovered  the 
heart  of  his  proposed  play  on  Marillac  to  be  Richelieu,  note 
that  he  speaks  of  the  simplification  and  the  unity  resulting: 
"  You  will  be  pleased  to  hear  that  I  have  completed  the  rough 
Sketch  of  the  Play  in  5  acts  —  &  I  hope  you  will  like  it.  I 
have  taken  the  subject  of  Richelieu.  Not  being  able  to  find 
any  other  so  original  &  effective,  &  have  employed  some- 
what of  the  story  I  before  communicated  to  you,  but  simpli- 
fied and  connected.  —  You  are  Richelieu,  &  Richelieu  is 
brought  out,  accordingly,  as  the  prominent  light  round  which 
the  other  satellites  move.  It  is  written  on  the  plan  of  a  great 
Historical  Comedy,  &  I  have  endeavoured  to  concentrate  a 
striking  picture  of  the  passions  &  events  —  the  intrigue  & 
ambition  of  that  era  —  in  a  familiar  point  of  view." * 

Thomas  Dekker  found  the  source  of  his  Shoemakers'  Holi- 
day 2  in  a  pamphlet  by  Thomas  Deloney,  The  Pleasant  and 
Princely  History  of  the  Gentle-Craft.3  This  loosely  written 
pamphlet  tries  to  tell  three  stories  supposed  to  redound  to  the 
credit  of  the  shoemakers :  that  of  Prince  Hugh  and  his  love 
for  Winifred;  that  of  Crispin  and  Crispinianus  and  the  brave 
deeds  of  the  latter  in  the  wars  in  France;  and,  finally,  that 
of  Simon  Eyre,  the  master  shoemaker  who  rose  to  be  Lo/d 
Mayor  of  London,  his  wife  and  his  apprentices.  What  obvi- 
ously attracted  Dekker  in  the  pamphlet  was  the  third  story, 
to  which  he  saw  he  could  give  much  realism  from  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  shoemakers  about  Leadenhall.   Unfortunately, 


1  Letters  of  Bulwer-Lytton,  p.  38.  Brander  Matthews,  ed. 

*  Plays  of  Thomas  Dekker.  Mermaid  Series.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York, 

«  A.  F.  Lange,  ed.  Mayer  &  Mliller,  Berlin. 


CLEARNESS  91 

the  story  of  Simon  Eyre,  though  it  provided  him  with  de- 
lightful characters,  gave  him  little  variety  of  incident.  Per- 
haps today  a  dramatist  might  make  such  a  play  carry  almost 
wholly  on  the  characterization  of  the  shoemaker  group.  The 
Elizabethans,  however,  wanted  a  complicated  story  of  va- 
ried action.  Dekker,  though  he  had  first-rate  romantic  ma- 
terial in  the  story  of  Crispin  and  Crispinianus,  could  hardly 
weave  this  in  with  the  story  of  Eyre,  a  relatively  recent  his- 
torical figure,  for  one  material  called  for  romantic  and  the 
other  for  realistic  treatment.  There  seemed  the  deadlock. 
But  Dekker,  thinking  of  this  Crispin  in  love  with  a  princess, 
who  disguised  himself  as  a  shoemaker  in  order  to  win  her 
hand,  remembered  the  wars  of  1588  and  English  sympathy 
for  the  Huguenots  involved  therein.  Therefore  he  turned 
Crispin  into  Lacy,  a  youth  of  that  period.  Lacy  is  not  a 
prince,  but  a  relative  of  the  Earl  of  Lincoln,  and  something 
of  a  ne'er-do-well,  in  love  with  the  Lord  Mayor's  daughter, 
Rose.  He  fears  that  if  he  goes  to  the  wars  in  France,  his  duty 
as  "chief  colonel"  of  the  London  Companies,  he  will  lose 
her.  Therefore  he  sends  Askew  in  his  stead  and  stays  in  Lon- 
don disguised  as  one  of  Eyre's  shoemaker  apprentices.  The 
purpose  of  Dekker  to  write  a  realistic  play  of  complicated 
plot  has  helped  him  to  reshape  his  material  till  two  stories, 
as  in  the  case  of  The  Country  Boy,  have  become  one.  Unity 
appears  in  materials  seemingly  as  irreconcilable  as  romance 
and  realism. 

There  are,  however,  two  weaknesses  in  this  story  as  now 
developed :  Rose  and  Lacy,  though  they  appear  against  the 
background  of  the  wars,  do  not  connect  the  apprentices  with 
the  enlistment,  nor  do  they  afford  many  scenes  of  marked 
dramatic  force.  Wishing  one  or  two  scenes  of  stronger  emo- 
tion which  at  the  same  time  would  bring  the  apprentices  into 
closer  connection  with  the  wars,  Dekker  creates  Ralph,  Jane, 
and  Hammon.  Ralph  is  one  of  the  shoemakers  who,  pressed 


92  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

to  the  war,  is  torn  from  his  protesting  wife  and  fellow  appren- 
tices. In  his  absence,  the  citizen  Hammon  falls  in  love  with 
Jane.  Trying  to  make  her  believe  that  Ralph  is  dead,  he 
wishes  to  marry  her.  Ralph,  returning  from  the  war  to  his 
former  work  with  Eyre,  can  find  no  trace  of  Jane,  for  after 
a  slight  difference  with  Margery  Eyre,  she  has  disappeared. 
One  day  a  servant  brings  Ralph  a  pair  of  shoes  to  be  dupli- 
cated for  a  wedding  gift.  The  pair  to  be  copied  Ralph  recog- 
nizes as  his  parting  gift  to  Jane.  Summoning  his  fellow  ap- 
prentices to  aid  him,  he  goes  to  the  place  proposed  for  the 
wedding  and  rescues  Jane.  Thus  some  scenes  of  fine  if 
homely  emotion  are  provided.  Wedded  love  is  contrasted 
with  that  of  Rose  and  Lacy  and  with  Hammon's  courtship, 
and  through  Ralph  the  apprentices  are  brought  closely  into 
connection  with  the  wars. 

Many  a  would-be  dramatist  suffers,  however,  not  from  a 
superabundance  of  material  bearing  on  his  subject  but  a 
dearth  of  it.  Again  and  again  one  hears  the  complaint:  "I 
know  who  my  characters  are  to  be,  and  I  have  dramatic  situ- 
ation, but  I  cannot  find  my  story.  I  haven't  enough  dra- 
matic situation  to  round  it  out."  Just  this  difficulty  troubled 
Bulwer-Lytton  when  he  was  preparing  for  Richelieu.  He 
wrote  to  Macready: 

Many  thanks  for  your  letter.  You  are  right  about  the  Plot  — 
it  is  too  crowded  &  the  interest  too  divided.  —  But  Richelieu 
would  be  a  splendid  fellow  for  the  Stage,  if  we  could  hit  on  a  good 
plot  to  bring  him  out  —  connected  with  some  domestic  interest. 
His  wit  —  his  lightness  —  his  address  —  relieve  so  admirably  his 
profound  sagacity  —  his  Churchman's  pride  —  his  relentless  vin- 
dictiveness  and  the  sublime  passion  for  the  glory  of  France  that 
elevated  all.  He  would  be  a  new  addition  to  the  Historical  portraits 
of  the  Stage;  but  then  he  must  be  connected  with  a  plot  in  which  he 
would  have  all  the  stage  to  himself,  &  in  which  some  Home  inter- 
est might  link  itself  with  the  Historical.  Alas,  I've  no  such  story 
yet  &  he  must  stand  over,  tho'  I  will  not  wholly  give  him  up.  .  .  . 


CLEARNESS  93 

.  .  .  Depend  on  it,  I  don't  cease  racking  my  brains,  &  something 
must  come  at  last. l 

Such  difficulty  means  that  a  writer  forgets  or  is  ignorant 
of  one  of  the  first  principles  of  dramatic  composition.  When 
he  has  three  or  four  good  situations  which  are  in  character, 
he  should  not  hunt  new  situations  till  he  is  sure  he  knows  the 
full  emotional  possibilities  of  the  situations  he  already  has. 
To  decide  after  the  closest  scrutiny  of  the  situations  in  hand, 
that  others  are  needed  is  one  thing.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
inexperienced  workman  presents  as  quickly  as  possible  the 
climactic  moment  of  the  scene  he  has  in  mind,  and  gets  away 
as  rapidly  as  possible  to  another  intense  climax.  Finding 
himself,  as  a  result,  badly  in  need  of  additional  dramatic 
moments,  he  hunts  for  situations  as  situations.  Returning 
triumphantly  with  some  strong  emotional  effect,  he  must 
perforce  put  the  characters  of  the  earlier  scenes  into  these. 
Usually,  as  they  have  no  real  part  in  these  later  scenes,  they 
prove  troublesome.  Sometimes  the  new  scenes  may  be  so 
reshaped  as  to  fit  the  original  characters,  but  usually  the 
result  of  this  method  is  that  the  scenes  are  foisted  on  the 
original  characters,  becoming  obvious  misfits,  or  that  the  ori- 
ginal characters  are  so  modified  as  to  fit  them.  When  modi- 
fied, however,  the  original  characters  no  longer  perfectly  fit 
the  original  scenes.  Driven  backward  and  forward  between 
character  and  story,  the  dramatist  pursuing  this  method 
often  gives  up  the  attempt,  saying  despairingly:  "It  is  no 
use.   My  characters  will  not  give  me  a  plot." 

The  trouble  here  is  that  the  inexperienced  dramatist  treats 
the  situation  as  if  its  value  lay  in  its  most  climactic  moment. 
Often,  however,  there  is  as  much  pleasure  for  the  public  emo- 
tionally in  working  up  to  the  climax  as  in  the  climax  itself. 
To  "hold  a  situation,"  that  is,  to  get  from  it  the  full  dra- 
matic possibilities  the  characters  involved  offer,  a  dramatist 

*  Letter*  qf  Bxdwer-LytUm,  pp.  36-37.   Brander  Matthews,  ed. 


94  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

must  study  his  characters  in  it  till  he  has  discovered  the 
entire  range  of  their  emotion  in  the  scene.  This  will  give 
him  not  only  many  and  many  a  new  situation  within  the 
original  situation,  but  the  transitional  scenes  which  will 
unify  situations  originally  apparently  unrelated  except  as 
the  same  figures  appeared  in  them.  For  example,  consider 
this. 

A  kindly  woman  in  middle  life  comes  in  friendliest  fashion 
to  offer  to  take  the  daughter  of  a  proud  man  in  great  finan- 
cial straits  into  her  own  home.  As  treated  by  an  inexperi- 
enced writer,  there  was  a  prompt,  clear  statement  of  what  the 
woman  desired,  with  an  immediate  passionate  denial  of  the 
request  by  the  jealously  affectionate  father.  In  this  treat- 
ment we  lose  the  best  of  the  scene.  Really  this  worldly-wise 
woman,  talking  to  such  a  man,  would  lead  up  tactfully  to  her 
proposal.  As  she  led  up  to  it,  there  would  be  many  dramatic 
moments,  with  much  interesting  revelation  of  her  own  and  the 
man's  character.  Caring  for  the  man  as  she  does,  and  loving 
the  girl  deeply,  she  would  not  immediately  accept  a  refusal. 
After  the  man's  first  denial,  as  she  tried  by  turns  to  cajole, 
convince  or  dominate  him,  there  would  be  strong  dramatic 
conflict,  and,  once  more,  interesting  revelation  of  character. 
Given,  then,  some  happening,  the  nature  of  the  human  being 
involved  in  it  will  affect  its  look.  A  second  person  involved 
will  affect  it  even  more.  Two  people,  influencing  each  other 
because  affected  by  the  same  incident  will  give  still  a  third 
look  to  the  original  situation.  When  you  have  what  seems  a 
good  situation,  don't  rush  into  another  at  your  earliest  op- 
portunity, but  instead  study  it  till  you  know  every  permu- 
tation and  combination  it  holds  emotionally  for  every  one 
involved,  both  because  the  situation  affects  every  character, 
and  because  every  character  may  affect  all  the  others.  Then 
you  will  know  how  to  "hold  a  situation."  Said  Dumas  the 
Younger:  "Before  every  situation  that  a  dramatist  creates, 


CLEARNESS  95 

he  should  ask  himself  three  questions.  In  this  situation, 
what  should  I  do?  What  would  other  people  do?  What 
ought  to  be  done?  Every  author  who  does  not  feel  disposed 
to  make  this  analysis  should  renounce  the  theatre,  for  he  will 
never  become  a  dramatist."  l  Though  every  writer  may 
not  examine  his  material  by  means  of  such  formal  catego- 
ries, he  must  in  some  way  gain  the  thorough  information 
about  it  for  which  Dumas  calls.  Then  and  then  only  he  can 
select  from  the  results  of  his  thinking  that  which  will  best 
accomplish  his  purpose  in  the  play. 

A  one-act  play  with  a  very  good  central  situation  came 
to  nothing  because  its  author  had  not  grasped  the  principle 
just  set  forth.  A  young  man  and  a  girl,  eloping,  come  to  the 
station  of  a  small  settlement.  They  find  no  one  about,  but 
the  door  of  the  ticket  office  ajar  as  if  the  person  in  charge  had 
stepped  out  for  a  moment.  They  fear  that  the  father  and 
mother  of  the  girl  and  perhaps  another  admirer  are  on  their 
trail.  Partly  from  curiosity  and  partly  from  the  desire  not 
to  be  seen  till  the  train  comes,  they  step  into  the  office,  clos- 
ing the  door  behind  them.  Then  they  discover  that  they  are 
prisoners,  for  the  door  can  be  opened  even  from  their  side 
only  by  a  person  with  the  right  key.  Just  at  this  point,  the 
father  and  mother  arrive,  amazed  at  finding  no  trace  of  the 
fugitives.  They  too  are  puzzled  by  the  absence  of  the  ticket- 
seller.  Just  as  they  start  out  to  find  him  he  appears,  apolo- 
getic for  his  absence.  He  is  mildly  interested  in  their  story, 
but  as  he  has  seen  no  young  persons,  and  as  he  expects  the 
train  shortly,  he  starts  to  go  into  his  office.  Then  he  dis- 
covers the  closed  door  and  admits  that  he  went  out  to  look 
for  his  key,  which  he  must  have  dropped  somewhere  since 
he  opened  the  station  that  morning.  Here  was  of  course  a 
dramatic  situation  of  large  possibilities,  but  in  the  play  it  was 

1  Preface,  Au  Public,  to  La  Princette  George*.    CEuvree,  vol.  v.  p.  78.   Calmann  Levy. 
Paris. 


96  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

treated  almost  as  just  stated.  Of  course  the  sensations  of  the 
two  young  people  cooped  up  in  the  ticket  office,  expecting 
the  parents,  the  station  agent,  and  the  train,  should  have 
given  us  a  comic  scene  before  any  one  else  appeared.  The 
effect  of  the  discovery  that  they  are  prisoners  upon  the  girl, 
the  effect  upon  the  young  man,  the  way  in  which  the  resulting 
emotions  of  each  affect  the  other,  all  this  must  be  given  if 
the  potential  comedy  of  the  situation  inside  the  ticket  office 
is  to  be  fully  used.  The  arrival  of  the  father  and  mother  offers 
a  chance  not  only  for  the  individual  emotions  of  each  and 
their  effect  upon  one  another,  but  for  the  emotion  of  the 
concealed  elopers  as  they  hear  the  familiar  voices  and  un- 
derstand how  enraged  the  parents  are.  There  is  opportunity 
for  a  good  scene  of  some  length  here  before  the  station 
master  appears.  When  he  does  enter,  he  should  be  inter- 
esting, not  simply  for  himself,  but  for  the  effect  he  has  on 
father,  mother,  girl,  and  young  man,  and  the  new  inter- 
play of  emotions  he  causes  among  them.  Add  the  coming 
of  the  former  admirer  with  evidence  he  has  found  that  the 
elopers  have  been  making  for  this  station;  and  as  the  new 
complications  developed  by  his  coming  take  shape,  let  the 
train  be  heard  far  up  the  line.  Surely  here  is  a  group  of 
very  promising  situations. 

In  this  play  so  crowded  with  dramatic  opportunity,  its 
author  found  only  the  most  dramatic  moments,  rushing 
rapidly  from  one  to  the  other.  Result,  a  failure.  Any  dra- 
matic situation  made  up  of  a  congeries  of  minor  situatiors  is 
like  a  great  desk  the  pigeon  holes  of  which  are  crowded  with 
letters  and  personal  documents.  The  biographer  sitting 
down  before  it  first  makes  himself  thoroughly  conversant 
with  all  the  data.  Then  he  selects  for  use  only  what  is  of 
value  for  the  biographical  purpose  he  has  in  mind.  The 
people  in  a  situation  are,  for  a  dramatist,  the  human  data 
he  must  study  till  he  so  completely  understands  them  that  he 


CLEARNESS  97 

can  differentiate  clearly  in  what  they  offer  between  what  is 
Useful  for  his  purposes  and  what  is  not. 

Even  Shakespeare,  in  his  earliest  work,  had  not  grasped 
the  importance  of  "holding  a  situation,"  as  a  scene  in  the 
First  Part  of  Henry  VI  shows.  He  knows  how  to  inform  his 
audience  in  Scene  2  of  Act  II  why  it  is  that  Talbot  visits 
the  Countess  of  Auvergne;  in  the  Whispers  of  the  next  to 
the  last  line  of  this  scene  he  even  prepares  for  the  surprise 
Talbot  springs  upon  the  Countess  in  the  next  scene;  but 
Scene  3  itself  he  treats  merely  for  the  broad  situation  and 
a  few  bits  of  rhetoric. 

A  Messenger  come  to  the  English  camp  has  just  asked 
which  of  the  men  before  him  is  the  famous  Talbot- 

Talbot.  Here  is  the  Talbot;  who  would  speak  with  him? 

Messenger.  The  virtuous  lady,  Countess  of  Auvergne, 
With  modesty  admiring  thy  renown, 
By  me  entreats,  great  lord,  thou  wouldst  vouchsafe 
To  visit  her  poor  castle  where  she  lies, 
That  she  may  boast  she  hath  beheld  the  man 
Whose  glory  fills  the  world  with  loud  report. 

Burgundy.  Is  it  even  so?  Nay,  then,  I  see  our  wars 
Will  turn  unto  a  peaceful  comic  sport, 
When  ladies  crave  to  be  encount'red  with. 
You  may  not,  my  lord,  despise  her  gentle  suit. 

Tal.  Ne'er  trust  me  then;  for  what  a  world  of  men 
Could  not  prevail  with  all  their  oratory, 
Yet  hath  a  woman's  kindness  over-rul'd ; 
And  therefore  tell  her  I  return  great  thanks, 
And  in  submission  will  attend  on  her. 
Will  not  your  honours  bear  me  company? 

Bedford.  No,  truly,  'tis  more  than  manners  will; 
And  I  have  heard  it  said,  unbidden  guests 
Are  often  welcomest  when  they  are  gone. 

Tal.  Well,  then,  alone,  since  there's  no  remedy, 
I  mean  to  prove  this  lady's  courtesy. 
Come  hither,  captain.  {Whispers.)  You  perceive  my  mind? 

Captain.  I  do,  my  lord,  and  mean  accordingly.  {Exeunt.) 


98 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


SCENE  3.  The  Countess's  castle 
Enter  the  Countess  and  her  'porter 
Countess.  Porter,  remember  what  I  gave  in  charge; 
And  when  you  have  done  so,  bring  the  keys  to  me. 

Porter.  Madam,  I  will.  {Exit.) 

Countess.  The  plot  is  laid.  If  all  things  fall  out  right 
•  I  shall  as  famous  be  by  this  exploit 
As  Scythian  Tomyris  by  Cyrus'  death. 
Great  is  the  rumour  of  this  dreadful  knight, 
And  his  achievements  of  no  less  account; 
Fain  would  mine  eyes  be  witness  with  mine  ears, 
To  give  their  censure  of  these  rare  reports. 

Enter  Messenger  and  Talbot 

Messenger.  Madam, 
According  as  your  ladyship  desir'd, 
By  message  crav'd,  so  is  Lord  Talbot  come. 

Countess.  And  he  is  welcome.  What!  is  this  the  man? 

Mess.  Madam,  it  is. 

Countess.  Is  this  the  scourge  of  France? 

Is  this  the  Talbot,  so  much  fear'd  abroad 
That  with  his  name  the  mothers  still  their  babes? 
I  see  report  is  fabulous  and  false. 
I  thought  I  should  have  seen  some  Hercules, 
A  second  Hector,  for  his  grim  aspect, 
And  large  proportion  of  his  strong-knit  limbs. 
Alas,  this  is  a  child,  a  silly  dwarf! 
It  cannot  be  this  weak  and  writhled  shrimp 
Should  strike  such  terror  to  his  enemies. 

Tal.  Madam,  I  have  been  bold  to  trouble  you; 
But  since  your  ladyship  is  not  at  leisure, 
I'll  sort  some  other  time  to  visit  you.  {Going.) 

Countess.  What  means  he  now?  Go  ask  him  whither  he  goes. 

Mess.  Stay,  my  Lord  Talbot;  for  my  lady  craves 
To  know  the  cause  of  your  abrupt  departure. 

Tal.  Marry,  for  that  she's  in  a  wrong  belief, 
I  go  to  certify  her  Talbot's  here. 

Reenter  Porter  with  keys 
Countess.  If  thou  be  he,  then  art  thou  prisoner. 
Tal.  Prisoner!  To  whom! 


CLEARNESS  99 

Countess.  To  me,  blood-thirsty  lord ; 

And  for  that  cause  I  train'd  thee  to  my  house. 
Long  time,  thy  shadow  hath  been  thrall  to  me, 
For  in  my  gallery  thy  picture  hangs; 
But  now  the  substance  shall  endure  the  like, 
And  I  will  chain  these  legs  and  arms  of  thine, 
That  hast  by  tyranny  these  many  years 
Wasted  our  country,  slain  our  citizens, 
And  sent  our  sons  and  husbands  captivate. 

Tal.  Ha,  ha,  ha! 

Countess.  Laughest  thou,  wretch?  Thy  mirth  shall  turn  to  moan. 

Tal.  I  laugh  to  see  your  ladyship  so  fond 
To  think  that  you  have  aught  but  Talbot's  shadow 
Whereon  to  practice  your  severity. 

Countess.  Why,  art  not  thou  the  man? 

Tal.  I  am  indeed. 

Countess.  Then  have  I  substance  too. 

Tal.  No,  no,  I  am  but  shadow  of  myself. 
You  are  deceiv'd,  my  substance  is  not  here. 
For  what  you  see  is  but  the  smallest  part 
And  least  proportion  of  humanity. 
I  tell  you,  madam,  were  the  whole  frame  here, 
It  is  of  such  a  spacious,  lofty  pitch, 
Your  roof  were  not  sufficient  to  contain't. 

Countess.  This  is  a  riddling  merchant  for  the  nonce; 
He  will  be  here,  and  yet  he  is  not  here. 
How  can  these  contrarieties  agree? 

Tal.  That  will  I  show  you  presently. 

(Winds  his  horn.  Drums  strike  up:  a  peal  of  ordnance.  The 
gates  are  forced.) 

Enter  Soldiers 
How  say  you,  madam?  Are  you  now  persuaded 
That  Talbot  is  but  shadow  of  himself? 
These  are  his  substance,  sinews,  arms,  and  strength, 
With  which  he  yoketh  your  rebellious  necks, 
Razeth  your  cities  and  subverts  your  towns 
And  in  a  moment  makes  you  desolate. 

Countess.  Victorious  Talbot!  pardon  my  abuse. 
I  find  thou  art  no  less  than  fame  hath  bruited 
And  more  than  may  be  gathered  by  the  shape. 


ioo  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Let  my  presumption  not  provoke  thy  wrath; 
For  I  am  sorry  that  with  reverence 
I  did  not  entertain  thee  as  thou  art. 

Tal.  Be  not  dismay'd,  fair  lady;  nor  misconstrue 
The  mind  of  Talbot,  as  you  did  mistake 
The  outward  composition  of  his  body. 
What  you  have  done  hath  not  offended  me; 
Nor  other  satisfaction  do  I  crave, 
But  only  with  your  patience,  that  we  may 
Taste  of  your  wine  and  see  what  cates  you  have; 
For  soldiers'  stomachs  always  serve  them  well. 

Countess.  With  all  my  heart,  and  think  me  honoured 
To  feast  so  great  a  warrior  in  my  house. 

(Exeunt.} 

Except  for  a  few  lines  of  rhetoric,  could  the  account  in 
Scene  3  be  shortened?  The  Countess  awaits  Talbot;  he 
comes;  she  reviles  him  in  a  few  lines;  he  turns  to  go;  she 
declares  him  a  prisoner;  he  laughs  at  her;  and  as  she 
stands  amazed,  calls  in  his  forces  brought  in  secret  to  the 
castle.  When  Talbot  invites  himself  and  his  men  to  feast 
at  her  expense,  the  Countess  immediately  agrees.  Reading 
the  scene,  one  recalls  the  words  of  Dumas  fils:  "Any  one 
can  relate  a  dramatic  situation :  the  art  lies  in  preparing  it, 
getting  it  accepted,  making  it  plausible,  especially  in  unty- 
ing the  knot."1  Here  Shakespeare  does  not  untie  the  knot; 
the  Countess  merely  yields.  What  she  feels,  what  happened 
thereafter,  —  all  these  are  omitted.  It  is  merely  the  situa- 
tion which  counts.  Before  Talbot  comes  in,  the  scene  could 
easily  be  made  to  reveal  much  more  of  the  character  of  the 
Countess.  WTien  he  does  enter,  the  play  of  wits  between 
them,  even  as  it  disclosed  character,  might  provide  inter- 
esting dramatic  conflict.  Surely  the  moment  when  the 
Countess  thinks  Talbot  trapped  and  he  coolly  jeers  at 
her,  is  worth  more  development.  Here  it  is  treated  so 
quickly  that  the  surprise  in  the  entrance  of  the  soldiers 

1  Preface  to  Lc  Supplice  (Time  Femme.  (Euvret,  vol.  v.  Calmann  Levy,  Paria. 


CLEARNESS  101 

hardly  ccts  its  full  effect.    All  this  is  the  work  of  a  tyro, 
even  if  be  be  Shakespeare. 

In  Richard  //,  there  is  a  scene,  not  as  long  as  that  just 
quoted,  in  which  the  central  situation  might  seem  to  many 
people  less  dramatic  than  that  of  Talbot  and  the  Countess, 
note  to  what  a  clear  and  convincing  conclusion  Shake- 
re  brings  it,  how  plausible  he  makes  the  scene,  how 
thoroughly  he  prepares  it  for  the  largest  emotional  effect  by 
entering  thoroughly  into  the  characters  involved. 
Enter  Aumerle 

DucJiess.  Here  comes  my  son  Aumerle. 

York.  Aumerle  that  was; 

But  that  is  lost  for  being  Richard's  friend, 
And,  madam,  you  must  call  him  Rutland  now. 
I  am  in  Parliament  pledge  for  his  truth 
And  lasting  fealty  to  the  new  made  king. 

Duch.  Welcome,  my  son.  Who  are  the  violets  now 
That  strew  the  green  lap  of  the  new  come  spring? 

Aunt.  Madam,  I  know  not,  nor  I  greatly  care  not 
God  knows  I  had  as  lief  be  none  as  one. 

York.  Well,  bear  you  well  in  this  new  spring  of  time, 
Lest  you  be  cropp'd  before  you  come  to  prime. 
What  news  from  Oxford?  Do  these  jousts  and  triumphs  hold? 

Aum.  For  aught  I  know,  my  lord,  they  do. 

York.  You  will  be  there,  I  know. 

Aum.  If  God  prevent  not,  I  purpose  so. 

York.  What  seal  is  that,  that  hangs  without  thy  bosom? 
Yea,  look'st  thou  pale?  Let  me  see  the  writing. 

Aum.  My  lord,  'tis  nothing. 

York.  No  matter,  then,  who  see  it. 
I  will  be  satisfied:  let  me  see  the  writing. 

Aum.  I  do  beseech  your  grace  to  pardon  me. 
It  is  a  matter  of  small  consequence, 
Which  for  some  reasons  I  would  not  have  seen. 

York.  Which  for  some  reasons,  sir,  I  mean  to  see. 
I  fear,  I  fear,  — 

Duch.  What  should  you  fear? 
'Tis  nothing  but  some  band,  whicn  he  has  ent'red  into 
For  gay  apparel  'gainst  the  triumph  day. 


102  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

York.  Bound  to  himself!  What  doth  he  with  a  bond 
That  he  is  bound  to?  Wife,  thou  art  a  fool. 
Boy,  let  me  see  the  writing. 

Aum.  I  do  beseech  you,  pardon  me.  I  may  not  show  it. 

York.  I  will  be  satisfied;  let  me  see  it,  I  say. 

(He  plucks  it  out  of  his  bosom  and  reads  it.) 
Treason!  foul  treason!  Villain!  traitor!  slave! 

Duch.  What  is  the  matter,  my  lord? 

York.  Ho!  who  is  within  there? 

Enter  a  Servant 

Saddle  my  horse. 
God  for  his  mercy,  what  treachery  is  here! 

Duch.  Why,  what  is  it,  my  lord? 

York.  Give  me  my  boots,  I  say;  saddle  my  horse. 

(Exit  Servant) 
Now,  by  mine  honour,  by  my  life,  by  my  troth, 
I  will  appeach  the  villain. 

Duch.  What  is  the  matter? 

York.  Peace,  foolish  woman. 

Duch.  I  will  not  peace.  What  is  the  matter,  Aumerle? 

Aum.  Good  mother,  have  content;  it  is  no  more 
Than  my  poor  life  must  answer. 

Duch.  Thy  life  answer! 

York.  Bring  me  my  boots;  I  will  unto  the  King. 

Reenter  Servant  with  boots 

Duch.  Strike  him,  Aumerle.  Poor  boy,  thou  art  amaz'd. 
—  Hence  villain!  never  more  come  in  my  sight. 

York.  Give  me  my  boots,  I  say. 

Duch.  Why,  York,  what  wilt  thou  do? 
WTilt  thou  not  hide  the  trespass  of  thine  own? 
Have  we  more  sons?  Or  are  we  like  to  have? 
Is  not  my  teeming  date  drunk  up  with  time? 
And  wilt  thou  pluck  my  fair  son  from  mine  age, 
And  rob  me  of  a  happy  mother's  name? 
Is  he  not  like  thee?  Is  he  not  thine  own? 

York.  Thou  fond  mad  woman. 
Wilt  thou  conceal  this  dark  conspiracy? 
A  dozen  of  them  here  have  ta'en  the  sacrament, 
And  interchangeably  set  down  their  hands, 
To  kill  the  King  at  Oxford. 


CLEARNESS  103 

Durh.  He  shall  be  none; 

We'll  keep  him  here;  then  what  is  that  to  him? 

York.  Away,  fond  woman!  Were  he  twenty  times  my  son, 
I  would  appeach  him. 

Duck.  Hadst  thou  groan'd  for  him 

As  I  have  done,  thou  wouldst  be  more  pitiful. 
But  now  I  know  thy  mind ;  thou  dost  suspect 
That  I  have  been  disloyal  to  thy  bed, 
And  that  he  is  a  bastard,  not  thy  son. 
Sweet  York,  sweet  husband,  be  not  of  that  mind. 
He  is  as  like  thee  as  a  man  may  be, 
Not  like  to  me  or  any  of  my  kin, 
And  yet  I  love  him. 

York.  Make  way,  unruly  woman!  (Exit.) 

Duck.  After,  Aumerie!  Mount  thee  upon  his  horse; 
Spur  post  and  get  before  him  to  the  King, 
And  beg  thy  pardon  ere  he  do  accuse  thee. 
I'll  not  be  long  behind ;  though  I  be  old, 
I  doubt  not  but  to  ride  as  fast  as  York. 
And  never  will  I  rise  up  from  the  ground 
Till  Bolingbroke  have  pardon'd  thee.  Away,  be  gone! 

(Exeunt.) 

So  far  as  the  situation  is  concerned  we  might  go  directly 
from  York's  "fealty  to  the  new  made  King"  to  his  "What 
seal  is  that?"  omitting  some  ten  lines.  We  should  lose,  how- 
ever, the  deft  touches  which  make  the  discovery  all  the  more 
dramatic,  —  the  words  of  York  which  show  that  he  has  no 
idea  that  his  son  is  really  involved  in  any  disloyalty;  the  af- 
fectionate effort  of  the  mother  to  draw  the  talk  from  un- 
pleasant subjects;  and  the  distrait  mood  of  Aumerie.  Again, 
the  discovery  of  the  contents  of  the  seal  might  be  made  at 
once,  but  the  fifteen  intervening  lines  before  York  cries 
"  Treason !  foul  treason ! "  increase  our  suspense  by  their  clear 
presentation  of  the  emotions  of  father,  mother,  and  son. 
Once  more  the  situation  is  held  when  York  does  not  declare 
at  once  the  nature  of  the  treason  and  the  frantic  mother 
demands  again  and  again  the  contents  of  the  paper  before 


104  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Aumerle  says  bitterly,  and  in  perfect  character  with  his  first 
speeches  of  the  scene, 

"it  is  no  more 
Than  my  poor  life  must  answer." 

Still  again  we  should  have  the  necessary  action  of  the  scene 
perfectly  if  York,  as  soon  as  he  has  his  boots,  flung  out  of 
the  room,  to  be  followed  immediately  by  the  Duchess,  cry- 
ing that  she  will  follow  him  to  the  King  and  ask  the  boy's 
pardon.  However,  had  Shakespeare's  treatment  here  been 
that  he  used  in  the  scene  of  Talbot  and  the  Countess  we 
should  have  lacked  the  perfect  portrayal  of  the  mother  who 
loses  all  sense  of  right  and  wrong  in  fear  that  her  loved  child 
may  die.  Finally,  do  we  not  gain  greatly  by  the  characteri- 
zation of  the  Duchess  in  the  last  lines  of  the  scene?  Five 
times,  then,  Shakespeare,  by  entering  into  his  characters, 
"holds  the  situation." 

The  second  act  of  The  Magistrate,*  by  Sir  Arthur  Pinero, 
is  in  central  situation  broadly  this.  Cis  Farringdon,  repre- 
sented by  his  mother  to  his  stepfather,  Mr.  Posket,  as  four- 
teen, because  she  does  not  like  to  admit  her  own  age,  is  really 
nineteen  and  precocious  at  that.  He  has  brought  Mr.  Posket 
to  one  of  his  haunts,  a  supper  room  in  the  Hotel  des  Princes, 
Meek  Street,  London,  where  they  are  to  sup  together. 
As  Mr.  Posket  is  a  police  justice,  he  has  been  induced  to 
figure  for  the  evening  as  "Skinner  of  the  stock  exchange." 
Shortly  after  the  arrival  of  the  two  comes  word  that  a  fre- 
quenter of  the  restaurant  twenty  years  ago,  now  returned  to 
London,  wants  to  sup  in  their  chosen  room  for  the  sake  of  old 
times.  Therefore  Mr.  Posket  and  Cis  are  put  into  an  ad- 
joining room.  Colonel  Lukyn,  the  returned  stranger,  and  a 
friend,  Captain  Vale,  enter.  Just  as  they  are  ordering  supper, 
a  note  comes  to  the  effect  that  Mrs.  Posket,  with  a  woman 

1  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston ;  W.  Heinemann,  London. 


CLEARNESS  105 

friend,  is  below,  begging  to  speak  with  her  old  acquaintance, 
Colonel  Lukyn.  As  Mrs.  Posket  asks  a  private  interview, 
Captain  Vale  is  put  out  on  the  balcony.  With  Mrs.  Posket 
comes  her  sister  Charlotte.  We  have  already  learned  from 
Vale  that  he  is  deeply  depressed  because  he  thinks  Charlotte 
no  longer  cares  for  him.  Mrs.  Posket  has  come  to  beg 
Colonel  Lukyn,  who  knew  her  before  she  became  a  widow, 
not  to  reveal  the  truth  about  her  age. 

Watch  now  the  permutations  and  combinations  the  author 
develops  from  this  general  situation.  Cis  is  hardly  in  the 
room  before  Isadore  presents  his  bill  for  past  meals.  Cis  sees 
the  chance,  by  borrowing  from  his  stepfather,  to  settle  a  long 
postponed  account.  Three  figures,  moved  in  turn  by  shrewd- 
ness, trickiness,  and  gullibility,  stir  us  to  amusement,  giving 
us  Situation  I.  Even  as  the  bill  is  paid,  Cis  asks  Isadore  to 
show  Mr.  Skinner  the  trick  of  "putting  the  silver  to  bed." 
Three  people  amused  or  interested  by  a  trick,  amuse  us  — 
Situation  II.  With  the  coming  of  the  note  from  Alexander 
Lukyn,  and  the  assignment  of  the  room  adjoining  to  Cis  and 
Mr.  Skinner-Posket,  there  is  a  hint  of  future  complication 
which  amuses  us  —  Situation  III.  Lukyn  and  Vale  entering, 
the  former  sentimental  over  his  memories  of  the  place,  and 
the  latter  comically  depressed  over  what  he  thinks  to  be  the 
faithlessness  of  Charlotte  Verrinder,  give  us  Situation  IV. 
The  note  saying  Mrs.  Posket  is  below  with  a  friend,  asking 
a  private  interview,  produces  Situation  V,  for  it  amuses  us  to 
think  what  may  happen  with  Mr.  Posket  and  Cis  just  on 
the  other  side  of  the  door.  Placing  Vale  on  the  balcony  leads 
to  Situation  VI,  for  he  goes  with  amusing  regret  for  the  de- 
layed supper. 

Up  to  this  point  the  situations  may  be  declared  parts  of  the 
main  situation,  which  must  now  itself  be  developed.  Just 
after  Blond,  the  proprietor,  ushers  in  the  ladies,  the  patter- 
ing of  rain  outside  is  heard. 


106  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Lukyn.  Good  gracious,  Blond!  What's  that? 

Blond.  The  rain  outside.  It  is  cats  and  dogs. 

Lukyn.  {Horrified.)  By  George,  is  it?  (To  himself,  looking  towards 
window.)  Poor  devil!  (To  Blond.)  There  isn't  any  method  of  get- 
ting off  that  balcony  is  there? 

Blond.  No  —  unless  by  getting  on  to  it. 

Lukyn.  What  do  you  mean? 

Blond.  It  is  not  at  all  safe.  Don't  use  it. 

(Lukyn  stands  horror-stricken.  Blond  goes  cut.  Heavy  rain 
is  heard.)  —  Situation  VII. 

As  Mrs.  Posket  reveals  to  Lukyn  the  complications  in  which 
her  lie  is  involving  her,  voices  from  the  next  room,  not  clearly 
distinguished  by  those  on  the  stage,  but  known  to  us  as  the 
voices  of  Cis  and  Mr.  Skinner-Posket,  are  heard  —  Situa- 
tion VIII.  Just  when  Lukyn  is  straining  every  nerve  to  get 
the  ladies  away  so  that  he  may  release  Vale,  Charlotte,  over- 
whelmed by  hunger,  invites  herself  to  supper  —  Situation 
IX.  As  the  two  women  eat,  Lukyn  sits  in  anxious  despair,  at 
times  forgetful  of  his  guests.  This  brings  Situation  X,  when 
Vale  reaches  out  from  behind  the  curtains  of  the  balcony 
and  passes  to  the  absent-minded  Lukyn  from  the  buffet  the 
dishes  Charlotte  desires.  When  Charlotte,  turning  suddenly, 
sees  the  outstretched  arm,  we  have  Situation  XL  WTien 
Vale  reenters,  thoroughly  irritated  and  quarrels  with  Lukyn, 
we  have  Situation  XII.  The  reunion  of  Charlotte  and  Vale 
makes  the  thirteenth.  That  is,  if  six  initial  situations  pro- 
duced the  situation  when  all  the  characters  were  upon  the 
stage,  Sir  Arthur  has  developed  seven  new  situations  from 
the  sixth.  Now  by  adding  a  fresh  complication  through  some 
new  figures,  he  develops  six  more  situations. 

Just  as  Lukyn,  Mrs.  Posket,  Charlotte,  and  Vale  are  about 
to  leave  amicably,  Blond  rushes  in  to  say  that  the  police  are 
below  because  the  prescribed  hour  for  closing  has  passed. 
The  names  and  addresses  of  all  persons  found  on  the  prem- 
ises will  be  taken — Situation  XIV.  Lukyn,  Vale,  Mrs.  Posket 


CLEARNESS  107 

and  Charlotte  hide  themselves  in  different  parts  of  the  room, 
putting  out  the  lights.  Situation  XV  is  the  entrance  in  the 
darkness  of  Blond  leading  Cis  and  Mr.  Skinner-Posket,  in 
order  that  the  other  room  may  be  searched  safely.  At  last, 
the  room  where  all  are  hidden  is  examined  by  the  police.  All 
try  to  hold  their  breath,  but  in  vain.  The  police  detect  some 
one  breathing  —  Situation  XVI.  In  the  resulting  confusion, 
Cis  escapes,  dragging  his  stepfather  with  him  —  Situation 
XVII.  The  other  four  when  caught,  foolishly  give  false 
names.  Lukyn,  thoroughly  irritated  by  the  officers,  flings 
one  of  them  aside  and  attempts  to  force  his  way  out,  when 
he  and  his  party  are  promptly  arrested  for  assault  —  Situ- 
ation XVIII. 

Lukyn,  You'll  dare  to  lock  us  up  all  night? 

Messiter.  It's  one  o'clock  now,  Colonel  —  you'll  come  on  first 
thing  in  the  morning. 

Lukyn.  Come  on?  At  what  court? 

Messiter.  Mulberry  Street. 

Agatha  Posket.  Ah!  The  Magistrate? 

Messiter.  Mr.  Posket,  Mum. 

(Agatha  Posket  sinks  into  a  chair,  Charlotte  at  her  feet ; 
Lukyn,  overcome,  falls  on  Vale's  shoulders.)  —  Situa- 
tion XIX. 

Five  situations  of  nineteen  lead  up  to  the  sixth.  Seven 
are  developed  from  that  sixth  by  means  of  four  people.  The 
new  complication,  the  search  of  the  restaurant  by  the  police 
and  the  bringing  into  one  room  of  all  the  figures,  gives  us 
six  more  situations.  Certainly  Sir  Arthur  knows  how  to 
"hold  a  situation." 

Act  III  of  Mrs.  Dane's  Defence '  is  just  equally  divided 
between  preparatory  material  and  the  great  scene  which  ebbs 
and  flows  about  the  following  situation.  Mrs.  Dane,  in  love 
with  Lionel,  the  adopted  son  of  Sir  Daniel  Carteret,  at  the 
opening  of  the  scene  has  lied  so  successfully  about  her  past 

>  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York. 


io8  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

that  Sir  Daniel,  who  has  been  suspicious  of  her,  has  been  en- 
tirely convinced  of  her  innocence.  Eager  to  help  her  set  her- 
self right,  he  asks  in  the  kindest  way  for  information  which 
may  aid  him.  Trying  not  to  commit  herself,  Mrs.  Dane  slips 
once  or  twice  and  all  the  old  suspicions  of  Sir  Daniel  are  re- 
aroused.  He  cross-examines  her  so  rigidly  that  ultimately 
she  breaks  down  and  confesses.  Handled  by  the  inexperi- 
enced that  situation  might  have  been  good  for  four  or  five 
pages.  As  treated  by  Mr.  H.  A.  Jones,  it  makes  a  scene  of 
twenty  pages  of  finest  suspense  and  climax.  The  situation 
is  well  held  because  every  reaction  upon  it  by  the  two  char- 
acters has  been  worked  out. 

One  would  hardly  think  two  quarrelsome  inmates  of  a  poor- 
house,  visited  by  a  relative  of  one  of  them  who  wishes  to  take 
him  away  to  manage  her  place,  likely  to  produce  a  master- 
piece of  comic  drama.  Yet  it  does  with  Lady  Gregory  in  The 
Workhouse  Ward,1  for  she  knows  Irish  character  and  speech 
so  intimately  that  minor  situation  after  minor  situation  de- 
velops, through  the  characters,  from  the  original  situation. 

Indeed,  much  of  our  so-called  new  drama  is  but  a  pro- 
longed holding  of  a  situation  stated  as  the  play  opens,  or 
clearly  before  us  at  the  end  of  Act  I.  Chains2  of  Miss  Eliza- 
beth Baker  in  Act  I  puts  this  double  situation  before  us.  A 
young  married  man  without  children,  though  happy  enough 
in  his  marriage,  is  so  weary  of  the  sordidness  of  his  small 
means  and  limited  opportunities  that  he  longs  to  break  away, 
go  out  to  Australia,  and  when  he  has  made  a  career  for  him- 
self, send  for  his  wife.  His  sister-in-law,  a  shop  girl,  equally 
weary  of  her  life,  is  weakly  thinking  of  marrying  a  man  she 
does  not  love,  but  who  really  loves  her,  in  order  to  escape  the 
grayness  of  her  life.  At  the  end  of  the  play  these  two  are 
accepting  the  situations  in  which  we  found  them.  Yet  the 
three  acts  of  the  play  are  full  of  varied  interest  for  an  audi- 

i  Seven  Short  Plays.   Maunsel  &  Co.,  Dublin. 

1  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston ;  Sidgwick  &  Jackson,  Ltd.,  London. 


CLEARNESS  109 

ence,  so  admirably  does  the  writer  discern  the  situations 
which  her  characters  will  develop  from  the  original  situation. 
II indie  Wakes,1  the  best  play  of  Stanley  Houghton,  is  really 
a  study  of  the  way  in  which  a  situation  which  took  place  be- 
fore the  play  began  affects  three  families. 

Surely  it  must  now  be  evident  that  if  a  dramatist  should 
in  the  first  place  understand  perfectly  that  illustrative  ac- 
tion is  the  core  of  drama,  and  must  be  carefully  selected; 
and  secondly  that  he  must,  among  possible  illustrative  ac- 
tions, select  those  which  quickest  will  produce  the  largest 
emotional  results;  he  must  also  recognize  that  till  he  has 
searched  and  probed  his  situations  by  means  of  the  charac- 
ters, in  the  first  place  he  cannot  know  which  are  his  strongest, 
and  in  the  second  place  cannot  hope  to  hold  the  situations 
chosen. 

Another  complaint  from  the  inexperienced  dramatist 
when  shaping  up  his  story  is  that  though  he  sees  the  big  mo- 
ments in  his  play,  he  does  not  see  his  way  from  one  to  an- 
other. That  is,  transitional  scenes  are  lacking.  They  will  not 
worry  him  long,  however,  if  he  follows  the  methods  just 
stated  for  holding  a  situation.  Let  him  watch  the  people 
who  have  come  into  his  imagination,  first  simply  as  people. 
Who  and  what  are  they?  Secondly,  what  are  they  feeling  and 
thinking  in  the  situations  which  have  occurred  to  him?  He 
can't  long  consider  this  without  deciding  what  people  they 
must  have  been  in  order  to  be  in  the  situations  in  question. 
Hard  upon  this  comes  the  question:  "What  will  people  who 
have  been  like  these  and  have  passed  through  this  experi- 
ence do  immediately,  and  thereafter?  In  the  answer  to  the 
question,  "  What  have  they  been?"  he  finds  the  transitional 
scenes  which  take  him  back  into  an  earlier  episode;  in  the 
answer  to  "What  will  they  become?"  the  transitional  scenes 
that  carry  him  forward.  In  the  scene  cited  from  Richard  II 

»  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston;  Sidgwick  &  Jackson,  Ltd.,  London. 


no  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

the  main  moments  are  the  home-coming,  the  discovery  of 
the  traitorous  paper,  and  the  departure  of  the  Duke  and 
Duchess  of  York.  How  is  the  transition  from  one  to  the  other 
to  be  gained?  Through  knowledge  of  the  characters,  as  the 
analysis  showed.  What  applies  here  to  transition  within  a 
scene  from  dramatic  moment  to  dramatic  moment  applies 
equally  in  transition  from  scene  to  scene.  Suppose  that  Sir 
Arthur  Pinero  had  as  the  starting-point  of  the  third  act  of 
The  Magistrate  the  idea  that  Mrs.  Posket  should  be  arrested 
under  such  conditions  that  she  must  appear  in  the  court  of 
her  husband  when  he  is  as  guilty  as  she.  Sir  Arthur  has  de- 
cided that  they  must  be  in  some  place  like  the  Hotel  des 
Princes  when  it  is  raided.  He  has  in  mind  episodes  which 
will  bring  them  all  together  at  that  place.  He  already  sees 
clearly  the  scene  of  the  raid  and  the  arrest.  But  the  place 
cannot  be  raided  till  late  in  the  evening,  and  Agatha  Posket 
is  too  jealous  of  her  reputation  thoughtlessly  to  stay  late 
in  such  a  place.  What  are  to  be  the  transitional "  scenes  " 
which,  in  the  first  place,  shall  make  us  feel  that  consider- 
able time  has  passed  since  Mrs.  Posket  came  to  the  hotel, 
and  secondly  shall  keep  us  amused?  Sir  Arthur  finds  them 
through  the  characters.  It  is  the  hunger  of  self-indulgent 
Charlotte  which  motivates  the  staying  and  gives  us  the 
supper  "  scene."  It  is  the  character  of  Vale  which  gives 
us  his  quarrel  with  Lukyn.  The  love  making  of  Charlotte 
and  Vale  provides  another  transitional  "  scene."  In  other 
words,  whether  one  is  looking  for  more  episodes  or  for 
transitions  from  one  chosen  episode  to  another,  one  should 
not  go  far  afield  hunting  episodes  as  episodes,  but  should 
become  acquainted  with  the  characters  as  closely  as  pos- 
sible.   They  will  solve  the  difficulties. 

All  this  lengthy  consideration  of  selection  makes  for  unity 
of  action  in  the  story  resulting.  Some  unity  of  action, 
whether  the  story  be  slight  or  complicated,  there  must  be. 


CLEARNESS  1 1 1 

Of  the  three  great  unities  over  which  there  has  been  endless 
discussion,  Action,  Place,  and  Time,  the  modern  dramatists, 
II  wc  shall  see,  treat  Place  with  the  greatest  freedom,  and 
ire  constantly  inventing  devices  to  avoid  the  Time  difficulty. 
With  the  dramatists  of  the  present,  as  with  the  dramatists 
of  the  past,  however,  what  they  write  must  be  a  whole,  a 
unit.  Some  central  idea,  plan,  purpose,  whatever  we  choose 
to  call  it,  must  give  the  play  organic  structure.  Story  is  the 
first  step  to  this.  Which  gives  most  pleasure,  —  a  string  of 
disconnected  anecdotes  and  jests;  or  a  series  of  them  given 
some  unity  because  they  concern  some  man  of  note,  for 
instance,  Abraham  Lincoln;  or  the  same  series  edited  till, 
taken  all  together,  they  make  Abraham  Lincoln,  in  one  or 
more  of  his  characteristics,  clearer  than  ever  before?  Does 
not  a  large  part  of  our  pleasure  in  biography  come  from  the 
way  in  which  it  co-ordinates  and  interprets  episodes  and 
incidents  hitherto  not  properly  inter-related  in  our  minds? 
Unity  of  action  is,  then,  of  first  importance  in  story. 

There  is,  however,  another  kind  of  unity  which  has  not 
been  enough  considered,  —  what  may,  perhaps,  be  called 
artistic  unity.  Why  is  it  that  a  play  which  begins  seriously 
and  for  most  of  its  course  so  develops,  only  to  end  farcically, 
or  which  begins  lightly  only  to  become  tragic,  leaves  us  dis- 
satisfied? Because  the  audience  finds  it  difficult  to  readjust 
its  mood  as  swiftly  as  does  the  author.  The  Climbers  l  and 
The  Girl  With  the  Green  Eyes 2  of  Clyde  Fitch  are  examples  in 
point.  The  first  begins  with  such  dignity  and  mysterious- 
ness  that  its  lighter  moods,  after  Act  I,  seem  almost  trivial. 
In  the  second  play  the  very  tragic  scene  of  the  attempted 
suicide,  after  the  light  comedy  touch  of  the  preceding  parts, 
is  distinctly  jarring.  A  recent  play  which  for  two  acts  or 
more  seemingly  had  been  dealing  with  but  slightly  disguised 
figures  of  the  political  world  had  a  late  scene  in  which  one  of 

i  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York.  «  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York. 


112  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

these  politicians,  like  Manson  in  The  Servant  in  the  House,1 
or  The  Stranger  in  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back,2 
shadowed  the  figure  of  Christ  himself.  The  effect  was  jarring, 
unpleasant,  and  confusing,  mainly  because  of  its  suddenness. 
It  will  be  noted  that  in  both  the  plays  mentioned,  Manson 
and  The  Stranger  carry  their  suggestion  from  the  start. 
Should  we  know  how  to  take  Percinet  and  Sylvette  in  The 
Romancers  3  of  Rostand  did  not  that  opening  scene,  when 
these  two,  in  love  with  being  in  love,  read  Romeo  and  Juliet 
together,  prepare  us  for  all  the  later  fantasy?  A  dramatist 
will  do  well,  then,  to  know  clearly  before  he  begins  to  write 
whether  he  wishes  his  story  to  be  melodrama,  tragedy,  farce, 
or  comedy  of  character  or  intrigue.  Unless  he  does  and  in 
consequence  selects  his  illustrative  material  so  that  he  may 
give  it  artistic  unity,  he  is  likely  to  produce  a  play  of  so 
mixed  a  genre  as  to  be  confusing. 

"Just  what  is  tragi-comedy,  then?"  a  reader  may  ask. 
The  Elizabethan  dramatist  frequently  offered  one  serious 
and  one  comic  plot,  running  parallel  except  when  brought 
together  in  the  last  scene  of  the  play.  Technically,  however, 
tragi-comedy  is  a  form  which,  although  it  may  contain  tragic 
elements,  is  throughout  given  a  general  emphasis  as  comedy 
and  ends  in  comedy.  We  do  not  have  good  tragi-comedy 
when  most  of  the  play  is  comedy  or  tragedy,  and  one  scene 
or  act  is  distinctly  the  opposite.  Therefore  not  only  unity 
of  action  but  artistic  unity,  unity  of  genre,  should  be  sought 
by  the  dramatist  shaping  up  his  story. 

How  much  story  does  a  play  require?  This  is  a  difficult 
point  to  settle,  but  first  of  all  let  us  clearly  understand  that 
there  are  great  differences  in  audiences  as  far  as  plotting  is 
concerned.  Some  periods  require  more  plot  than  others. 
Today  we  do  not  demand,  as  did  the  audience  of  Shake- 

i  Harper  &  Bros.,  New  York.  *  Hurst  &  Blackett,  Ltd.,  London. 

«  Doubleday  &  McClure  Co.,  New  York. 


CLEARNESS  113 

gpeare's  time,  plays  containing  two  or  more  stories,  some- 
times scarcely  at  all  connected,  sometimes  neatly  inter- 
woven. Middleton's  The  Changeling  l  contains  two  almost 
independent  stories.  This  is  nearly  as  true  of  The  Coxcomb  2 
by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  On  the  other  hand,  in  Much 
.  1  bout  Nothing  the  Hero-Claudio  story,  the  Beatrice- 
Benedict  story,  and  the  Dogberry- Verges  story  are  so 
deftly  interwoven  that  they  are,  to  all  appearances,  a  unit. 
Even  as  late  as  thirty  years  ago  one  found  in  many  plays 
a  group  of  characters  for  the  serious  interest  and  another 
for  the  comic  values.  Gradually,  however,  dramatists  have 
come  to  get  their  comic  values  from  people  essential  to  the 
serious  story,  or  from  a  comic  emphasis  they  place  on  cer- 
tain aspects  of  the  serious  figures  of  the  play.  Today  is 
the  time  of  the  single  story  rather  than  the  interwoven 
story.  Yet  even  now,  so  far  as  the  public  of  the  United 
States  is  concerned,  a  writer  may  easily  go  too  far  in  sim- 
plicity, or  rather  scantiness  of  story,  trusting  too  much  to 
admirable  characterization.  That  is  why  that  delightful 
play,  The  Mollusc,*  failed  in  this  country.  Many  people, 
among  them  the  intelligent,  declared  the  play  too  thin  to 
give  them  pleasure.  That  is,  apparently  we  of  the  United 
States  care  more  in  our  plays  for  elaborate  stories  than 
do  our  English  cousins. 

Indeed,  national  taste  differs  as  to  the  amount  of  plot 
desirable.  Both  Americans  and  English  care  more  for  plot 
than  do  most  of  the  Continental  nations,  which  are  often 
satisfied  with  plays  of  slight  story-value  but  admirable  char- 
acterization. Nor  is  the  difference  a  new  one.  Writing  of 
Wycherley's  arrangement  of  Moliere's  Misanthrope  in  his 
Plain  Dealer,  Voltaire  said,  "The  English  author  has  cor- 

1  Playt  of  Thomas  Middleton.  Mermaid  Series.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 
*  Workt  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  vol.  iv.  Whalley  &  Colman,  eds.  1811. 
1  The  MolUuc.   H.  H.  Davies.    Walter  H.   Baker   &  Co.,  Boston  ;  W.  Heinemann, 
London. 


u4  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

rected  the  only  fault  of  Moliere's  piece,  lack  of  plot."  l  In 
the  same  Letter  on  Comedy,  Voltaire  brings  out  clearly  what 
any  student  of  English  drama  knows,  that  all  through  its 
greatest  period  it  depended  far  more  on  complicated  story 
than  did  the  drama  of  the  Continent.  Lessing  in  his  Ham- 
burg Dramaturgy,  speaking  of  Colman's  The  English  Mer- 
chant, says  it  has  not  action  enough  for  the  English  critics. 
"Curiosity  is  not  sufficiently  fostered,  the  whole  complica- 
tion is  visible  in  the  first  act.  We  Germans  are  well  content 
that  the  action  is  not  richer  and  more  complex.  The  English 
taste  on  this  point  distracts  and  fatigues  us,  we  love  a  simple 
plot  that  can  be  grasped  at  once.  The  English  are  forced  to 
insert  episodes  into  French  plays  if  they  are  to  please  on  their 
stage.  In  like  manner  we  have  to  weed  episodes  out  of  the 
English  plays  if  we  want  to  introduce  them  to  our  stage.  The 
best  comedies  of  Congreve  and  Wycherley  would  seem  intol- 
erable to  us  without  this  excision.  We  manage  better  with 
their  tragedies.  In  part  these  are  not  so  complex  and  many 
of  them  have  succeeded  well  amongst  us  without  the  least 
alteration,  which  is  more  than  I  could  say  for  any  of  their 
comedies."2 

About  all  the  generalization  one  may  permit  one's  self  here 
is :  For  the  public  of  the  United  States  one  can  at  present 
feel  sure  that  story  increases  its  interest  in  characterization, 
however  fine.  As  we  shall  see  in  dealing  with  character,  the 
latter  should  never  be  sacrificed  to  story,  but  story  often 
ferries  a  play  from  the  shore  of  unsuccess  to  the  shore  of  suc- 
cess. Even  today  it  is  not  the  great  poetry,  the  subtle  char- 
acterization nor  the  fine  thinking  of  Hamlet  which  give  it 
large  audiences:  it  is  the  varied  story,  full  of  surprises  and 
suspense. 

In  another  way,  Hamlet  is  a  case  in  point.  It  shows  the  im- 

i  Letires  tur  let  Anglais,  Lettre  xix,  Sur  la  ComSdie,  p.  170.  A.  Basle,  1734. 
*  Hamburg  Dramaturgy,  p.  265.  Bohn  ed. 


CLEARNESS  115 

ability  of  laying  down  any  golden  rule  as  to  the  amount 
of  story  a  play  should  have.  Only  speaking  broadly  is  it 
true  that  different  kinds  of  plays  seem  to  call  for  different 
amounts  of  story.  Melodrama  obviously  does  depend  on 
M«>r\-happenings  often  unmotivated  and  forced  on  the  char- 
acters by  the  will  of  the  dramatist.  Romance  is  almost  syn- 
onymous with  action  and  we  associate  with  it  a  large  amount 
of  story.  The  word  Intrigue  in  the  title  "Comedy  of  In- 
trigue" at  once  suggests  story.  Tragedy  and  High  Com- 
edy, on  the  other  hand,  depend  for  their  values  on  subtle 
characterization.  In  these  last  two  forms  it  would  seem  that 
the  increasing  characterization  must,  because  of  the  time 
limit,  mean  decrease  in  the  amount  of  story;  then  Hamlet, 
with  its  complicated  story,  occurs  to  us  as  by  no  means  a  sin- 
gle instance  of  a  play  of  subtle  characterization  in  compli- 
cated story.  Farce  may  be  either  of  character  or  of  situa- 
tion, but  there  are  also  farces  in  which  both  situation  and 
character  have  the  exaggerations  which  distinguish  this 
form  from  comedy.  Comedy  of  Manners  must  obviously 
use  much  characterization,  but  it  does  not  preclude  a  com- 
plicated story.  Melodrama,  then,  does  call  above  all  else  for 
story.  With  all  the  other  forms  it  is  in  the  last  analysis 
the  common  sense  of  the  dramatist  which  must  tell  him  how 
much  story  to  use.  He  will  employ  the  amount  the  time 
limits  permit  him  if  he  is  at  the  same  time  to  do  justice  to 
his  characters  and  to  the  idea,  if  any,  he  may  wish  to  convey. 
That  is,  story  as  we  have  been  watching  it  develop  from  the 
point  of  departure  is,  for  the  dramatist,  story  in  the  rough. 
It  is  only  when  it  has  been  proportioned  and  emphasized 
so  that  upon  the  stage  it  will  produce  in  an  audience  the 
exact  emotional  effects  desired  by  the  dramatist  that  it  be- 
comes plot. 

Just  as  the  point  of  departure  for  a  play  comes  to  a  writer 
as  a  kind  of  unconscious  selection  from  among  all  possible 


n6  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

subjects,  so  we  have  seen  that  story  takes  shape  by  a  similar 
process  of  conscious  or  unconscious  selection  till  it  is  some- 
thing with  a  beginning,  a  middle,  and  an  end,  and  clear.  Nor 
does  selection  stop  here.  The  very  necessary  proportioning 
and  emphasizing  mean,  as  we  shall  see,  that  the  dramatist 
selects,  and  again  selects. 


CHAPTER  V 

FROM  SUBJECT  TO  PLOT:  PROPORTIONING  THE 
MATERIAL:  NUMBER  AND  LENGTH  OF  ACTS 

A  dramatist,  proportioning  his  rough  story  for  performance 
in  the  limited  space  of  time  the  stage  permits,  faces  at  once 
the  question:  "How  many  acts?"  If  inexperienced,  noting 
the  number  of  changes  of  set  his  story  seems  to  demand  he 
finds  himself  in  a  dilemma:  to  give  an  act  to  each  change  of 
scene  is  to  break  the  play  into  many  scrappy  acts  of  a  few 
minutes  each;  to  crowd  all  his  needed  scenes  into  five  acts  is 
to  get  scenes  as  scrappy  as  the  eight  which  make  the  fifth  act 
of  Shakespeare's  Macbeth  or  the  ten  in  Act  IV  of  Henry  VI, 
Part  II.  In  either  case,  if  he  gives  his  numerous  scenes  ade- 
quate treatment,  he  is  likely  to  find  their  combined  length 
forces  him  beyond  the  time  limit  the  theatre  allows  —  about 
two  hours  and  a  half. 

Let  him  rid  himself  immediately  of  any  feeling  that  cus- 
tom or  dramatic  dignity  calls  for  any  preference  among  three, 
four,  or  five  acts.  The  Elizabethan  drama  put  such  a  spell 
upon  the  imagination  of  English-speaking  peoples  that  until 
recently  the  idea  was  accepted:  "Five  is  dignity,  with  a 
trailing  robe,  whereas  one,  two,  or  three  acts  would  be  short 
skirts,  and  degrading."1  Today  a  dramatist  may  plan  for 
a  play  of  three,  four,  or  five  acts,  as  seems  to  him  best. 

Why,  if  no  change  of  scene  be  required,  is  not  a  play  of  one 
long  act  desirable?  At  first  sight,  there  would  seem  to  be  a 
gain  in  the  unbroken  movement.  The  power  of  sustained 
attention  in  audiences  is,  however,  distinctly  limited.*  Any 
one  who  has  seen  a  performance  of  The  Trojan  Women2  by 

1  E<*ay  on  Comedy,  p.  8.  George  Meredith.  Copyright,  1897,  by  Chas.  Scribner's  Sou* 
New  York. 

*  The  Trojan  Womtn.  Translated  by  Gilbert  Murray.  G.  Allen  &  Sons,  London. 


n8  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Euripides,  or  von  HofmannsthaFs  Electro,1  needs  no  further 
proof  that  though  each  makes  a  short  evening's  entertain- 
ment it  is  exhausting  because  of  uninterrupted  movement 
from  start  to  finish.  To  plays  of  one  long  act  most  audiences 
become  unresponsive  from  sheer  physical  fatigue.  Conse- 
quently, use  has  confined  one-act  plays  to  subjects  that  may 
be  treated  in  fifteen  minutes  to  an  hour,  with  an  average 
length  of  from  twenty  to  forty-five  minutes.  Strindberg  has 
stated  well  the  problem  which  the  play  in  one  long  act  in- 
•/olves:  "I  have  tried,"  he  wrote  in  his  Introduction  to  Miss 
Julia,  "to  abolish  the  division  into  acts.  And  I  have  done 
so  because  I  have  come  to  fear  that  our  decreasing  capacity 
for  illusion  might  be  unfavorably  affected  by  intermissions 
during  which  the  spectator  would  have  time  to  reflect  and  to 
get  away  from  the  suggestive  influence  of  the  author-hypno- 
tist. My  play  will  probably  last  an  hour  and  a  half,  and  as 
it  is  possible  to  listen  that  length  of  time,  or  longer,  to  a  lec- 
ture, a  sermon,  or  a  debate,  I  have  imagined  that  a  theatri- 
cal performance  could  not  become  fatiguing  in  the  same  time. 
As  early  as  1872,  in  one  of  my  first  dramatic  experiments, 
The  Outlaw,  I  tried  the  same  concentrated  form,  but  with 
scant  success.  The  play  was  written  in  five  acts,  and  wholly 
completed,  when  I  became  aware  of  the  restless,  scattered 
effect  it  produced.  Then  I  burned  it,  and  out  of  the  ashes 
rose  a  single,  well-built  act,  covering  fifty  printed  pages,  and 
taking  an  hour  for  its  performance.  Thus  the  form  of  the 
present  play  is  not  new,  but  it  seems  to  be  my  own,  and 
changing  sesthetical  conventions  may  possibly  make  it  timely. 
"My  hope  is  still  for  a  public  educated  to  a  point  where  it 
can  sit  through  a  whole-evening  performance  in  a  single  act. 
But  that  point  cannot  be  reached  without  a  great  deal  of 
experimentation."  2 

1  Eledra.    Von  Hofmannsthal.  Translated  by  A.  Symons.  Brentano,  New  York. 
*  Introduction  to  Miss  Julia.  Translated  by  E.  Bjorkman.  Copyright,  1912,  by  Cha& 
Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


PROPORTION  119 

The  difficulty  with  a  play  of  only  two  acts  is  similar.  If 
the  piece  is  to  fill  an  evening,  each  act  must  last  an  hour  or 
more.  The  Winter's  Tale  is  really  a  two-act  play:  Act  I  is  the 
story  of  Ilcrmione  and  Leontes,  Act  II  the  story  of  Florizel 
and  Perdiia,  with  Time  as  Chorus  separating  the  acts.  Divi- 
sion of  this  play  into  five  acts  and  use  of  modern  scenery 
have  given  it  the  effect  of  breaking  to  pieces  midway,  where 
Time  speaks.  When  each  of  the  two  parts  is  played  uninter- 
ruptedly, as  in  Mr.  Granville  Barker's  recent  revival,  this 
effect  disappears  and  it  becomes  clear  that  the  original 
division  is  artistically  right.  However,  so  long  is  each  of  the 
two  parts  that  The  Winter's  Tale,  when  seen  in  this  way, 
badly  strains  the  attention  of  a  present-day  audience. 

Contrastingly,  to  use  more  than  five  acts  in  the  space  of 
two  hours  and  a  half  is  either  to  carry  the  performance  over 
into  a  second  day,  as  with  the  two-part  play  of  Elizabeth's 
time  —  something  we  cannot  now  tolerate;  or  to  write  such 
scrappy  acts  that  the  frequent  shifting  of  scenery  and  drop- 
ping of  the  curtain  spoil  desired  illusion.  If  it  be  remembered 
that  there  is  nothing  essentially  wrong  in  a  play  of  one,  two, 
six,  or  even  more  acts,  and  that  changing  tastes  or  the  neces- 
sities of  particular  subjects  may  in  very  rare  instances  make 
any  of  these  divisions  desirable,  it  can  be  said  that  three,  four, 
or  five  acts  are  today  the  normal  divisions  for  plays. 

An  objection  to  long  plays  of  one  or  two  acts  is  that  when 
the  piece  lasts  only  an  hour  and  a  half,  as  in  the  case  of  Miss 
Julia,  the  evening  must  be  filled  out  with  something  else.  In 
the  first  place,  it  is  by  no  means  easy  to  arrange  a  mixed  pro- 
gram in  which  each  play  shows  to  complete  advantage.  Nor 
are  audiences  usually  fond  of  adjusting  themselves  to  new 
characters  and  new  plots  two  or  three  times  in  an  evening. 
On  the  professional  stage,  Barrie's  short  plays  have  done 
something  to  make  the  general  public  more  ready  to  shift 
their  interest  to  fresh  subjects  in  the  course  of  an  evening, 


no  DRAMATIC  TECHNIOUE 

but  a  mixed  program  of  plays  is  rarely  popular  except  in 
theatres  of  the  so-called  "experimental"  class. 

The  advantage  in  three  acts  is  that  each  allows  a  longer 
space  than  does  the  division  into  four  or  five  acts  in  which 
characterization  may  develop  before  the  eyes  of  the  audience, 
or  a  larger  number  of  illustrative  actions  bearing  on  the  cen- 
tral purpose  of  the  act  may  be  shown.  The  offset  is  that  three 
acts  provide  only  two  breaks  by  which  the  passing  of  time 
may  be  suggested.  Neither  four  nor  three  acts  have  any  es- 
sential superiority  over  each  other,  or  over  five  acts.  Five 
acts,  in  and  of  themselves,  have  no  superiority  over  four  or 
three;  nor,  as  some  persons  have  seemed  to  think,  are  they 
the  only  divisions  in  which  a  drama  in  verse  may  be  written. 
Avoidance  of  awkward  changes  of  scene  within  an  act  may 
compel  use  of  four  or  five  acts  rather  than  three.  The  more 
episodes  in  the  story  to  be  dramatized,  the  more  aspects  of 
character  to  be  shown  by  action,  the  more  acts  or  scenes  the 
dramatist  must  use.  If  long  spaces  of  time  must  be  allowed 
for  because  they  are  part  of  the  story  or  marked  changes  of 
character  demand  them,  the  dramatist  will  need  more  entr'acte 
space,  and,  consequently,  more  acts.  It  is,  then,  necessary 
change  of  place  and  passage  of  time  which  are  the  chief  fac- 
tors in  determining  choice  among  three,  four,  or  five  acts. 

For  centuries  theoretical  students  of  the  drama  have 
worried  themselves  about  the  two  unities:  place  and  time. 
Practising  dramatists,  however,  have  usually  found  that 
generalizations  in  regard  to  them  help  little  and  that  in  each 
individual  play  they  must  work  out  the  place  and  time  prob- 
lems for  themselves.  Practice  as  to  shifting  scenes  has  de- 
pended most,  and  always  will,  upon  whether  the  physical 
conditions  of  the  stage  permit  many  real  or  imagined 
shifts.  The  Greek  stage,  with  its  fixed  background  and  its 
chorus  nearly  always  present,  forced  an  attempt  at  unity  of 
place,  though  the  Greeks  often  broke  through  it. 


PROPORTION  121 

Unity  of  action  was  the  first  dramatic  law  of  the  ancients;  unity 
of  time  and  place  were  mere  consequences  of  the  former  which 
they  would  scarcely  have  observed  more  strictly  than  exigency  re- 
quired had  not  the  combination  with  the  chorus  arisen.  For  since 
their  actions  required  the  presence  of  a  large  body  of  people  and 
this  concourse  always  remained  the  same,  who  could  go  no  farther 
from  their  dwellings  nor  remain  absent  longer  than  it  is  customary 
to  <Io  from  mere  curiosity,  they  were  almost  obliged  to  make  the 
scene  of  the  action  one  and  the  same  spot  and  confine  the  time  to 
one  and  the  same  day.  They  submitted  bona  fide  to  this  restric- 
tion; but  with  a  suppleness  of  understanding  such  that  in  seven 
cases  out  of  nine  they  gained  more  than  they  lost  thereby.  For 
they  used  this  restriction  as  a  reason  of  simplifying  the  action  and 
to  cut  away  all  that  was  superfluous,  and  thus,  reduced  to  essen- 
tials, it  became  only  the  ideal  of  an  action  which  was  developed 
most  felicitously  in  this  form  which  required  the  least  addition 
from  circumstances  of  time  and  place. 

The  French,  on  the  contrary,  who  found  no  charms  in  true 
unity  of  action,  who  had  been  spoilt  by  the  wild  intrigues  of  the 
Spanish  school,  before  they  had  learnt  to  know  Greek  simplicity, 
regarded  the  unity  of  time  and  place  not  as  consequences  of  unity 
of  action,  but  as  circumstances  absolutely  needful  to  the  represen- 
tation of  an  action,  to  which  they  must  therefore  adapt  their  more 
complicated  and  richer  actions  with  all  the  severity  required  in  the 
use  of  chorus,  which,  however,  they  had  totally  abolished.  When 
they  found,  however,  how  difficult,  nay  at  times  impossible  this  was, 
they  made  a  truce  with  the  tyrannical  rules  against  which  they 
had  not  the  courage  to  rebel.  Instead  of  a  single  place  they  intro- 
duced an  uncertain  place,  under  which  we  could  imagine  now  this 
now  that  spot;  enough  if  the  places  combined  were  not  too  far 
apart  and  none  required  special  scenery,  so  that  the  scenery  could 
fit  the  one  about  as  well  as  the  other.  Instead  of  the  unity  of  a  day, 
they  substituted  unity  of  duration,  and  a  certain  period  during 
which  no  one  spoke  of  sunrise  or  sunset,  or  went  to  bed,  or  at  least 
did  not  go  to  bed  more  than  once,  however  much  might  occur  in 
this  space,  they  allowed  to  pass  as  a  day.1 

The  Elizabethan  author  writing,  in  his  public  perform- 
ances, for  an  audience  accustomed  to  build  imaginatively 

1  Hamburg  Dramaturgy,  p.  370.  Leasing.  Bohn  ed. 


122  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

a  setting  from  hints  given  by  properties,  signs  on  the  stage, 
or  descriptions  in  the  text,  changed  the  scene  at  will.  Recall 
the  thirteen  changes  in  Act  III  of  Antony  and  Cleopatra. 

On  the  modern  stage  such  frequent  change  is  undesirable 
for  three  reasons:  the  expense  of  constructing  and  painting 
so  many  scenes;  the  time  consumed  in  making  the  changes, 
which  may  reduce  decidedly  the  acting  time  of  the  play;  and 
the  check  in  sustained  interest  on  the  part  of  the  audience 
caused  by  these  many  changes.  The  growth  of  the  touring 
system  also  has  led  to  reduction  in  the  number  of  scenes,  for 
transportation  of  numerous  and  elaborate  sets  is  too  ex- 
pensive. Moreover,  the  interest  in  extreme  realism  has  car- 
ried us  more  and  more  into  such  scenes  of  simple  or  sordid 
living  as  call  for  only  one  to  three  sets  in  a  play. 

At  times  it  is  easy,  or  at  least  possible  with  ingenuity,  to 
have  for  a  play,  whatever  its  length,  but  one  setting.  Von 
Hofmannsthal's  Electra  is  an  illustration.  Another  is  The 
Servant  in  the  House,  a  play  in  five  acts  by  Rann  Kennedy. 

The  scene,  which  remains  unchanged  throughout  the  play,  is 
a  room  in  the  vicarage.  Jacobean  in  character,  its  oak-panelling 
and  beamed-ceiling,  together  with  some  fine  pieces  of  antique  fur- 
niture, lend  it  an  air  of  historical  interest,  whilst  in  all  other  re- 
spects it  speaks  of  solid  comfort,  refinement,  and  unostentatious 
elegance.1 

Hervieu's  Connais-Toi,  a  play  of  three  acts,  is  another  in- 
stance of  one  setting  throughout.2 

Not  infrequently  it  is  comparatively  simple  to  confine  a 
play  to  one  set  for  each  act,  or  even  less.  The  Great  Divide,  by 
William  Vaughn  Moody,  and  The  Weavers,  by  Hauptmann, 
show  a  new  setting  for  each  act.  In  The  Truth,  by  Clyde 
Fitch,  Acts  I  and  II  have  the  same  setting:  "At  Mrs.  Ward- 
er's.   An  extremely  attractive  room  in  the  best  of  taste"; 

»  P.  13.  Harper  &  Bros.,  New  York. 

2  Chief  Contemporary  Dramatists,  pp.  517-546.  T.  H.  Dickinson,  ed.  Houghton  Mifflin 
Co.,  Boston. 


PROPORTION  123 

Acts  III  and  IV  are  in  "Mr.  Roland's  rooms  in  Mrs.  Cres- 
pitjnijs  flat  in  Baltimore."  In  the  four  acts  of  The  Witching 
Hour,  by  Augustus  Thomas,  there  is  a  change  of  set  only  for 
Act  II.1  Such  reducing  of  possible  settings  to  two  or  three 
for  a  play  of  four  or  five  acts  requires  practice,  and,  in  some 
es,  decided  ingenuity.  In  present-day  use  the  safest 
principle  is  this:  a  set  to  an  act,  if  really  needed,  but  no 
change  of  set  within  the  act  unless  there  be  unavoidable 
reason  for  it. 

What,  then,  is  the  would-be  dramatist  to  do  when  faced 
by  six  or  more  settings  to  a  five-act  play,  or  two  or  three  set- 
tings within  what  he  believes  should  be  an  act?  Often  what 
seems  a  necessary  early  scene  is  but  clumsy  exposition :  skil- 
ful handling  would  incorporate  it  with  the  scene  immediately 
following.  Scene  1,  Act  III,  of  Dry  den's  The  Spanish  Friar  is 
in  the  street.  Lorenzo,  in  friar's  habit,  meeting  the  real  friar, 
Dominic,  bribes  him  to  introduce  him  into  the  chamber  of 
Elvira.  The  scene  is  merely  the  easiest  way  of  making  the 
audience  understand  why  the  two  men  enter  together  very 
early  in  the  next  scene. 

ACT  m.  SCENE  1.  The  Street 
Enter  Lorenzo,  in  Friar's  habit,  meeting  Dominic 

Here  follow  some  fifteen  speeches  in  which  the  arrange- 
ments are  made.   Then: 

SCENE  2 

Enter  Elvira,  in  her  chamber 

Elvira.  He'll  come,  that's  certain;  young  appetites  are  sharp, 
and  seldom  need  twice  bidding  to  such  a  banquet;  —  well,  if  I 
prove  frail,  —  as  I  hope  I  shall  not  till  I  have  compassed  my  de- 
sign, —  never  woman  had  such  a  husband  to  provoke  her,  such  a 
lover  to  allure  her,  or  such  a  confessor  to  absolve  her.  Of  what  am 
I  afraid,  then?  not  my  conscience  that's  safe  enough;  my  ghostly 

1  For  all  these  plays,  idem. 


124  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

father  has  given  it  a  dose  of  church  opium  to  lull  it;  well,  for  sooth- 
ing sin,  I'll  say  that  for  him,  he's  a  chaplain  for  any  court  in  Chris- 
tendom. 

Enter  Lorenzo  and  Dominic 
0  father  Dominic,  what  news?  How,  a  companion  with  you !  What 
game  have  you  on  hand,  that  you  hunt  in  couples? 

Lorenzo.  (Lifting  up  his  hood.)    I'll  show  you  that  immediately. 

Elvira.  O  my  love! 

Lorenzo.  My  life! 

Elvira.  My  soul!  (They  embrace.) 

Dominic.  I  am  taken  on  the  sudden  with  a  grievous  swimming 
in  my  head  and  such  a  mist  before  my  eyes  that  I  can  neither  hear 
nor  see.1 

All  the  needed  exposition  given  in  Scene  1  could,  with 
very  little  difficulty,  be  transferred  to  Scene  2.  Were  the  two 
men  to  enter,  not  to  Elvira,  but  by  themselves,  they  could 
quickly  make  their  relationship  clear.  The  conduct  and 
speech  of  Elvira  could  be  made  to  illustrate  what  she  now 
states  in  soliloquy  just  before  the  two  men  enter. 

In  the  original  last  act 2  of  Lillo's  George  Barnwell,  the  set- 
tings are:  "A  room  in  a  prison,"  "A  dungeon."  The  whole 
act  could  easily  have  been  arranged  to  take  place  in  some 
room  where  prisoners  could  see  friends.  Today  we  should 
in  many  cases  exchange  a  number  of  settings  as  used  in 
eighteenth  century  plays  for  one  setting. 

Scenes,  which  in  the  original  story  occurred  upstairs  or 
downstairs,  inside  or  outside  a  house,  may  often  be  easily 
interchanged  or  combined.  The  Chd,  by  Lewis  Beach,  a  one- 
act  success  of  the  Washington  Square  Players,  in  its  first  draft 
showed  a  setting  both  upstairs  and  downstairs.  This  un- 
sightly arrangement  was  quickly  changed  so  that  all  the 
action  took  place  in  a  lower  room.  At  one  time  Bulwer- 
Lytton  thought  seriously  of  changing  what  is  now  Scene  1, 

*  Belles-Lettres  Series.  W.  Strunk,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  New  York. 

*  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. 


PROPORTION  125 

Act  I,  of  his  Richelieu,  an  interior,  to  an  exterior  scene.   To 
Macready  he  wrote: 

Let  me  know  what  you  mean  about  omitting  altogether  the 
BOM  at  Marion  de  Lorme's. 

Do  you  mean  to  have  no  substitute  for  it? 

What  think  you  of  merely  the  outside  of  the  House?  Francois, 
coming  out  with  the  packet  and  making  brief  use  of  Huguet  and 
Mau prat  [who  figure  in  the  interior  scene].  Remember  you  wanted 
to  have  the  packet  absolutely  given  to  Frangois.1 

Greek  plays,  because  of  the  fixed  backing,  provide  many 
illustrations  of  interior  scenes  brought  outdoors : 

.  .  .  The  dramatic  action  was  necessarily  laid  in  the  open  air 
—  usually  before  a  palace  or  temple.  ...  In  general  the  drama- 
tists displayed  an  amazing  fertility  of  invention  in  this  particular, 
as  a  few  illustrations  will  suffice  to  show.  In  the  Alcestis  Apollo 
explains  his  leaving  Ametus'  palace  on  the  ground  of  the  pollution 
which  a  corpse  would  bring  upon  all  within  the  house  (Euripides' 
Alcestis,  22  f.)  and  Alcestis  herself,  though  in  a  dying  condition, 
fares  forth  to  look  for  the  last  time  upon  the  sun  in  heaven  {ibid. 
206).  CEdipus  is  so  concerned  in  the  afflictions  of  his  subjects  that 
he  cannot  endure  making  inquiries  through  a  servant  but  comes 
forth  to  learn  the  situation  in  person  (Sophocles'  CEdipus  Rex, 
6  f.).  Karion  is  driven  out  of  doors  by  the  smoke  of  sacrifice  upon 
the  domestic  altar  (Aristophanes'  Plvtus,  821  f.).  In  Plautus' 
Mostellaria  (1,  ff.)  one  slave  is  driven  out  of  doors  by  another  as  the 
result  of  a  quarrel.  Agathon  cannot  compose  his  odes  in  the  winter 
time,  unless  he  bask  in  the  sunlight  (Aristophanes'  Thesmophoria- 
zuscp,  67  f.).  The  love-lorn  Phsedra  teases  for  light  and  air  (Eu- 
ripides' Hippohjtus,  181).  And  Medea's  nurse  apologizes  for  her 
soliloquizing  before  the  house  with  the  excuse  that  the  sorrows 
within  have  stifled  her  and  caused  her  to  seek  relief  by  proclaiming 
them  to  earth  and  sky  (Euripides'  Medea,  56  ff.).2 

When  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how  a  number  of  settings  may 
be  cut  down,  a  dramatist  should  carefully  consider  this: 
May  episodes  happening  to  the  same  person  or  persons 

1  Letters  of  Bulmer-Lytton  to  Macready,  xxvin.  Brander  Matthews,  ed. 
*  The  Influence  of  Local  Theatrical  Conditions  upon  the  Drama  of  the  Greeks.    Roy  C.  Flick- 
ingcr.   Classical  Journal,  October,  1911. 


126  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

in  the  same  settings,  but  apparently  demanding  separate 
treatment  because  they  occur  at  widely  different  times,  be 
brought  together?  The  dramatizer  of  a  novel  faces  many 
opportunities  for  this  telescoping  of  scenes.  Any  one  adapt- 
ing A  Tale  of  Two  Cities,  if  he  uses  Jerry  Cruncher,  will  prob- 
ably combine  the  two  scenes  in  his  home.  To  bring  together 
incidents  happening  to  the  same  person  or  persons  at  the 
same  place,  but  at  different  times,  is  the  easiest  method  of 
cutting  down  possible  scenes. 

It  is,  of  course,  possible  to  bring  together  circumstances 
which  happened  at  different  places  at  different  times,  but  to 
the  same  persons.  A  notable  instance  is  Irving's  compacting 
of  two  scenes  in  Tennyson's  Becket :  he  places  at  Montmirail 
what  is  essential  in  both  Scene  2,  Act  II,  Montmirail.  "The 
Meeting  of  the  Kings,"  and  Scene  3,  Act  III,  "Traitor's 
Meadow  at  Freteval."  It  is,  indeed,  often  necessary  to  trans- 
fer a  group  of  people  from  the  exact  setting  in  which  an  occur- 
rence took  place  to  another  which  makes  possible  other  im- 
portant action.  In  Haraucourt's  adaptation  of  Les  Oberle, 
a  dinner  party  at  the  Brausigs'  is  transferred  to  the  home  of 
Jean  Oberle,  with  his  father  and  mother  as  hosts.  This 
change  permits  the  adapter  to  follow  the  dinner  party  with 
episodes  which  must  take  place  in  Jean's  home.  This  group 
of  changes  concerns,  obviously,  bringing  to  one  place  events 
which  happened  to  the  same  persons  at  another  place,  and 
even  at  another  time. 

Sometimes  necessary  condensation  forces  a  dramatist  to 
bring  together  at  one  place  what  really  happened  at  the  same 
time,  but  to  other  people  in  another  place.  For  instance,  the 
heroine  of  the  play  is  concealing  in  the  house  her  Jacobite 
brother,  supposed  by  the  people  who  have  seen  him  to  be 
the  Pretender  himself.  The  Whig  soldiery  come  to  search 
the  house.  Sitting  at  the  spinet,  the  girl  makes  her  brother 
crouch  between  her  and  the  wall,  folding  her  ample  gown 


PROPORTION  127 

around  and  over  him.  Then,  as  the  officer  and  his  men  mi- 
nutely search  the  room,  she  plays,  apparently  idly  song  after 
of  the  <  lay.  Just  at  this  time,  but  at  a  distance,  her  lover, 
a  young  Whig  officer,  is  eating  his  heart  out  with  jealousy, 
because  he  fears  that  she  is  concealing  the  Pretender  through 
love  of  him.  Why  waste  time  on  a  separate  scene  for  the 
lover?  Make  him  the  officer  in  command  of  the  searching 
troop:  then  all  that  is  vital  in  what  was  his  scene  can  be 
brought  out  when  what  happened  to  the  same  people  at  the 
same  time,  but  at  different  places,  is  made  to  happen  at  the 
same  place. 

Similarly,  what  happened  to  two  people  in  the  same  place 
but  at  different  times  may  sometimes,  with  ingenuity,  be 
made  to  happen  to  one  person,  and  thus  time  saved. 

Finally,  what  happened  to  another  person  at  another  time, 
and  at  another  place  may  at  times  be  arranged  so  that  it  will 
happen  to  any  desired  figure.  About  midway  in  the  novel 
Les  Oberle,  Jean  and  his  uncle  Ulrich  hear  the  women  at  the 
autumn  grape-picking  sing  the  song  of  Alsace.  In  the  play, 
in  the  first  scene,  Jean  sings  it  as  he  passes  from  the  rail- 
way station  to  his  house.1  Shakespeare,  in  handling  the  origi- 
nal sources  of  Macbeth,  also  illustrates  successful  combina- 
tion around  one  person  of  incidents  or  details  historically 
associated  with  other  persons,  times,  and  even  places. 

Most  of  the  story  is  taken  from  Holinshed's  account  [in  the  His- 
toric of  Scotland]  of  the  reigns  of  Duncan  and  Macbeth  (a.d.  1034- 
1057),  but  certain  details  are  drawn  from  other  parts  of  the  chron- 
icle. Thus  several  points  in  the  assassination  of  Duncan,  like  the 
drugging  of  the  grooms  by  Lady  Macbeth,  and  the  portents  de- 
scribed in  11,  iv.,  are  from  the  murder  of  Duncan's  ancestor  Duffe 
(a.d.  972);  and  the  voice  that  called  "Sleep  no  more!"  seems  to 
have  been  suggested  by  the  troubled  conscience  of  Duffe's  brother 
Kenneth,  who  had  poisoned  his  own  nephew.2 

»  See  p.  83. 

*  Introduction  to  Macbeth.  Cambridge  ed.  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  Boston. 


128  DRAMATIC  TECHNIOUE 

Marlowe,  in  his  Edward  II,  —  a  dramatization  of  a  part 
of  Holinshed's  History,  —  proves  that  he  perfectly  under- 
stood all  these  devices  for  compacting  his  material. 

The  action  covers  a  period  of  twenty  years,  from  1307,  when 
Gaveston  was  recalled,  to  the  death  of  Edward  in  1327.  Marlowe's 
treatment  of  the  story  shows  a  selection  and  transposing  of  events 
in  order  to  bring  out  the  one  essential  fact  of  the  King's  utter  in- 
competence and  subjection  to  unworthy  favorites.  Gaveston  was 
executed  in  1312,  and  the  troubles  in  Ireland  (n,  ii.)  and  in  Scot- 
land (u,  ii.)  occurred  after  his  death,  but  Marlowe  shifts  both  for- 
ward in  point  of  time  in  order  to  connect  them  with  Gaveston's 
baleful  influence.  Warwick  died  in  his  bed  in  1315,  seven  years 
before  the  battle  of  Boroughbridge,  but  Marlowe  keeps  him  alive 
to  have  him  captured  and  ordered  to  execution  in  retaliation  for  his 
killing  of  Gaveston.  At  the  time  the  play  opens  the  Earl  of  Kent 
was  six  years  old,  but  Marlowe,  needing  a  counsellor  and  supporter 
of  the  King,  used  Kent  for  the  purpose.  In  the  play  young  Spencer 
immediately  succeeds  Gaveston  as  the  King's  favorite;  really  the 
young  Hugh  le  Despenser,  who  had  been  an  enemy  of  Gaveston, 
remained  an  opponent  of  Edward's  for  some  six  years  after  Gaves- 
ton's death.  Historically  the  Mortimers  belong  with  the  Spencers, 
i.e.  to  the  later  part  of  the  reign,  but  in  order  to  motivate  the 
affair  between  the  Queen  and  young  Mortimer  Marlowe  transfers 
them  to  the  beginning  of  the  play  and  makes  them  leaders  in  the 
barons'  councils.1 

The  essential  point  in  all  this  compacting  is :  when  cum- 
bered with  more  scenes  than  you  wish  to  use,  determine  first 
which  scenes  contain  indispensable  action,  and  must  be  kept 
as  settings;  then  consider  which  of  the  other  scenes  may  by 
ingenuity  be  combined  with  them. 

Evidently  a  dramatist  must  develop  great  ingenuity  and 
skill  in  so  re-working  scenes  originally  conceived  as  occurring 
in  widely  separated  places  and  times  that  they  may  be  acted 
in  a  single  set.  As  has  been  said,  the  audience  of  the  public 
theatres  in  Shakespeare's  day  imaginatively  shifted  the  scene 
at  any  hint  from  text,  stage  properties,  or  even  signs.  With 

»  Introduction  to  Marlowe's  Edward  II.  Tatlock  and  Martin.  The  Century  Co. 


PROPORTION  129 

the  Restoration  came  elaborate  scenery,  a  gift  from  earlier 
performances  at  the  English  court  and  from  the  continental 
theatres  which  the  English  nobility  had  attended  in  their 
exile.  By  means  of  the  "drawn  scene"  dramatists  now 
changed  rapidly  from  place  to  place.  In  The  Spanish  Friar, 
ie  1  of  Act  II  is  "The  Queen's  ante-chamber."  For 
ie  2,  "The  scene  draws,  and  shows  the  Queen  sitting  in 
state;  Bertram  standing  next  her;  then  Teresa,  etc."  These 
drawn  scenes  held  the  stage  until  very  recently.  Painted 
on  flats  which  could  be  pulled  off  stage  from  left  and  right, 
these  scenes  could  not  be  "drawn"  without  hurting  theatri- 
eal  illusion.  If  moved  in  any  light,  all  illusion  departed;  if 
changed  in  darkness,  but  not  instantaneously,  they  interfered 
with  illusion.  To  overcome  these  objections  there  have  been 
many  inventions  in  recent  years  —  Revolving,  Wagon,  Sink- 
ing Stages.1  Undoubtedly,  these  make  changes  of  scene 
within  the  act  well-nigh  unobjectionable.  The  difficulty 
with  them  is  that  most  are  elaborate  and  expensive,  and 
therefore  exist  in  only  a  few  theatres.  It  is,  consequently, 
useless  to  stage  a  play  with  them  in  mind,  for  on  the  road 
it  will  not  find  the  conditions  of  production  essential  to  its 
success.  Occasionally,  as  in  On  Trial,  some  simple,  easily 
portable  device  makes  these  very  quick  changes  possible 
even  on  the  road.  At  present,  though  invention  tries  steadily 
to  make  change  of  scene  so  swift  as  to  be  unobjectionable,  it 
is  wiser  to  keep  to  one  setting  to  an  act,  unless  the  play  will 
greatly  suffer  by  so  doing,  or  the  change  is  one  which  may  be 
made  almost  instantaneously  when  the  lights  are  lowered  or 
the  curtain  dropped. 

On  the  other  hand,  recently  dramatists  have  rather  over- 
done reducing  possible  settings  to  the  minimum.  While  a 
change  of  setting  within  the  act  always  demands  justification, 
forcing  a  play  of  three  to  five  acts  into  one  or  two  settings 

1  See  Play  Production  in  America.  A.  E.  Krows.  Henry  Holt  &  Co.,  New  York. 


130  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

when,  at  a  trifling  additional  cost,  a  pleasing  variety  to  the 
eye  and  a  change  of  place  helpful  to  the  dramatist  might  have 
been  provided,  is  undesirable.  Lately  there  have  been  signs 
that  our  audiences  are  growing  weary  of  plays  of  only  one 
set,  especially  when  they  suspect  the  play  has  been  thus  ar- 
ranged by  skill,  rather  than  necessity.  Certainly,  the  newer 
group  of  dramatists  permit  themselves  changes  of  scene  even 
within  the  act.  Act  II  of  The  Silver  Box,1  by  Galsworthy, 
shows  as  Scene  1,  "The  Jones's  lodgings,  Merthyr  Street";  as 
Scene  2,  "The  Barthwicks'  dining-room."  In Hindle  Wakes,2 
by  Stanley  Houghton,  Scene  1,  Act  I,  is  the  "Kitchen  of  the 
Hawthorns'  house";  Scene  2  is  the  "Breakfast  room  of  the 
Jeff  cotes'  house."  To  the  preliminary  statement  of  scenes  the 
dramatist  appended  words  which  hint  the  underlying  danger 
in  all  changes  of  setting,  —  disillusioning  waits : 

Note.  —  The  scene  for  Act  I,  Scene  1,  should  be  very  small,  as 
a  contrast  to  the  room  at  the  Jeffcotes'.  It  might  well  be  set  inside 
the  other  scene  so  as  to  facilitate  the  quick  change  between  Scenes 
1  and  2,  Act  I. 

All  things  considered,  it  is  probably  best  to  repeat  the 
statement  already  made :  a  change  of  scene  within  the  act  is 
desirable  only  when  absolutely  necessary;  a  change  of  scene 
with  each  act  is  desirable,  except  when  truth  to  life,  expense, 
or  undue  time  required  for  setting  it  forbid. 

What  exactly  does  this  constantly  repeated  word  "Scene" 
mean?  In  English  theatrical  usage  today,  and  increasingly 
the  world  over,  it  signifies:  "a  change  of  setting."  All  that 
happens  from  one  change  of  set  to  another  change  makes  a 
scene.  French  usage,  based  on  the  Latin,  till  very  recently 
always  marked  off  a  scene  when  any  person  more  important 
than  a  servant  or  attendant  entered  or  left  the  stage.  For 
instance,  in  Les  Petits  Oiseaux  of  Labiche,  known  in  English 
as  A  Pair  of  Spectacles,  four  consecutive  scenes  in  Act  I, 
which  throughout  has  no  change  of  setting  read  thus: 

-»  Playt,  pp.  33,  42.  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  New  York.       *  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston. 


PROPORTION  131 

SCENE  4.  Blandinet,  Henriette,  Leonce,  then  Joseph  [a  servant]. 

A  scene  of  some  fourteen  brief  speeches  follows,  when  : 

(They  start  to  go  out,  Tiburce  appears.) 
SCENE  5.  The  same  persons,  Tiburce 
After  a  scene  of  eleven  short  speeches, 

(Blandinet  goes  over  to  left  with  Leonce.) 
SCENE  6.  Henriette,  Tiburce 
Ihnriettc,  who  sat  down  after  the  entrance  of  Tiburce,  and  took  up 
her  work  again,  rises  immediately  on  the  exit  of  Blandinet,  folding 
her  work. 

Tiburce.    (Approaching  her  hesitatingly.)    You  are  not  working 
any  longer,  Aunt.  .  .  .  It's  done  already? 

(Henriette  bows  to  him  frigidly  and  qoes  out  at  right.) 

SCENE  7.  Tiburce,  then  Frangois1 
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  as- 
sistance. 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.)* 

»  Tkidtre  Complei,  vol.  r.    Calmann  Levy.  Paris. 

•  Belles-Lettres  Series.  Sir  A.  W.  Ward,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  New  York. 


132  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  af- 
fects 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  cor- 
respond 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  propor- 
tioning material  into  acts  and  within  acts  difficult,  but  the 
time  question  also  raises  many  problems.  It  may  be  trouble- 
some 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  Eliza- 
bethan, in  a  case  like  this,  was  ready  to  assist  the  dramatist, 
today  wre  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.1 
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,2  this  time  difficulty  has 

1  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  ab- 
sorbing action  come  between  one  chiming  of  the  quarter  hour  and  the  next.  Though  a  stop- 
watch 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  tht 
passing  of  time. 

»  See  p.  35. 


PROPORTION  133 

made  it  practically  impossible  to  dramatize  satisfactorily 
renson's  The  Sire  de  Alaletroit'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  MaletroiVs  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  au- 
dience by  a  long  scene  of  complicated  and  absorbing  emo- 
tion into  thinking  that  the  required  time  has  passed;  or 
(6)  must  discover  some  motive  sufficiently  strong  to  account 
for  a  swift  change  in  feeling;  (c)  or  must  get  his  person  or  per- 
sons 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;  't  will  all  be 
passed  anon";  "The  clock  strikes  twelve."  In  Hamlet,  the 
fourth  act  takes  place  during  the  absence  of  Hamlet  in  Eng- 
land. 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 


134  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  circum- 
stances which  permits  it  to  be  as  swift  as  it  is  on  the  stage, 
is  best  treated  in  the  next  chapter. 

In  The  Russian  Honeymoon,1  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  cos- 
tume 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  your- 
self the  messenger  of  joy:  Fly  this  instant!  —  Tell  him  all  these 

1  Eugene  Scribe,  adopted  by  Mrs.  Burton  Harrison.  Dramatic  Publishing  Co.,  Chicago. 


PROPORTION  135 

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 
hfl  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? 
I  lis  bounteous  hand  to  give,  and  make  my  heart  a  present  worthy 
of  Kevil'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  be- 
stow 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  alli- 
ance, 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  happi- 
ness.1 

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. 

l  Mermaid  Series.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


136  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

The  telephone  and  the  automobile  have  been  godsends  to 
the  young  dramatist.  By  use  of  the  first,  a  lover  can  tele- 
phone 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  Charyb- 
dis.  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.1 

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, 

»  Letters  of  Bulwer-Lytton  to  Macready,  lxiii.  Brander  Matthews,  ed. 


PROPORTION  137 

and  present-day  interest  in  its  characterization  rather  than 
y ,  make  us  miss  greatly  the  leading  figure,  wholly  ab- 
I  in  the  act.  Therefore  we  hasten  to  declare,  not  recog- 
nizing 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  ad- 
mirably. Toward  the  end  of  the  first  act,  Pierre  makes  an  ap- 
pointment with  Jaffier  to  meet  him  that  night  on  the  Rial  to 
a  1 1  welve.  Exit  Pierre.  Immediately  Belvidera  enters  to  Jaf- 
fier. Their  talk,  only  about  four  pages  in  length,  is  so  pas- 
sionately 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.1 

All  the  methods  just  described  have  had  to  do  with  repre- 
senting time  on  stage.  When  time  necessary  for  the  telling 
of  a  story  may  be  treated  as  passing  off  stage,  other  de- 
vices may  be  used.  Most  of  them  gather  about  a  dropping  of 
the  curtain.  Recently  there  has  been  much  use  of  the  cur- 
tain 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.2  Mr.  Belasco,  in  The 
Woman,  dropped  the  curtain  at  the  beginning  of  a  cross  ex- 
amination, to  raise  it  for  the  next  act  as  the  examination 

»  Belles-Lettres  Series.  C.  F.  McClumpha,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  New  York. 
*  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston;  W.  Heinemann,  London. 


138  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

nears  its  climax.  In  The  Silver  Box>1  dropping  the  curtain 
twice  in  Act  I  makes  it  possible  to  see  the  Barthwicks'  din- 
ing-room "just  after  midnight,"  "at  eight-thirty  a.m.,"  and  at 
"the  breakfast  hour  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Barthwick."  Such  cur- 
tains, 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.2  In  how  many,  many  plays  —  for  in- 
stance, 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,  degen- 
erating youth  into  a  firm  character,  even  into  a  landed  pro- 
prietor, is  a  sea  voyage  from  San  Francisco  to  Honolulu  — 
and  an  entracte !  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  en  the 
same  subject  or  person,  implies  or  states  that  very  many 
years  have  elapsed  beween  the  two  parts.  No  one  seriously 
objects  when  thousands  of  years  are  supposed  to  elapse  be- 
tween the  Prometheus  Bound  and  the  Prometheus  Unbound 
of  iEschylus.3    Surely,  it  is  logical  to  treat  spaces  between 

*  Plays.  G.  P.  Putnam'8  Sons,  New  York. 

»  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston;  W.  Heinemann,  London. 

»  Everyman's  Library.  Plumptre,  ed. 


PROPORTION  139 

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  n 
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 !  — 


140  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  '11  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  characteriza- 
tion 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  hear- 
ing 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 l  the  public  did  not  object  strongly  to  what  was  sup- 
posed 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  impor- 
tant changes,  as  he  may  with  Sophy  Fullgarney  in  the  third 
act  of  the  Gay  Lord  Quex,2  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 

1  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston;  W.  Heinemann,  London. 
*  B.  H.  Russell  &  Co.,  New  York. 


PROPORTION  141 

chancre  of  environment  there,  have  produced  marked  differ- 
ence in  character  is  not  today  enough.  A  dramatist  may  as- 
sume that  only  as  much  time  has  passed  between  acts  as  he 
makes  entirely  plausible  by  the  happenings  and  character- 
ization of  the  next  act.  For  any  needed  statement  of  what 
has  happened  since  the  close  of  a  preceding  act  he  must 
dej>end  only  on  deft  exposition  within  the  act  in  question. 

Recent  usage  no  longer  insists  that  acts  may  not  some- 
what overlap.  "  Toward  the  end  of  Act  II  of  Eugene  Walter's 
Paid  in  Fully  Emma  Brooks  is  disclosed  making  an  appoint- 
ment 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  dif- 
ferent." l  There  is  a  similar  use  in  Under  Cover.  At  the  be- 
ginning 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  char- 
acters which  are  fundamental  in  understanding  the  play. 
The  Chorus  and  the  Dumb  Show  again  were,  among  early 
dramatists,  the  clumsy  solution  of  this  problem. 

1  The  Influence  qf  Local  Theatrical  Conditions  upon  the  Drama  qf  the  Greeks.  R.  C.  Flick, 
inger.  Classical  Journal,  October,  1911. 


142  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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.1 

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? 

1  Troiliu  and  Crania. 


PROPORTION  143 

ACT  I.  SCENE  1.  (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, 


144  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  ac- 
quired almost  unconsciously  by  an  auditor  held  absorbed  by 
the  immediate  dramatic  action. 

Sometimes,  however,  it  is  well-nigh  impossible  thus  to  in- 
corporate needed  exposition  with  the  dramatic  action.  For 
instance,  a  play  depicted  the  fortunes  of  a  Jacobite's  daugh- 
ter. 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  per- 
fectly 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,  pres- 
ent-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, 


PROPORTION  145 

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  /,  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 
burger  scheme,  he  writes  what  he  prefers  to  call,  not  an  ad- 
ditional act,  but  an  Epilogue. 

A  dramatist  should  be  very  careful  that  what  he  calls  Pro- 
logue or  Epilogue  is  not  merely  an  additional  act.  An  act 
does  not  cease  to  be  an  act,  and  become  a  prologue  or  an  epi- 
logue, 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  can- 
not with  his  epilogue  hold  his  audience  long.  Not  always, 
however,  are  prologues,  or  epilogues  short.  That  of  Ma- 
dame Sans  Gene1  has  the  same  number  of  pages  as  Act  II, 
seventeen.  The  Prologue  of  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor 
Back  2  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  3  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 

1  Samuel  French,  New  York.  «  Hurst  &  Blackett,  Ltd.,  London. 

»  Penn  Publishing  Co.,  Philadelphia. 


146  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  nine- 
teen 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  pre- 
ceded 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  drama- 
tist 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,  Tlie  Taming  of  a  Shrew,1  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  un- 
satisfactory. Romance,  by  Edward  Sheldon,  shows  right  use 

1  Shakespeare's  Library,  vol.  vi.    W.  C.  Hazlitt,  ed.    Reeves  &  Turner,  London. 


PROPORTION  147 

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  au- 
dience 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.1  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  mo- 
ment 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  lat- 
ter 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 

1  Perm  Publishing  Co-,  Philadelphia. 


148  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

play.1  Indeed,  what  stands  between  are  one-act  plays  mak- 
ing the  dream  of  Anne.  According  to  present  usage,  Mr. 
Knobloch  could  have  called  these  scenes  Prologue  and  Epi- 
logue, 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  confu- 
sion, in  recent  use  of  the  words,  Prologue  and  Epilogue.  The 
use  rests  on  a  fact:  that  sometimes  a  play  is  best  propor- 
tioned, 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  his- 
torical 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  usu- 

*  Drama  League  Series.  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  New  York. 


PROPORTION  149 

lily  not  distant  from  the  climax  of  the  play,  is  most  often 
the  shortest  division,  for  as  soon  as  the  climax  is  reached, 
should  drop  the  curtain  as  quickly  as  possible.  A  glance 
at  certain  notable  plays  of  different  periods  will  show,  how- 
ever, 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  Cam- 
bridge edition  of  Shakespeare's  Lear  (printed  in  two  col- 
umns of  fine  type)  the  acts  run  as  follows: 

Act  1 9i  pages 

Actll 7    pages 

Act  III 6i  pages 

Act  IV 6}  pages 

Act  V 5i  pages 

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

Act  1 48    pages 

Act  II 33    pages 

Act  III 22*  pages 

For  three  plays  of  Richard  Steele  it  is  possible  to  give  the 
exact  playing-time : " 

The  Funeral  The  Conscious  Lovers    The  Tender  Husband 

Act  1 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  Bote 

Act  1 27  pages  Act  1 27  pages 

Act  II 24  pages]  Act  II 27  pages 

Act  III 21  pages  Act  III 21  pages 

»  Life  of  Richard  Steele,  vol  n,  p.  868.   G.  Aitken.    Wm.  Isbister,  London. 


150  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

The  plays  just  cited  are  of  very  different  lengths :  Kismet l 
took  nearly  three  hours  in  performance;  Candida  2  and  The 
Silver  Box  3  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  be- 
tween 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-writ- 
ten 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-Shake- 
spearean  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  rela- 
tions should  be  perfectly  clear,  but  to  narrate  a  series  of 

1  Methuen  &  Co.,  Ltd.,  London. 

*  Plays  Pleasant  and  Unpleasant..  Brentano,  New  York. 

»  Plays.  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  New  York. 


PROPORTION  151 

events  that  did  not,  of  necessity,  possess  such  inner  rela- 
tions. It  is  much  to  be  doubted  whether  any  thought  of 
such  relations  ever  entered  their  heads."  ■  Influenced  par- 
ticularly 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."  2  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  char- 
ity 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  him- 
self. 

It  is  a  fine  adventurous  career  to  depict  dramatically.  But  of 
course  you  would  have  to  get  farther  away  from  your  story  first. 

1  .1  Note  on  Act  Division  at  practiced  in  the  Early  Elizabethan  Drama.  Bulletin  of  Western 
Reserve  University. 
»  Play-Making,  p.  1S6.  Win.  Archer.  Small,  Maynard  &  Co.,  Boston. 


152  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

You  perhaps  think  this  a  barbarous  and  inhuman  suggestion. 
But  all  your  stories  have  the  making  of  a  drama  in  them.1 

In  The  Princess  and  the  Butterfly,2  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,3  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  sacri- 
fice 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  f he 
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 

1  Letters  of  Henrik  Ibsen,  p.  236  ;  to  Jonas  Lie. 

1  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston;  W.  Heinemann,  London. 

*  P.  Hervieu.    Drama  League  Series.  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  New  York. 


PROPORTION  153 

she  is  to  go  to  America  with  her  father  and  that  Sabine  can- 
not 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.  Ill,  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  al- 
ready 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  em- 
phasis. 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? 


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  conse- 
quence. Clearness  is.  When  an  audience  does  not  under- 
stand 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: 


ARRANGEMENT  15J 

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  0; 

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  devout- 
ness  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  as- 
sume 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  explan- 
atory notes  because  of  these  omissions. 

The  Choephori,  like  the  plays  of  iEschylus  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  Py lades  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 

1  Ancient  Classical  Drama,  chap,  vii,  "Elements  of  Comedy."  Moulton.  Clarendon  Press, 
Oxford. 


156  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

both,  that  as  a  fact  we  are  not,  and  that  our  only  way  of  approach- 
ing the  play  intelligently  is  by  the  assumption  of  some  working 
hypothesis.1 

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  bur- 
lesque, but  the  beginning  of  a  so-called  play.  Why  is  it  un- 
satisfactory? 

ORCHIDS 

Conservatory  of  the  Strones'  house.  Natalie  is  walking  about  among 
the  flowers  and  plantst  arranging  them  for  the  day  in  the  vases  on 
the  near-by  table. 

Natalie.  (To  herself.)  O-oh,  Natalie.  (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  sto- 
things  until  two  or  three  in  the  ries  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  thought- 
He  might  realize  that  his  light  ful  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  lilies-  me  awake.  Oh,  dear,  (that 
of -the- valley  in  all  the  vases  maid's)  been  putting  lilies-of- 
again.  I'll  not  have  those  every-  the-valley  in  all  the  vases  again, 
where  when  we've  got  orchids  I'll  not  have  those  everywhere 
instead.     Flowers   don't   need  when  we've  got  orchids  instead. 

1  The  "Choephori"  of  JEschylut.  Introduction,  p.  xvi.  A.  W.  Verral.  The  Macmillan  Co, 
New  York. 


ARRANGEMENT 


157 


fragrance  anyway;  they're  just 
meant  to  be  seen.  (Dumping  the 
wilted  lilies  in  a  basket  by  her 
side  and  arranging  the  newly-cut 
orchids  in  their  place.)  Tom  [Who 
is  Tom  —  brother  or  fiance?] 
1  makes  a  fuss  when  I  have 
nothing  but  orchids,  so  I  sup- 
pose Mary  put  the  others  about 
to  calm  him  down.  [Who  is 
Mary,  then:  a  maid,  a  sister, 
a  girl  friend,  some  one  en- 
gaged to  Tom?]  Really  I've 
got  to  speak  to  him  about  last 
night  when  he  comes.  The  light 
is  bad  enough,  but  I  won't 
have  him  firing  his  gun  out  of 
the  window  besides.  It  must 
have  been  at  that  horrid  thin 
cat  that's  always  clawing  Hope- 
ful. [A  cat,  a  dog,  or  a  small 
sister?]  I'm  glad  she  [Hopeful 
or  the  thin  cat?]  was  locked  up 
indoors  if  Tom's  going  to  act 
that  way.  Oh,  dear,  these  are 
the  wrong  shears  again.  (Rings 
bell.  Enter  maid.)  Mary,  bring 
me  the  other  shears  —  and 
Mary,  where's  Hopeful  this 
morning;  I  haven't  seen  her? 

Mary.  The  kitten,  Miss 
Strone? 

Natalie.  Yes,  of  course. 

Mary.  Why — why  she  hasn't 
been  in  this  morning.  (Starts 
away.) 

Natalie.  Come  back,  Mary. 
Don't  run  off  while  I'm  speak- 
ing to  you.  Haven't  you  seen 
her  at  all? 


Flowers  don't  need  fragrance 
anyway;  they're  just  meant  to 
be  seen.  (Dumping  the  wilted 
lilies  in  a  basket  by  her  side  and 
arranging  the  newly -cut  orchids 
in  their  place.) 

Tom  always  makes  a  fuss  when 
I  have  nothing  but  orchids,  so 
I  suppose  Mary  put  the  others 
about  to  calm  him  down. 


Really  I  've  got  to  speak  to  (Tom 
Hammond)  about  last  night, 
when  he  comes.  The  light  is  bad 
enough,  but  I  won't  have  bim 
firing  his  gun  out  of  the  win- 
dow besides.  It  must  have  been 
at  that  horrid  thin  cat  that's 
always  clawing  Hopeful. 

I'm  glad  (Hopeful) 
was  locked  up  indoors  if  Tom's 
going  to  act  that  way  (with  cats). 
Oh,  dear,  these  are  the  wrong 
shears  again.  (Rings  bell.  Enter 
maid.)  Mary,  bring  me  the 
other  shears  —  and  Mary, 
where's  Hopeful  this  morning; 
I  haven't  seen  her? 

Mary.  The  kitten,  Miss 
Strone? 

Natalie.  Yes,  of  course. 

Mary.  Why  —  why  she  hasn't 
been  in  this  morning.  (Starts 
away.) 

Natalie.  Come  back,  Mary. 
Don't  run  off  while  I'm  speak- 
ing to  you.  Haven't  you  seen 
her  at  all? 


158 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


Mary.  Well  —  yes,  Miss 
Strone  —  that  is  Parkins  [an- 
other maid,  a  butler,  or  a 
milkman?]  found  —  I  mean  — 

Natalie.  {Impatiently.)  Well? 

Mary.  The  shots  last  night, 
Miss  Strone  —  that  is  we  think 
it  was  —  although  she  was  on 
the  other  side  of  the  garden 
when  Parkins  came  on  her  — 
and  there's  the  wall  and  the  al- 
ley between  —  still,  Mr.  Ham- 
mond was  shooting  out  of  the 
upper  windows  and  — 

Natalie.  (Quickly.)  Has  any- 
thing happened  to  Hopeful? 

Mary.  Why  —  why,  Par- 
kins — 


Mary.  Well  —  yes,  Miss 
Strone  —  that  is  (the  butler) 
found  —  I  mean  — 

Natalie.  (Impatiently.)  Well? 

Mary.  The  shots  last  night, 
Miss  Strone  —  that  is  we  think 
it  was  —  although  she  was  on 
the  other  side  of  the  wall  when 
Parkins  came  on  her  —  and 
there's  the  wall  and  the  alley 
between  —  still,  Mr.  Hammond 
was  shooting  out  of  the  upper 
windows  and  — 

Natalie.  (Quickly.)  Has  any- 
thing happened  to  Hopeful? 

Mary.  Why  —  why,  Par- 
kins — 


(Enter  Parkins.) 
Parkins.  (Quietly.)  I    buried 
her  all  right  just  now,   Miss 
Strone.    (Louder.)    Mr.   Ham- 
mond. 

(Exit  [sic]  Mary  and  Par- 
kins,  enter  Tom  Ham- 
mond.) 


(Enter  Parkins.) 
Parkins.  (Quietly.)  I    buried 
her  all  right  just  now,   Miss 
Strone.    (Louder.)  (Mr.   Ham- 
mond.) 

(Exeunt  Mary  and  Parkins, 
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.  Writ- 
ing, "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 


ARRANGEMENT  159 

historical  figure,  or  information  carefully  given  before  the 
figure  enters  may  reveal  identity,  every  newcomer  is  an  en- 
tirely 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  rigid,  bangs  the  door,  and  stands  with  back  to  it. 

Anne.  I  hate  Aunt  Caroline.  (She  hurries  forward  to  stand  at  op- 
posite 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  tem- 
perament, and  you  are  too  young  to  understand  hers,  — "  and 
you'll  go  on  preaching  and  smiling  in  that  horrid  way  —  you  al- 
ways 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  handfaU  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 


160  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

me  that.  —  Tt  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  king- 
dom 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"?  Wliat  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  Count- 
ess, the  Slave?  The  author  is  depending  for  identification 
upon  a  list  of  dramatis  persona?  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  De- 
partment." 


ARRANGEMENT  161 

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  Caro- 
line." Yet  these  substitutions  show  what  the  scene  looks  like 
to  a  man  entering  the  theatre  without  a  program.  When- 
ever such  substitution  of  a  type  name  for  that  of  an  individ- 
ual 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  open- 
ing 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  in- 
teriors, too,  are  not  always  easily  identifiable  as  of  this  or  that 
province,  or  even  country.  If  province  or  country  at  all  de- 
termines 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  representa- 
tions 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 


162  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  '11  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.1 

1  The  Rising  of  the  Moon,  Lady  Gregory.    Contemporary  Dramatiitt.    T.  H.  Dickinson, 
ed.  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  Boston. 


ARRANGEMENT  163 

The  period  in  which  the  play  is  supposed  to  take  place,  if 
of  importance  to  the  action,  needs  careful  statement.  Helped 
out  by  sotting  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  beatingy  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.  (UpC.)  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.)1 

Lapse  of  time  between  two  acts,  if  important  to  the  develop- 
ment 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: 

1  Mme.  Sam  Oine,  Prologue,  Scene  1.  Sardou  and  Moreau.  Samuel  French,  New  York. 


164  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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? 

In  The  Galloper,  by  Richard  Harding  Davis,  what  the  au- 
dience 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  read- 
ing 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  can- 
vas United  States  Army  leggings  and  tan  shoes.  On  the  table  are  his 
slouch  hat  and  the  khaki-colored  helmet  of  Griggs. 

Captain  O'Mattey  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? 

1  Lonely  Lives,  Act  iv.  The  Dramatic  Works  of  Gerhart  Hauptmann,  vol.  m ,  p.  265. 
Ludwig  Lewisohn,  ed.  B.  W.  Huebsch,  New  York. 


ARRANGEMENT  165 

('apt.  Anstruther.  Yes. 

Capt.  0%  Medley.  (Showing  him  a  visiting  card.)  Pardon,  is  this 
your  rani? 

(apt.  Anstruther.  (Reading  card.)  "Mr.  Kirke  Warren."  No. 

Copt.  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  of  left.)  I  thank  you. 

(He  exits  left.) ' 

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  iden- 
tify 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  simi- 
lar 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 
eountries.  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 

»  Farce;  "The  Galloper,"  Act  1.  Richard  Harding  Davis.  Copyright,  1906,  by  Qua, 
Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


166  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

the  Acropolis  and  of  classic  Greek  statues.  On  the  black  frames  hold- 
ing 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  thai  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  char- 
acters or  emphasizing  the  place  and  time  of  the  play  is  show- 
ing the  relations  of  the  characters  to  one  another.  This  usu- 
ally 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  Shake- 
speare's custom. 

SCENE  5.  Inverness.  MacbetKs  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,  be- 
fore, 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 


ARRANGEMENT  167 

goo!  to  deliver  thee,  my  dearest  partner  of  greatness,  that  thou 
tst  not  lose  the  dues  of  rejoicing,  by  being  ignorant  of  what 

Bi  atness  is  promis'd  thee.  Lay  it  to  thy  heart,  and  farewell." 

Glarnis  thou  art,  and  Cawdor;  and  shalt  be 

What  thou  art  promis'd.   Yet  do  I  fear  thy  nature; 

It  i^  too  full  o'  the  milk  of  human  kindness 

.itch  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, 

vet  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  out- 
worn 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.1  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  ex- 
position, 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  con- 
fidant. 

>  The  Lonely  Way,  etc.  Three  Playt  by  Arthur  SchnitzUr.  Translated  by  E.  Bjorkman. 
Mitchell  Kenoerley. 


168  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

ACT  I 

(Enter  Hippolytus,  Tkeramenes.) 

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  El  is,  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 


ARRANGEMENT  169 

The  u-xls  sent  Phaedra. 

Therametws.  I  perceive  the  cause 
Of  your  distress.   It  is  the  queen  whose  sight 

Is  you.  With  a  step-dame's  spite  she  schemed 
Your  exile  soon  as  she  set  eyes  on  you. 
Hut  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  Phiedra,  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? 

llnpolytus.  I  should  not  need  to  fly,  if  it  were  hatred. 

Theramenes.  May  I,  then,  learn  the  meaning  of  your  flight?  * 

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  ex- 
position. 

The  Opportunity,2  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  wThat  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. 

1  Phadra,  Act   i.   Racine.   Translated  by  R.  B.  Boswell.   Chief  European  Dramatists. 
Houjfhton  Mifflin  Co.,  Boston. 
*  Works,  vol.  S.  W.  Gifford  and  Dycc.  Murray,  London. 


170  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

A  hearer  would  take  in  almost  unconsciously  the  needed  ex- 
position, so  amused  would  he  be  at  the  increasing  bewilder- 
ment 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  Gen- 
tleman-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.1 

Another  method,  talking  back  to  people  off  stage,  as 
one  enters,  in  such  a  way  as  to  bring  out  necessary  facts., 
Terence  both  used  and  ridiculed  centuries  ago.  This  is  his 
use  of  the  device: 

Enter  My  sis 

My  sis.  {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. Y 

1  The  Rehearsal,  Act  i.  The  Duke  of  Buckingham.  Bell's  British  Theatre,  vol.  xv.  Lon- 
don, 1780. 

*  The  Lady  of  Andros,  Act  i.  Terence.  Translated  by  J.  Sargeaunt.  The  Macmillan  Co, 
New  York;  W.  Heinemann,  London. 


ARRANGEMENT  171 

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.1 

Lately  the  telephone,  the  stenographer,  and  most  re- 
cently the  dictaphone  have  seemed  to  puzzled  dramatists  the 
swift  road  to  successful  initial  exposition.  To  all  these  hu- 
man 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,  how- 
ever, more  ambitious  workers  who,  weary  of  servants,  con- 
fidants, 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,2  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 

1  The  LtSv  of  Androt,  Act  in. 

1  Walter  il.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston;  W.  Ueinemann,  London. 


172  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

told  to  old  friends,  so  that  much  of  it  is  to  them  well  known. 
What  device  will  make  the  narrative,  under  the  circum- 
stances, 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  per- 
son, 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  ter- 
rible 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  be- 
comes 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 


ARRANGEMENT  173 

ificed  to  mere  necessary  exposition;  with  it,  the  specta- 
tor, absorbed  by  incident  or  characterization,  learns  uncon- 
usly  that  without  which  he  cannot  intelligently  and 
>y  in  pathetically  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  insinu- 
ated into  his  mind.  Lastly,  the  device  should  permit  this 
preliminary  exposition  to  be  given  swiftly.  It  is  hard  to  con- 
ceal 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  turnstile  open* 
ing  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  hun- 
dred francs!  He  is  going  to  put  on  his  patronizing  air . . .  make  him- 
self important ...  a  carriage  builder!     It's  a  shame!     Still  h« 


174  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

doesn't  come!  One  would  say  that  he  did  it  on  purpose!  (Address- 
ing 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  corpora- 
tions! 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!  (Mak- 
ing 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  tijae 
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? 


ARRANGEMENT  175 

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  mer- 
chant does  not  retire  from  business  as  easily  as  his  little  daughter 
<s  boarding  school.  .  .  .  Besides,  I  was  waiting  for  your  educa- 
tion 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.)1 

»  Thidtre  Compld,  rol.  u.  Calmann  L6vy,  Pari*. 


176  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  exposi- 
tion is,  probably,  the  growing  popularity  of  three  or  four  acts 
as  compared  with  five.  Less  space  has  forced  a  swifter  move- 
ment. Contrast,  in  the  five-act  piece  Une  Chaine  l  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.2 

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  exposi- 
tion." Here  is  the  history  which  lies  behind  Act  I  of  Suder- 
mann's  Heimat,  or  Magda.3  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  de- 
serted her.  A  child  was  born  to  whom  she  is  passionately  de- 
voted. 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 

*  ThSdlre,  vol.  n.  Michel  Levy  freres,  Paris.  •  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston. 

*  Magda,  translated  by  A.  E.  A.  Winslow.  Lamson,  Wolffe  &  Co.,  Boston. 


ARRANGEMENT  177 

ly  lost  his  mind  from  an  apoplectic  shock  when  lie 
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  fam- 
ily 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  Heffer- 
dingt. 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. 


178  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

In  other  words,  postponing  detailed  exposition  of  these  mat- 
ters 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  back- 
ground 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  impor- 
tant. 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 


ARRANGEMENT  179 

the  potty  social  ambitions  of  the  latter,  and  the  tyrannical 
attitude  of  the  former  toward  his  family.  The  scene  with 
(debs  and  Beckmann  not  only  illustrates  social  condi- 
tions in  the  town,  but  begins  to  connect  Dall'Orto  with  the 
1(  ftt  daughter  by  showing  the  extraordinary  interest  of  Heffer- 
dingt  in  meeting  the  singer.  The  coming  of  Aunt  Franziska 
with  her  announcement  that  the  Dall'Orto  is  Magdaends  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  Rosmersholmy  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 
floicers.  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  firtft 
he  was  going  straight  across  the  foot-bridge;  but  then  he  turner' 
back  — 

Jfrt.  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. 

Jfrt.  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! 


180  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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.  Ro&mer.  (Goes  over  and  opens  the  door  to  the  hall.)  Good 
afternoon;  how  glad  I  am  to  see  you,  my  dear  Rector!  * 

In  this  version  the  "white  horses"  appear,  definitely  ex- 
plained, 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  ap- 
pear. 

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.)2 

In  the  final  draft,  Ibsen  put  the  "white  horses"  into  his 

i  From  Ibsen's  Workshop,  pp.  271-272.    Translated  by  A.  G.  Chater.  Copyright,  1911, 
by  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 
»  Idem,  pp.  288-289. 


ARRANGEMENT  181 

opening  page.  The  beginning  of  this  draft  emphasizes  par- 
ticularly a  grim,  unexplained  tragedy.  The  most  mysteri- 
touch  in  the  new  arrangement  is  given  by  the  "white 
horses,"  here  treated  referentially,  not  in  definite  explana- 
tion. 

t  ting-room  at  Rosmersholm;  spacious,  old-fashioned,  and  com- 
■!r.) 
(Rebecca  West  is  sitting  in  an  easy  chair  by  the  window  and  crochet- 
ing a  large  white  woolen  shawl,  which  is  nearly  finished.  Now  and  then 
looks  out  expectantly  through  the  leaves  of  the  plants.   Soon  after, 
'am  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, 

.  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 

crsholm. 
Madam  Helseth.  Now  I  would  say,  Miss,  that  it's  the  dead  that 
clings  to  Rosmersholm. 


182  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Rebecca.  (Looks  at  her.)  The  dead? 

Madam  Helseth.  Yes,  it's  almost  as  if  they  couldn't  tear  them- 
selves 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, 
>-»u  don't  believe  in  such  things. 

Rebecca.  Do  you  believe  in  them? 

Madam  Helseth.  (Goes  and  shuts  the  urindow.)  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  liaU.)  At  last!  How  glad  I  am  to 
see  you,  my  dear  Rector.1 

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, 

1  Ibsen' '*  Prose  Dramas,  vol.  v,  Walter  Scott,  London;  Chaa.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


ARRANGEMENT  183 

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"?  l 

What  has  just  been  said  as  to  ordering  the  details  in  pre- 
liminary 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 
I  unless  he  knows  how  properly  to  emphasize  his  material,  for 
f   it  is  above  all  else  emphasis  which  reveals  the  meaning  of  a 
I  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."  2 

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  audi- 
tor. 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  al- 
most be  said  that  good  drama  consists  in  right  selection  of 
necessary  illustrative  action  and  in  right  emphasis. 
xEven  though  the  general  exposition  of  a  play  be  clear,  it 

1  Letter*  of  Titanic  Ibeen,  p.  €91.    Fox,  Duffield  &  Co.,  New  York. 

1  Some  Platitude!  concerning  Drama.  Atlantic  Monthly,  December,  1909. 


i8+  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  devel- 
opment of  some  character  who,  for  the  moment,  possesses  his 
imagination ;  or  by  the  handling  of  some  scene  of  large  dra- 
matic possibilities.  In  a  recent  play  meant  to  illustrate  amus- 
ingly 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  con- 
fusing 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  char- 
acter 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-in- 
tentioned 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  prac- 
tically disappeared,  and  we  were  asked  to  give  all  our  at- 
tention to  the  way  in  which  a  son-in-law  was  bringing  ruin 
upon  this  same  parent.  In  Act  III,  another  cause  for  anx- 
iety on  the  part  of  the  parent  appeared,  the  other  disap- 
pearing. 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 


ARRANGEMENT  185 

the  central  idea  illustrated  by  each  of  the  acts  was  missing. 
In  The  Trap,  a  four-act  play  developed  from  a  vaudeville 
iketch,  lack  of  good  emphasis  went  far  to  spoil  an  interest- 
ing 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  astute- 
ness 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  im- 
pressed 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. 


186  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  '11  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.) 


ARRANGEMENT  187 

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.1 

Five  times  the  handkerchief  is  mentioned.  The  first  time 
the  action  is  such  that  Othello  specially  notices  the  hand- 
kerchief. 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  handker- 
chief and  Emilia  tries  to  get  it  back,  holds  it  before  our  at- 
tention. 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? 

1  Othtllo,  Act  m,  Scene  8. 


188  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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?  l 

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 ;  tjiat  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  Darling- 
ton?  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  Winder- 
mere'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 

1  Lady  Windermere's  Fan,  Act  i.  Oscar  Wilde.  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston. 


ARRANGEMENT  189 

the  opera  libretto  picked  up  by  Hoover,  as  he  watches  Elinor 
tutor  the  apartment  of  De  Lota.  Therefore,  earlier  in  the 
act  he  emphasizes  as  follows: 

Elinor.  ( To  Burnt.)  Here's  a  libretto  of  Aida.  Find  that  passage 
of  which  you  spoke. 

Burnt,  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.1 

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. 

1  Duffield  &  Co..  New  York. 


igo  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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 
tfith  De  Lota. 

Hoover.  (Going  up  the  hallway.)  My  idea  too  —  fun  and  word 
)f  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  ma- 
chine.   (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 


ARRANGEMENT  191 

this  last  scene,  note  the  care  of  Mr.  Thomas  to  make  all  ab- 
iolutely  clear.  He  does  not  stop  when  Hoover  says  "A  li- 
bretto," 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  solil- 
oquies of  Iago  referred  to  on  page  183  are  of  this  sort.  Em- 
phasis 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  em- 
phasized 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  ■ 

The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray 2  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  com- 

1  Play:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  New  York. 

*  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston;  W.  Heinemann,  London. 


iQ2  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

ing  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  govern- 
ess' work  for  so  long  that  she  has  ceased  to  have  any  personal  exist- 
ence. She  no  longer  cares  to  possess  anything  of  her  own,  every- 
thing 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,  anx- 
ieties, expenses,  gifts,  and  sacrifices,  all  of  their  vital  forces  to 
equip,  arm,  and  decorate  their  sons  and  daughters  who  are  de- 
scending into  the  plain  of  the  future.  Take  my  own  case,  for  in- 
stance. 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. 


ARRANGEMENT  193 

}fararon.  You  have  probably  never  heard  of  the  "Lampado- 
phories,"  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 
pi  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  use- 
less 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  chil- 
dren 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  in- 
spiration of  many  deeds  of  heroism  as  you  seem  to  forget.1 

A  recent  editor  of  Hauptmann's  Gabriel  Schilling's  Flight 
writes  of  it:  "His  analysis  is  projected  creatively  in  the  char- 
acters 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  pas- 
sion for  possession,  for  absorption,  a  hunger  of  the  nerves 
rather  than  of  the  heart.  These  modern  women  have  aban- 
doned the  simple  and  sane  preoccupations  of  their  grand- 
mothers; 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 

1  The  Trail  of  the  Torch,  Paul  Hervieu.  Translated  by  J.  H.  Haughton.  Drama  League 
Seri«».  vol.  xn.  Doubleday  Page  &  Co.,  New  York. 


194  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  exac- 
tions, seeks  a  last  refuge  in  the  great  and  cleansing  purity 
of  the  sea. 

'  The  modern  malady  of  love  is  nerves.'  "  * 

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  self- 
ish? Does  the  play  signify  that  the  man  who  chooses  to  fol- 
low 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  Schil- 
ling'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 
I  does  not  so  intend.  As  in  real  life,  it  is  first  and  final  impres- 
sions, rather  than  intermediate,  which  count  most.  An  ?ble 
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 

1  The  Dramatic  Works  of  Gerhart  Hauptmann,  vol.  vi,  Introduction,  p.  xi,  Ludwig  Lew- 
isohn, ed.  B.  W.  Huebscb,  New  York. 


ARRANGEMENT  195 

with  effective  speech  and  pantomime,  when  the  woman 
busy  only  with  unimportant  pantomime.   The  promi- 
nence 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.1  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. 

1  The  Macmillan  Co.  publish  both  forms. 


196  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  Rosa- 
mund and  Becket's  supposed  protection  of  the  King's  mis- 
tress. A  secondary  interest  in  Tennyson's  presentation  be- 
comes by  this  shifting  first  interest  with  Irving. 


ARRANGEMENT  197 

PROLOGUE 
SCENE  1.  A  Castle  in  Normandy.  Eleanor.  Fitz  Urse 

Eltcinor.  Dost  thou  love  this  Becket,  this  son  of  a  London  mer- 
chant, that  thou  hast  sworn  a  voluntary  allegiance  to  him? 

Fitz  Urse.  Not  for  my  love  toward  him,  but  because  he  hath  the 

<  »f  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- 


198  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

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  hiss  ;  a  hud  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  momenta- 
rily 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  hurry- 
ing  to  her  as  the  curtain  falls.) 


ARRANGEMENT  190 

This  is  the  close  of  Act  III. 

Fitzroy.  Look! 

(And  he  bends  Alice's  head  back  upon  his  shoulder  u> 
kiss  her  on  the  lips.) 
Bale.  Blackguard! 

(With  a  blow  of  his  right  arm  he  knocks  Cunningham  on  the 
hcadt  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  Cun- 
ningham, 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,  yell' 
ing.)   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.) 

Act  IV  has  a  double  ending:  the  closing  of  the  love  story 
and  the  execution.  The  chief  interest  thus  far  created  for 
the  audience  could  end  with  the  parting  of  the  lovers. 

(The  soldiers  sing  the  air  of  what  is  now  called  "Believe  Me  If  All 
Those  Endearing  Young  Charms."  Hale  stands  listening  for  the 
sound  of  Alice's  coming.  The  Sentinel  retires  to  the  farther  corner  of 
the  tent,  and  stands  with  arms  folded,  his  back  towards  Hale.  Tom 
comes  on  first,  bringing  Alice.  As  they  come  into  Hale's  presence,  Alice 
glides  from  out  of  Tom's  keeping,  and  her  brother  leaves  the  two  to- 
gether.  They  stand  looking  at  each  other  a  moment  without  moving  and 


200  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

then  both  make  a  quick  movement  to  meet.  As  their  arms  touch  in  the 
commencement  of  their  embrace,  they  remain  in  that  position  a  few 
moments,  looking  into  each  other's  eyes.  Then  they  embrace,  Hale  clasp- 
ing  her  tight  in  his  arms  and  pressing  a  long  kiss  upon  her  lips.  They 
remain  a  few  moments  in  this  position,  silent  and  immovable.  Then 
they  slowly  loosen  their  arms  —  though  not  altogether  discontinuing 
the  embrace  —  until  they  take  their  first  position  and  again  gaze  into 
each  other's  faces.  Alice  sways,  about  to  fall,  faint  from  the  effort  to 
control  her  emotions,  and  Hale  gently  leads  her  to  the  tree  stump  at 
right.  He  kneels  beside  her  so  that  she  can  rest  against  him  with  her 
arms  about  his  neck.  After  a  moment,  keeping  her  arms  still  tight 
about  him,  Alice  makes  several  ineffectual  efforts  to  speak,  but  her  quiv- 
ering lips  refuse  to  form  any  words,  and  her  breath  comes  with  diffi- 
culty. Hale  shakes  his  head  with  a  sad  smile,  as  if  to  say,  "No,  don't 
try  to  speak.  There  are  no  words  for  us."  And  again  they  embrace. 
At  this  moment,  while  Alice  is  clasped  again  tight  in  Hale's  arms, 
the  Sentinel,  who  has  his  watch  in  his  hand,  slowly  comes  out  from  the 
tent.  Tom  also  re-enters,  but  Alice  and  Hale  are  oblivious.  Tom  goes 
softly  to  them  and  touches  Alice  very  gently  on  the  arm,  resting  his  hand 
there.  She  starts  violently,  with  a  hysterical  taking-in  of  Jier  breath, 
and  an  expression  of  fear  and  horror,  as  she  knows  this  is  the  final 
moment  of  parting.  Hale  also  starts  slightly,  rising,  and  his  muscles 
grow  rigid.  He  clasps  and  kisses  her  once  more,  but  only  for  a  second. 
They  both  are  unconscious  of  Tom,  of  everything  but  each  other.  Tom 
takes  her  firmly  from  Hale,  and  leads  her  out,  her  eyes  fixed  upon  Hale's 
eyes,  their  arms  outstretched  toward  each  other.  After  a  few  paces  she 
breaks  forcibly  away  from  Tom,  and  with  a  wild  cry  of  "No!  No!" 
locks  her  hands  about  Hale's  neck.  Tom  draws  her  away  again  and 
leads  her  backward  from  the  scene,  her  lips  dry  now  and  her  breath 
coming  in  short,  loud,  horror-stricken  gasps.  Hale  holds  in  his  hand 
a  red  rose  she  wore  on  her  breast,  and  thinking  more  of  her  than  of 
himself,  whispers,  as  she  goes,  "  Be  brave !  be  brave ! "  The  light  is  being 
slowly  lowered,  till,  as  Alice  disappears,  the  stage  is  in  total  darkness.) 

The  second  ending  merely  connects  the  play  more  closely 
with  history. 

Colonel  Rutger's  Orchard,  the  next  morning.  The  scene  is  an  orchard 
whose  trees  are  heavy  with  red  and  yellow  fruit.  The  centre  tree  has  a 
heavy  dark  branch  jutting  out,  which  is  the  gallows;  from  this  branch 
all  the  leaves  and  the  little  branches  have  been  chopped  off;  a  heavy  coil 


ARRANGEMENT  201 

of  rope  with  a  noose  hangs  from  it,  and  against  the  trunk  of  the  tree 

.    It  is  the  moment  before  dawn,  and  slowly  at  the  back 

///  the  trees  is  seen  a  purple  streak,  which  changes  to  crimson  as 

u  p.  A  dim  gray  haze  next  Jills  the  stage,  and  through  this 

gradually  breaks  the  rising  sun.  The  birds  begin  to  wake,  and  suddenly 

is  heard  the  loud,  deep4oned,  single  toll  of  a  bell,  followed  by  a 

roll  of  muffled  drums  in  the  distance.    Slowly  the  orchard  fills  with 

murmuring,  whispering  people;  men  and  women  coming  up  through 

trees  make  a  semicircle  amongst  them,  about  the  gallows  tree, 

but  at  a  rjood  distance.    The  bell  tolls  at  intervals,  and  muffled  drums 

are  heard  between  the  twittering  and  happy  songs  of  birds.    There  is 

mud  of  musketry,  of  drums  beating  a  funeral  march,  which  gets 

nearer,  and  finally  a  company  of  British  soldiers  marches  in,  led  by 

Fitzroy,  Nathan  Hale  in  their  midst,  walking  alone,  his  hands  tied 

behind  his  back.   As  he  comes  forward  the  people  are  absolutely  silent, 

and  a  girl  in  the  front  row  of  the  spectators  falls  forward  in  a  dead  faint. 

s  quickly  carried  out  by  two  bystanders.  Hale  is  led  to  the  foot  of 

Vie  tree  before  the  ladder.  The  soldiers  are  in  double  lines  on  either  side. 

Fitzroy.  {To  Hale.)  Nathan  Hale,  have  you  anything  to  say? 

We  are  ready  to  hear  your  last  dying  speech  and  confession! 

(Hale  is  standing,  looking  up,  his  lips  moving  slightly,  as  if 
in  prayer.  He  remains  in  this  position  a  moment,  and 
then,  with  a  sigh  of  relief  and  rest,  looks  upon  the  sym- 
pathetic faces  of  the  people  about  him,  with  almost  a  smile 
on  his  face.) 
Hale.  I  onlv  regret  that  I  have  but  one  life  to  lose  for  my  coiin- 

try! 

(Fitzroy  makes  a  couple  of  steps  toward  him;  Hate  turns 
and  places  one  foot  on  the  lower  rung  of  the  ladder,  as  the 
curtain  falls.)1 

Watch,  then,  the  beginning  and  the  ending  of  scenes  and 
acts,  lest  an  unconscious  and  undesired  emphasis  result. 

An  important  means  of  emphasis  is  contrast  —  in  charac- 
ter, situation,  and  even  dialogue.  Melodrama  has  always 
rested,  in  large  part,  for  its  definite  emotional  appeals  on 
sharply  contrasted  characters — the  spotless  hero,  the  double- 
dyed  villain,  the  adventuress,  and  the  heroine  so  innocent 

■  Saihan  Bale,  Act  iv,  Scene  2.  Clyde  Fitch.  Little,  Brown  &  Co.,  Boston. 


202  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

of  the  world  as  to  provide  unlimited  dramatic  situations.  Re- 
call the  impetuous  Julia  and  the  gentle  Sylvia  of  The  Two 
Gentlemen  of  Verona.  If  it  be  said  that  such  direct  contrasting 
of  dissimilar  figures  belongs  more  to  the  earlier  plays  of  dra- 
matists, this  is  not  true.  In  The  Gay  Lord  Quex,1  contrast 
of  the  old  and  the  young  roues,  Quex  and  Bastling,  helps  to 
make  clear  and  to  emphasize  the  point  of  the  play.  The 
Princess  and  the  Butterfly 2  largely  depends  upon  contrast,  — 
among  the  restless  women  of  Act  I,  the  restless  men  of  Act 
II,  between  the  Princess  and  Sir  George,  between  the  love 
of  Fay  Zuliani  for  Sir  George  and  that  of  Edward  for  the 
Princess. 

Contrast  in  situation  was  a  great  reliance  with  the  Eliza- 
bethans and,  even  when  very  crudely  used,  remains  popular 
with  the  American  public  today.  So  much  pleasure  did  the 
Elizabethan  derive  from  contrasted  situation  that  he  was  will- 
ing to  have  it  worked  up  as  a  separate  sub-plot,  at  times  very 
slightly  connected  with  the  main  plot.  Take  The  Change- 
ling of  Middleton :  the  titular  part,  written  for  comic  value, 
deals  with  scenes  in  a  madhouse;  the  other  intensely  tragic 
plot  of  De  Flores  and  Beatrice-Joanna  is  but  slightly  con- 
nected with  it.  Think  of  the  grave-diggers  in  Hamlet,  just 
before  the  burial  of  Ophelia,  and,  above  all,  consider  in  Mac- 
beth the  consummate  use  of  a  contrasting  scene,  in  the  por- 
ter at  the  gate  just  after  the  murder  of  Duncan. 

It  is  a  sense  of  the  value  of  contrasting  situation  which 
produces  the  best  dramatic  irony.  When  in  Scene  2,  Act  I, 
of  Hindle  Wakes,  we  listen  to  Alan  Jeffcote's  father  and 
mother  planning  for  his  marriage,  the  fine  dramatic  irony 
comes  from  the  contrast  we  feel  with  the  facts  of  his  con- 
duct, known  to  us  from  the  preceding  scene,  which  may 
make  his  marriage  impossible.  Dramatic  irony  depends  on 
a  preceding  planting  in  the  minds  of  the  auditors  of  infor- 

1  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston;  W.  Heinemann,  London.  2  Idem. 


ARRANGEMENT  203 

mat  ion  which  makes  what  is  true  contrast  sharply  with 
what  the  characters  of  the  particular  scene  suppose  to  be 
true.  Contrast,  then, underlies  dramatic  irony.  An  audience, 
feeling  the  dramatic  irony  of  a  scene,  is  put  into  a  state 
of  susi>ense  as  to  how  and  when  the  blow  they  anticipate 
will  fall.  Evidently,  then,  emphasis  by  means  of  contrast, 
when  it  results  in  dramatic  irony,  makes  for  dramatic  sus- 
pense. 

Contrast  may  be  used  effectively  in  dialogue.  The  modern 
dramatist  sometimes  overdoes  this  use.  Because  he  has  ob- 
served that  the  greatest  suffering  of  the  strongest  natures 
rarely  finds  expression  in  rich  or  varied  speech,  he  tries  to 
discover  words  which  in  their  feebleness,  their  inapposite- 
ness,  or  their  unexpected  commonplaceness,  contrast  sharply 
with  what  a  hearer  feels  is  the  intensity  of  the  emotion  be- 
hind them.  This  has  given  us  in  recent  drama  some  dialogue 
unnatural  in  its  tameness.  This  kind  of  contrast,  however, 
when  handled  with  real  understanding,  is  extremely  effective. 
In  the  parting  of  Laurie  and  the  heroine  in  Iris,1  the  very 
commonplaceness  of  the  details  of  which  they  talk  shows 
that  they  do  not  dare  to  speak  of  what  is  really  in  their 
minds,  and  makes  the  best  preparation  for  the  sudden  loos- 
ing of  emotion  by  Iris  in  what  would  be  ordinarily  a  simple 
request:  "Close  the  jalousies!" 

Except  in  our  recent  revival  of  Moralities  for  the  delecta- 
tion of  moral  Broadway,  we  are  growing  away  dramatically 
from  mere  contrasting  of  types  of  character  and  from  plays 
in  which  a  serious  and  a  comic  plot  are  but  loosely  connected. 
Yet  dramatists  will  always  find  contrast  highly  useful  in 
emphasizing  points  of  characterization  and  important  values 
in  the  story.  Moreover,  any  trained  dramatist  knows  that 
when  his  audience  has  been  somewhat  exhausted  by  laugh- 

1  Pp.  145-45.    R.  H.  Russell,  New  York.    Abo  published  by  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co, 
Boston. 


204  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

ter  or  tears,  a  scene  of  contrasting  emotional  value  is  of  the 
highest  importance.  By  changing  the  focus  of  interest,  it  re- 
news the  power  of  response  exhausted  in  the  just  preceding 
scene.  As  has  been  pointed  out  again  and  again,  though  it 
may  be  true  that  the  drunken  porter  in  Macbeth  was  funnier 
for  an  Elizabethan  public  than  he  is  today,  nevertheless  his 
coming  breaks  the  tension  of  the  terrible  murder  scene  and 
makes  it  possible  even  now  to  turn  to  fresh  horrors  with 
surer  responsiveness.  There  is  no  space  here  to  go  into  any 
satisfactory  analysis  of  the  basal  relations  between  the  seri- 
ous and  the  comic,  but  every  competent  actor  knows  that  fre- 
quently, if  the  full  desired  comic  values  are  to  appear,  it  is  nec- 
essary to  play  a  part,  or  all  the  parts,  with  great  seriousness, 
even  in  a  piece  meant  to  be  broadly  comic  for  the  audience. 
This  is  true  not  merely  in  some  of  Shaw's  plays,  —  Man  and 
Superman,  You  Never  Can  Tell,  etc.,  but  in  many  old  farces 
and  even  in  burlesque.  In  the  contrast  the  audience  makes 
between  the  seriousness  of  the  characters  in  what  they  do 
and  say  and  the  attitude  the  dramatist  creates  toward  them 
lie  the  real  comic  values.  Often  it  is  only  on  the  flint  of  the 
serious  that  one  may  strike  the  most  brilliant  spark  of  the 
comic. 

Emphasis  is  needed  not  only  to  keep  clear  the  development 
of  the  story  and  its  thesis,  if  there  be  any,  but  also  to  deter- 
mine and  maintain  the  dramatic  form  in  which  it  is  cast  — 
farce,  comedy,  melodrama,  and  tragedy.  If  an  audience  is 
kept  long  in  the  dark  as  to  whether  the  dramatist  is  thinking 
of  his  material  seriously  or  with  amusement,  or  if  they  feel 
at  the  end  that  the  story  has  been  told  with  no  coordinating 
emphasis  to  determine  whether  it  is  farce  or  comedy  or  trag- 
edy, they  are  confused  and  likely  to  hold  back  part  of  their 
proper  responsiveness.  As  has  been  pointed  out,  it  is  more 
than  doubtful  whether  the  scene  of  the  attempted  suicide 
in  what  is  otherwise  a  genuine  comedy  of  character,    The 


ARRANGEMENT  205 

Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes,1  did  not  seriously  hurt  the  effective- 
1  of  the  play  for  a  great  many  people. 
Here,  again,  beginnings  and  endings  are  of  the  utmost  con- 
uence.  Notice  the  extreme  care  of  Maeterlinck,  at  the 
out  sot  of  Pdleas  and  Melisande  2  to  create  a  mood  for  his  play. 
One  is  prepared  for  the  tragic  and  the  mysterious  by  the 
opening  scene  of  the  handmaidens  washing  the  mysterious 
stain  from  the  palace  steps.  An  auditor  has  not  heard  ten 
speeches  of  Synge's  Riders  to  the  Sea  3  before  he  knows  that 
the  dramatist  is  dealing  seriously  with  grim  matters,  that, 
in  all  probability,  the  play  is  a  tragedy.  Look  at  Rostand's 
The  RotJiancers.4  It  is  to  be  a  graceful  telling  of  a  jest  played 
upon  two  sentimental  children  by  two  fond  fathers.  The 
author  must  make  clear  early  in  the  play  that  what  may  be 
tragic  enough  for  the  young  people  is  to  be  fantastic  comedy 
for  any  hearers.  Could  anything  be  better  than  the  opening: 
these  two  children,  on  the  wall  between  their  homes,  so  read- 
ing Romeo  and  Juliet  together  that  it  is  obvious  that  they  are 
in  love  with  being  in  love,  nothing  more?  There  is  the  perfect 
emphasis  which  establishes  early  the  attitude  of  the  drama- 
tist toward  his  material,  in  this  case  making  the  play  poetic 
comedy.  Can  any  one  feel  much  doubt  what  form  of  drama 
is  The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest  ?  5  The  first  few  pages 
show  that  dialogue  is  to  count  heavily  as  such.  Evidently 
the  mood  is  comic.  As  evidently,  there  is  exaggeration. 
Thus  we  move  from  initial  farce  to  the  more  broadly  farcical 
mourning  for  the  death  of  the  supposititious  Earnest  and  to 
the  fateful  black  handbag.  If  the  ending  of  The  Romancers 
be  played  as  it  was  in  London,  with  the  speakers  of  the  last 
lines  gradually  fading  from  sight  in  the  dimming  lights, 

1  Act  iv,  Scene  «.  The  Macmillan  Co. 

*  Contemporary  Dramatist*.  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  Boston. 
»  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston. 

«  Translated  by  May  Hendee.  Doubleday,  McClure  &  Co.,  New  York. 

•  Plays  of  Oscar  Wilde,  vol.  n.  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston. 


206  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

surely  that  emphasis  must  mean  to  the  audience  that  it  has 
been  seeing  a  fantasy.1 

However,  as  has  been  said,  danger  lurks  in  these  places 
of  easy  emphasis,  the  beginning  and  the  ending,  for  at  times 
something  effective  in  itself  swings  the  emphasis  the  wrong 
way.  In  Masks  and  Faces,2  two  generations  have  shed  tears 
over  the  woes  of  Triplet  as  meant  for  "real  life,"  only  to  be 
somewhat  rebuffed  when,  just  before  the  final  curtain,  all 
the  characters  step  out  of  the  play  for  the  "Epilogue,"  and 
so  stamp  it  as  "only  a  story  after  all." 

In  brief,  unless  some  special  purpose  is  subserved  thereby, 
an  audience  should  not  long  be  left  in  the  dark  as  to  the 
form  in  which  the  dramatist  thinks  he  has  cast  his  play.  He 
who  treats  his  material  in  many  different  moods  runs  the 
chance  of  confusing  his  hearers.  Only  by  sure  and  well-placed 
emphasis  can  he  keep  his  chosen  form  clear.  Particularly  is 
this  true  in  the  mixed  forms,  tragi-comedy  and  farce-comedy. 
Only  well-placed  emphasis  will  carry  an  audience  through 
these  with  just  the  result  desired  by  the  dramatist. 

How  decide  what  to  emphasize?  Tom  Taylor,  despising 
the  intelligence  of  audiences  of  his  day,  used  to  say,  "When 
you  have  something  to  say  to  an  audience,  tell  them  you 
are  going  to  say  it.  Tell  them  you  're  saying  it.  Tell  them 
you  've  said  it.  Then,  perhaps,  they  '11  understand  it."  Truth 
probably  lies  between  this  and  the  statement  of  a  dramatist 
of  today,  "I  am  re- writing  a  play  originally  composed  some 
ten  years  ago.  Do  you  know  what  I  am  doing?  I  am  cutting 
and  condensing,  because  the  intervening  years  have  taught 
me  that  I  may  suggest  where  I  thought  I  must  explain  in 
full,  and  state  but  once  what  I  thought  I  must  repeat.  Au- 
diences are  far  quicker  than  ten  years  ago  I  supposed  them 
to  be."  Till  the  training  of  the  dramatist  gives  him  a  kind 

1  The  Fantasticks,  pp.  145-146.  Translated  by  George  Fleming.  R.  H  Russell,  New 
York. 

•  Samuel  French,  New  York. 


ARRANGEMENT  207 

of  sixth  sense  which  tells  him  what  in  his  plot  needs  empha- 

For  his  public,  he  must  depend  on  the  comments  of  really 

intelligent  hearers  to  whom  he  reads  the  manuscript  and, 

above  all,  on  retouching  his  play  after  the  first  performances. 

It  is  not  enough,  however,  by  clearness  and  right  em- 
phasis to  maintain  interest:  as  the  play  develops,  the  inter- 
should  if  possible  be  increased.  Either  to  maintain  or  to 
increase  interest  means  that  a  hearer  must  be  led  on  from 
scene  to  scene,  act  to  act,  absorbed  while  the  curtain  is  up 
ami,  between  the  acts,  eager  for  it  to  rise  again.  Such  atten- 
tion given  a  play  means  that  it  has  a  third  essential  quality, 
movement.  The  plays  of  tyro  dramatists  today  are  often 
sadly  lacking  in  good  movement. 

Good  movement  rests,  first  of  all,  on  clearness;  secondly, 
on  right  emphasis;  and  thirdly,  on  something  already  men- 
tioned in  connection  with  both  clearness  and  right  emphasis, 
—  suspense.  This  means  a  straining  forward  of  interest,  a 
compelling  desire  to  know  what  will  happen  next.  Whether 
a  hearer  is  totally  at  a  loss  to  know  what  will  happen,  but 
eager  to  ascertain;  partly  guesses  what  will  take  place,  but 
deeply  desires  to  make  sure;  or  almost  holds  back  so  greatly 
does  he  dread  an  anticipated  situation,  he  is  in  a  state  of  sus- 
pense, for  be  it  willingly  or  unwillingly  on  his  part,  on  swreeps 
his  interest. 

There  should  be  good  movement  within  the  scene,  the  act, 
and  even  the  play  as  a  whole.  It  is,  however,  easily  checked. 
If  scenes  or  characters  not  essential  are  allowed  place  within 
a  play,  it  has  been  shown  on  pages  87-89  that  this  may 
interfere  with  either  clearness  or  good  emphasis.  They  will 
hurt  the  movement  of  the  play.  Closely  related  as  a  possible 
danger  are  necessary  scenes  not  well  placed.  Often  shifting 
part  of  a  scene  or  act  makes  all  the  difference  between  sus- 
tained and  interrupted  suspense.  For  example,  a  young  man, 
after  some  quarrelsome  words,  threatens  to  shoot  his  sister. 


208  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

As  they  stand  facing  each  other,  steps  are  heard  outside. 
A  group  which  enters  brings  about  an  amusing  scene.  Good 
as  it  is,  it  may  kill  the  suspense  created  by  those  two  tense 
figures,  if  it  switches  interest  wholly  or  in  large  part  from 
them.  If  it  does,  any  effective  picking  up  the  scene  between 
the  angry  brother  and  sister,  when  the  visitors  go  out,  may 
be  impossible.  On  the  other  hand,  so  write  the  scene  that 
the  audience,  never  diverted  in  its  attention  to  those  two 
figures,  feels  that  the  moment  the  visitors  leave  the  quar- 
rel will  be  resumed  with  greater  intensity  just  because  of 
the  interruption :  then  there  will  be  no  loss  of  tension.  Just 
here  lies  the  important  point:  suspense  once  created  must 
never  be  allowed  to  lapse  so  long  as  to  be  lost.  A  scene  for 
contrast  or  to  renew  the  power  of  desired  emotional  response 
in  the  audience  or  to  develop  part  of  a  correlated  story  may 
be  introduced,  but  always  what  is  put  between  something 
which  makes  the  audience  strain  forward  and  its  goal  should 
leave  it  as  eager,  and  preferably  more  eager  for  the  solution. 

A  shift  in  order  may  do  much  to  increase  suspense.  When 
Ibsen  transferred  Rosmer's  confession,  which  is  very  neces- 
sary to  the  play,  from  Act  II  to  the  end  of  Act  I,  he  greatly 
added  to  the  suspense  created  by  the  first  act.  To  put  it  dif- 
ferently, he  greatly  accelerated  the  movement  of  the  play. 
An  audience,  knowing  that  Rosmeris"an  apostate  from 
the  faith  of  his  fathers,"  eagerly  desires  to  see  what  will  hap- 
pen to  him  in  such  surroundings  as  those  made  clear  in  Act  I. 
In  the  earlier  version,  a  reader  learns  that  there  are  mys- 
teries which  the  play  will  probably  solve,  but  has  nothing 
on  which  to  focus  his  attention  as  a  compelling  element  of 
suspense. 

Any  one  knows  that  when  an  actor  fails  to  come  on  at  the 
right  moment,  unless  quick-witted  actors  invent  dialogue  or 
action,  the  stage  "waits"  for  the  actor.  There  is  something 
which  exactly  corresponds  to  this  in  the  text  of  plays.  Henry 


ARRANGEMENT  209 

Le  Barron  comes  to  call  on  Madge  Ellsworth.  The  maid, 
r  showing  him  into  the  library,  goes  to  find  her  mistress. 
"Meanwhile  Henry  looks  idly  at  the  books  on  the  table  till 
nters"  Unless  Madge,  perfectly  sure  that  Henry 
would  call  ill  this  hour,  is  waiting  just  outside  the  door,  some 
iction  is  needed  on  the  stage  to  cover  the  time  space  until 
she  can  enter  naturally.  It  is  true  that  looking  at  the 
books  fills  the  time  for  Henry,  but  it  does  not  sustain  for  the 
audience  interest  already  created  in  him  or  the  story.  When 
nothing  is  taking  place  on  the  stage,  something  is  taking 
place  in  the  audience  which  greatly  concerns  the  dramatist: 
it  is  slipping  away  from  him  because  it  is  losing  interest.  For 
contrast,  suppose  that  Henry  sits  restlessly  only  a  moment, 
then  with  a  sigh  picks  up  a  book,  tries  to  read,  falls  to  dream- 
ing, and  holds  the  book  so  that  we  may  see  he  is  reading  it 
upside  down.  He  tries  another  book  in  vain.  He  starts  three 
or  four  times,  thinking  that  the  door  is  about  to  open.  He 
absent-mindedly  examines  a  piece  of  bric-a-brac.  He  starts 
forward  eagerly  the  moment  Madge  enters.  Now  we  are  in- 
terested, because  he  is  either  exhibiting  emotions  the  cause 
of  which  we  understand,  emotions  which  lead  us  to  expect 
an  interesting  scene  between  him  and  Madge,  or  his  conduct 
sets  us  guessing  as  to  what  can  lie  ahead  between  the  two.  In 
the  first  illustration,  the  play  lacks  movement;  in  the  second, 
commonplace  as  it  is,  the  movement  does  not  cease. 

At  times  it  helps  suspense  not  only  to  shift  the  order  of 
details  but  to  separate  two  elements  of  suspense,  treating 
them  separately  in  well  correlated  groups.  In  Hamlet,  Ql, 
the  soliloquy,  "To  be,  or  not  to  be"  precedes  the  meeting  of 
Ophelia  and  Hamlet,  part  of  Hamlet's  tricking  of  Polonius, 
and  the  coming  of  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern.  The 
greater  part  of  the  befuddling  of  Polonius  then  follows.  The 
players  enter  and  plan  with  Hamlet  the  performance  of 
The  Mousetrap.    Hamlet,  left  alone,  bursts  into  the  solilo- 


210  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

quy,  "  Why  what  a  dunghill  idiot  slave  am  I ! "  Q2  rearranges 
thus:  Polonius  and  Hamlet;  Rosencrantz  and  Guildenstern; 
Polonius  returning  to  announce  the  players;  the  planning 
for  The  Mousetrap;  Hamlet  left  alone  crying,  "Oh  what  a 
rogue  and  peasant's  slave  am  I!"  Here  all  the  details  bear- 
ing on  the  play  are  gathered  together.  Next  come  the  King 
and  Queen  with  their  plot  to  try  out  Hamlet  by  means  of 
Ophelia.  The  soliloquy,  "To  be,  or  not  to  be"  follows  this. 
Then  Hamlet  and  Ophelia  have  the  scene  "  To  a  nunnery  go ! " 
Instead  of  jumbling  two  elements  of  suspense,  —  probable 
results  of  the  play  planned  by  Hamlet  and  of  the  Ophelia- 
Hamlet  interest,  —  each  is  given  added  suspense  by  separ- 
ate treatment.  In  Ql,  as  we  shift  from  one  to  the  other,  each 
weakens  the  other  or  is  momentarily  blocked  by  it.  Rear- 
ranged, the  very  order  of  the  details  in  each  part  makes  not 
only  for  clearer  but  stronger  suspense.1 

Today  a  plot  made  up  of  two  or  three  but  slightly  re- 
lated stories  is  far  less  popular  than  in  the  days  of  Queen 
Elizabeth.  Our  public  demands  that  such  stories  shall  be  so 
correlated  within  the  play  as  to  be  mutually  helpful.  This 
desire  results  not  from  innate  niceness  of  feeling  for  unity 
of  design  but  from  dislike  of  a  distribution  of  interests  which 
interferes  with  the  suspense  each  story  creates.  Though  it  is, 
of  course,  possible  perfectly  to  maintain  suspense  in  plays 
of  interwoven  plots  —  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  and  many 
writers  since  prove  this  —  it  is  far  more  difficult  than  main- 1 
taining  suspense  in  a  play  of  single  plot.  Quite  possibly  this 
is  the  chief  reason  for  the  great  popularity  today  of  plays 
of  single  plot :  they  are  both  easier  to  follow  and  easier  to 
write. 

A  related  fault  which  interferes  with  suspense  is  the  "stage 
wait"  treated  on  page  209.  As  has  also  been  pointed  out, 
there  is  danger  in  transitional  scenes  meant  to  cover  a  time 

1  The  Devonshire  Hamlets,  pp.  34-46.  Sampson  Low,  Son  &  Co.,  London. 


ARRANGEMENT  211 

space  or  to  shift  the  interest  of  an  audience.  If  they  ac- 

iplish  either  purpose  and  do  not  advance  the  plot,  they 

really   fail.    Bulwer-Lytton  met  this  difficulty  in  writing 

I  think  in  the  first  3  acts  you  will  find  little  to  alter.    But  in 
\  —  the  2  scene  with  Lady  B.  &  Clara  —  &  Joke  &  the  Trades- 
man don't  help  on  the  Plot  much  —  they  were  wanted,  however, 
especially  the  last  to  give  time  for  change  of  dress  &  smooth  the 
of  the  theme  from  money  to  dinner;  you  will  see  if  this  part 
requires  any  amendment.1 

Also  exposition,  undoubtedly  necessary  but  delayed  too 
long,  may  so  clog  an  act  as  to  weaken  or  kill  it.  In  a  play 
set  in  what  was  once  a  fashionable  dining-room,  but  is  now 
the  fitting-room  of  a  dressmaker,  the  scene  is  not  placed 
for  some  time.  Finally,  a  figure  entering  makes  clear  the 
supposed  setting,  but  for  this  the  action  on  stage  has  to 
be  broken  off. 

The  increasing  popularity  of  a  play  of  three  or  four  acts 
as  compared  with  five  has  almost  wholly  done  away  with 
another  destroyer  of  suspense  —  the  explanatory  and  adjust- 
ing last  act.  In  it,  intelligent  auditors  who  knew  from  the 
close  of  the  fourth  act  how  the  story  must  end  were  expected 
to  watch  with  interest  final  disposition  of  the  characters. 
Dramatists  of  the  eighties  and  nineties  turned  from  this  use 
slowly.  For  proof  examine  the  last  act  of  The  Hypocrites,  by 
II.  A.  Jones,  in  other  respects  a  play  well  away  from  the  older 
methods  of  technique.  Now,  both  the  older  and  the  younger 
generation  of  dramatists  expect  to  carry  suspense  as  near  the 
end  of  the  play  as  they  possibly  can.  Letting  an  audience 
anticipate  something  of  the  end  of  a  play  is  all  very  well,  but 
when  it  foresees  just  what  is  going  to  happen  and  has  no 
farther  interest,  except  to  learn  whether  it  happens  exactly 
as  anticipated,  suspense  and  even  attention  cease.    In  that 

1  Lettert  qf  Bulwer-Lytton  to  Macready,  lxui.  Braoder  Matthews,  ed. 


212  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

case  an  audience  begins  to  gather  its  belongings  for  depart- 
ure. Something  held  back  which  cannot  surely  be  anticipated 
is  the  very  basis  of  suspense. 

It  follows  from  what  has  just  been  said  that  there  can 
never  be  perfect  suspense  when  the  plot  ends  an  act  or  more 
before  the  final  curtain.  It  is  vain  to  try  to  start  new  inter- 
ests in  order  to  create  fresh  suspense.  Unless  the  latter  part 
of  a  play  grows  out  of  the  first,  at  least  as  much  as  the  Per- 
dita-Florizel  story  grows  out  of  that  of  Leontes  and  Hermione, 
there  can  be  no  good  suspense.  When  it  seems  necessary  to 
tack  on  new  material  because  all  suspense  is  ended,  do  not 
add:  rewrite. 

It  has  often  been  said  that  surprise  —  springing  something 
unexpectedly  upon  an  audience  —  is  better  than  suspense. 
Lessing  said  of  the  comparative  value  of  surprise  and  sus- 
pense: 

For  one  instance  where  it  is  useful  to  conceal  from  the  specta- 
tor an  important  event  until  it  has  taken  place  there  are  ten  and 
more  where  interest  demands  the  very  contrary.  By  means  of  se- 
crecy a  poet  effects  a  short  surprise,  but  in  what  enduring  disquie- 
tude could  he  have  maintained  us  if  he  had  made  no  secret  about  it! 
Whoever  is  struck  down  in  a  moment,  I  can  only  pity  for  a  mo- 
ment. But  how  if  I  expect  the  blow,  how  if  I  see  the  storm  brewing 
and  threatening  for  some  time  about  my  head  or  his?  For  my  part 
none  of  the  personages  need  know  each  other  if  only  the  spectator 
knows  them  all.  Nay  I  would  even  maintain  that  the  subject  which 
requires  such  secrecy  is  a  thankless  subject,  that  the  plot  in  which 
we  have  to  make  recourse  to  it  is  not  as  good  as  that  in  which  we 
could  have  done  without  it.  It  will  never  give  occasion  for  any- 
thing great.  We  shall  be  obliged  to  occupy  ourselves  with  prepara- 
tions that  are  either  too  dark  or  too  clear,  the  whole  poem  becomes 
a  collection  of  little  artistic  tricks  by  means  of  which  we  effect 
nothing  more  than  a  short  surprise.  If  on  the  contrary  everything 
that  concerns  the  personages  is  known,  I  see  in  this  knowledge  the 
source  of  the  most  violent  emotions.  Why  have  certain  monologues 
such  a  great  effect?  Because  they  acquaint  me  with  the  secret  in- 
tentions of  the  speaker  and  this  confidence  at  once  fills  me  with 


ARRANGEMENT  213 

h<.f*>  <r  fear.    If  the  condition  of  the  personages  is  unknown,  the 

spectator  cannot  interest  himself  more  vividly  in  the  action  than 
{>ersonages.  But  the  interest  would  be  doubled  for  the  spec- 
;  if  light  is  thrown  on  the  matter,  and  he  feels  that  action  and 

speech  w<  >nl<  I  l>e  quite  otherwise  if  the  personages  knew  one  another. 
Only  then  I  shall  scarcely  be  able  to  await  what  is  to  become  of 

them  when  I  am  able  to  compare  that  which  they  really  are  with 

that  which  they  do  or  would  do.1 

Look  at  the  quotation  from  the  First  Pari  of  Henry  VI  on 
V\ >.  !)?-100.  Talbot  whispers  to  the  Captain,  and  leaves  us 
guessing  what  he  means  to  do  at  his  meeting  with  the  Count- 
ess of  Auvergne.  In  like  manner  the  Countess  merely  refers 
to  t  lie  plot  she  has  laid  with  her  Porter.  We  never  know  just 
what  was  the  plan  of  the  Countess.  We  get  only  a  momen- 
tary sensation,  surprise,  when  Talbot's  soldiers  force  their  way 
in.  Suppose  we  had  been  allowed  to  know  the  plans  of  the 
Countess,  and  they  had  seemed  very  dangerous  for  Talbot. 
Then,  as  she  played  with  him,  sure  of  her  position,  there 
would  have  been  more  suspense  than  in  Shakespeare's  text, 
because  an  audience  would  have  been  wondering,  not  merely 
"What  is  the  blow  Talbot  will  strike?"  but  "Can  any  blow 
he  will  strike  overcome  the  seemingly  effective  plans  of  the 
Countess?  "  Suppose  we  had  been  allowed  to  know  the  plans 
of  both.  Then,  as  we  watched  the  Countess  playing  her 
scheme  off  against  the  plan  of  Talbot,  of  which  she  would  be 
unaware,  might  there  not  easily  be  even  more  suspense?  At 
every  turn  of  their  dialogue  we  should  be  wondering:  "Why 
does  not  Talbot  strike  now?  Can  he  save  the  situation,  if  he 
delays?  With  all  this  against  him,  can  he  save  it  in  any  case?" 
In  the  use  of  surprise,  the  dramatist  depends  almost  entirely 
on  his  situation.  Suspense  permits  him  to  elaborate  his  situ- 
ation by  means  of  the  characters  in  it.  In  other  words,  sur- 
prise is  situation,  suspense  is  characterization. 

On  this  matter  recent  words  of  William  Archer  seem  final : 

1  Hamburg  Dramaturgy,  p.  377.  Leasing.  Bobn,  ed. 


214  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Curiosity  [I  said]  is  the  accidental  relish  of  a  single  night;  whereas 
the  essential  and  abiding  pleasure  of  the  theatre  lies  in  foreknowl- 
edge. In  relation  to  the  characters  of  the  drama,  the  audience  are 
as  gods  looking  before  and  after.  Sitting  in  the  theatre,  we  taste, 
for  a  moment,  the  glory  of  omniscience.  With  vision  unsealed, 
we  watch  the  gropings  of  purblind  mortals  after  happiness  and 
smile  at  their  stumblings,  their  blunders,  their  futile  quests,  their 
misplaced  exultations,  their  groundless  panics.  To  keep  a  secret 
from  us  is  to  reduce  us  to  their  level,  and  deprive  us  of  our  clairvoy- 
ant aloofness.  There  may  be  a  pleasure  in  that  too;  we  may  join 
with  zest  in  the  game  of  blind-man's-buff;  but  the  theatre  is  in 
its  essence  a  place  where  we  are  privileged  to  take  off  the  bandage 
we  wear  in  daily  life,  and  to  contemplate,  with  laughter  or  with 
tears,  the  blindfold  gambols  of  our  neighbors.1 

What  is  basal  in  suspense  is,  of  course,  that  an  audience 
shall  feel  for  some  person  or  persons  of  the  play  just  the  de- 
gree of  sympathy  the  dramatist  desires.  Unless  their  sym- 
pathy is  as  keen  as  his,  the  scene  must  fall  short  emotionally. 
For  instance,  in  a  play  produced  some  years  ago  author  and 
actors  expected  the  audience  to  sympathize  throughout  with 
a  mother.  At  the  climax  of  one  of  the  acts  she  was  left  on-stage 
in  an  agonized  state  of  mind  because  her  husband,  who  hates 
her  illegitimate  child,  has  left  the  stage  with  threats  to  kill 
it.  The  actress  wrote  of  the  first  night:  "In  that  scene  I 
might  as  well  have  recited  the  alphabet  for  all  the  audience 
cared  for  my  emotion.  Their  sympathy  made  them  live, 
not  with  me,  but  with  the  defenceless  child  who  at  any  mo- 
ment might  be  murdered  off-stage  by  the  cruel  father."  Sus- 
pense for  the  audience  there  certainly  was,  but  not  of  the 
kind  intended.   It  was  necessary  to  rewrite  the  scene. 

Evidently,  what  happens  off-stage  may,  by  its  greater  in- 
terest for  the  audience,  kill  the  effect  of  what  is  passing  on- 
stage. Wliat  the  dramatist  dares  not  try  to  represent  on- 
stage because  of  its  mechanical  difficulty  or  horror,  he  tries 
to  carry  off  by  vivid  and  even  terrifying  description.    By 

1  Play-Making,  pp.  171-172.  William  Archer.  Small,  Maynard  &  Co.,  Boston. 


ARRANGEMENT  215 

making  the  audience  see  the  off-stage  action  through  the  eyes 
of  the  person  most  affected,  or  by  portraying  vividly  his  emo- 
tions when  another  describes  the  action  to  him,  dramatists 
endeavor  to  lose  none  of  their  desired  suspense.  The  point 
to  remember  is  that  the  moment  the  off-stage  action  becomes 
of  more  importance  than  the  emotions  caused  by  that  ac- 
tion for  persons  on-stage,  the  real  centre  of  interest  has  been 
shifted,  the  desired  suspense  is  gone,  and  the  scene  must 
be  rewritten.  Suspense  in  a  play  is  rightly  handled,  then, 
when  it  is  promptly  created  to  the  extent  desired  by  the 
dramatist;  carries  on  with  increasing  intensity  from  act  to 
act ;  and  reaches  its  climax  at  or  just  before  the  final  curtain. 
Climax  is,  therefore,  an  integral  part  of  suspense.  The 
point  of  greatest  intensity  reached  in  an  incident,  scene,  act, 
or  play  is  the  moment  of  climax.  Climax  is  not  the  result  of 
theory  but  comes  from  long  observation  of  audiences.  A 
scene  or  act  which  breaks  off  or  declines  in  interest  towards 
its  close  never  delights  an  audience  as  does  a  scene  or  act 
which  closes  with  its  strongest  emotional  effect.  Look  at  the 
ending  of  The  Troublesome  Raigne  of  King  John,  Part  I. 
Though  King  John  declares  himself  "the  joyfulst  man 
alive,"  the  audience  does  not  so  sympathize  with  him  that 
his  delight  is  a  fitting  climax  to  the  play.  Rather  do  they 
so  keenly  sympathize  with  Prince  Arthur  and  even  the  lords 
who  have  been  outraged  by  Arthur's  proposed  death  that 
they  want  to  know  more  of  him  and  them. 

Hubert.  My  lord,  attend  the  happie  tale  I  tell, 
For  heauens  health  «end  Sathan  packing  hence 
That  instigates  your  Highnes  to  despaire. 
If  Arthurs  death  be  dismall  to  be  heard, 
Bandie  the  newes  for  rumors  of  vnthruth: 
He  Hues  my  Lord,  the  sweetest  youth  aliue, 
In  health,  with  eyesight,  not  a  hair  amisse. 
This  hart  tooke  vigor  from  this  froward  hand, 
Making  it  weake  to  execute  your  charge. 


216  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Iohn.  What,  Hues  he!  Then  sweete  hope  come  home  agen, 
Chase  hence  despaire,  the  purueyor  for  hell. 
Hye  Hubert,  tell  these  tidings  to  my  Lords 
That  throb  in  passions  for  yong  Arthurs  death: 
Hence  Hubert,  stay  not  till  thou  hast  reueald 
The  wished  newes  of  Arthurs  happy  health. 
I  go  my  seife,  the  joyfulst  man  aliue 
To  storie  out  this  new  supposed  crime.  (Exeunt.)1 

The  author,  though  he  got  from  this  a  suspense  which 
carried  his  audience  over  to  the  performance  of  Part  II  on 
the  next  day,  missed  any  real  climax  for  Part  I. 

Inexperienced  playwrights,  in  spite  of  good  characteriza- 
tion and  dialogue,  frequently  do  not  understand  the  value 
and  the  nature  of  real  climax.  Consequently,  an  audience 
feels  that  any  interest  it  has  given  is  cheated  in  the  end.  The 
following  scenario,  though  its  feebleness  can  hardly  be 
traced  solely  to  lack  of  climax,  illustrates  what  is  meant. 

THE  DEBUTANTE 

Characters: 

Major  Worthington,  an  American  financier; 
EmilRichter,  a  young  poet; 

'.J,    „  '  !•  who  do  "team  work"  for  the  hand  of  Kitty. 

Kitty  Worthington,  the  dSbutante. 

Mme.  Cavanaugh  King,  a  widow,  Kitty's  aunt. 

SCENE:  Den,  off  the  ballroom  of  Major  Worthington' s  home.  Mu- 
sic from  the  ballroom  is  heard  intermittently  during  the  action. 

DISCOVERED:  A  group  of  guests  who  chatter  and  pass  out,  leav- 
ing Squeam  and  Van  Metre.  They  talk  of  the  attractions  of  Kitty,  the 
dSbutante,  and  make  a  wager  as  to  who  will  win  out.  Each  agrees  to 
back  the  other  up  in  case  of  failure.  They  go  off  as  Mrs.  King  and 
Major  Worthington  enter.  She  reproves  her  brother  for  looking  tired 
and  uninterested  on  this  occasion  of  his  daughter's  "coming  out.,y 

1  The  Troublesome  Raigne  of  King  Iohn,  pp.  279-280;  Shakespeare's  Library,  vol.  v.  Reevei 
&  Turner,  London. 


ARRANGEMENT  217 

At  length,  exhausted  by  his  sister* s  flippancy,  he  tells  her  that  they  are 
financially  ruined,  and  that  the  crash  will  come  on  the  morrow.  Mrs. 

!  is  distracted,  but  they  both  brighten  as  Kitty  enters  in  a  whirl. 

is  radiantly  happy,  and  hugs  one  and  then  the  other,  then  both. 

let  Rickter,  a  stalwart  young  westerner,  who  does  not  know  how  to 

dance.   They  congratulate  him  on  his  little  volume  of  verses  which  has 

been  published.    After  promising  to  sit  out  a  dance  with  himt 
Kitty  sends  him  off  to  talk  with  Miss  Smithkins.  He  picks  up  a  rose 

■h  Kitty  has  dropped  and  goes  off  with  it.  Enter  Dr.  Van  Metre 
and  Squeam.  Exeunt  Major  Worthington  and  Mrs.  King.  Van 
Metre  and  Squeam  take  turns  in  proposing  to  Kitty.  Enter  Mrs. 
King,  to  whom  Squeam  finds  himself  making  violent  love,  mistaking 
for  Kitty.  He  starts  to  bolt,  but  she  lays  hold  of  him,  and  they  go 
off  together.  Kitty  and  Van  Metre  go  off  to  dance,  she  laughing  at  his 
ardent  protestations.  Enter  Major.  He  takes  out  a  revolver  from  his 
writing  desk,  and  puts  it  back  as  some  dancers  pass  through.  Enter 
Emit,  and  the  two  exeunt  arm-in-arm.  Enter  Mrs.  King  and  Kitty. 
Mrs.  King  bluntly  tells  Kitty  their  financial  straits,  and  adds  that 
Kitty  must  give  up  any  sentimental  feelings  she  has  for  RicJUer,  and 
must,  if  she  gets  the  chance,  accept  Van  Meter  or  Squeam  on  the  spot. 
With  this,  she  hastily  departs,  leaving  Kitty  in  tears.  The  tears  turn 
to  dimples  the  moment  Richter  appears,  and  she  tries  to  shock  him  into 
a  dislike  for  her.  Nevertheless,  he  makes  a  clumsy  effort  at  proposing 
which  is  interrupted  by  Van  Metre,  then  Squeam,  then  both,  who  insist 
on  taking  her  to  supper.  She  dismisses  them.  (Soft  music.)  Richter 
proposes,  and  Kitty  refuses  him,  telling  him  the  reason  frankly,  as 
her  aunt  has  just  given  it  to  her.  He  reprimands  her  for  having  mer- 
cenary motives,  and  makes  an  eloquent  plea  for  the  equality  of  men. 
Enraged,  she  leaves  the  room,  but  quickly  returns  and  throws  herself 
into  his  arms.  Enters  Mrs.  King  hastily,  and  says  they  may  go  right 
on  embracing,  as  the  Major  has  just  received  a  telegram  stating  that  he 
has  won  out  in  a  law  suit  involving  millions  of  dollars*  worth  of  iron 
mines.  Enter  the  Major  hilarious.  Enter  Squeam  and  Van  Meter. 
They  shake  hands  and  declare  the  wager  off.  Enter  the  dancers  from 
a  cotillion  figure.  They  are  arrayed  in  grotesque  paper  hats  and  bon- 
nets and  garlands  of  paper  flowers.  They  circle  about  Kitty  and  Rich- 
ter, and  pelt  them  with  paper  flowers.  Exeunt.  Tableau:  Kitty  and 
Richter  looking  into  firelight. 

Curtain. 

Obviously,  though  some  slight  suspense  has  been  created 


218  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

as  to  the  possible  solution  of  Kitty's  difficulties,  the  proposed 
play  goes  all  to  pieces  the  moment  Mrs.  King  enters  with 
her  news.  When  an  audience  knows  that  had  the  dramatist 
so  willed,  the  fateful  telegram  might  have  arrived  at  any 
moment  in  the  play  other  than  the  point  chosen,  it  is  likely 
to  vote  unanimously  that  the  telegram  should  have  been 
received  before  the  curtain  was  ever  rung  up.  Except  in 
amateur  performances  arranged  for  admiring  friends,  there 
is  no  hope  that  such  a  fizzle  can  be  covered  by  introducing 
dancers  to  make  a  pretty  picture  and  a  pseudo-climax. 

Climax  is,  then,  whatever  in  action,  speech,  pantomime, 
or  thought  (whether  conveyed  or  suggested)  will  produce 
in  an  audience  the  strongest  emotion  of  the  scene,  act,  or 
play. 

The  means  to  climax  range  from  mere  action  to  quiet 
speech,  from  pure  theatricality  to  lifelike  subtlety.  The 
poisoned  cup,  the  fatal  duel,  indeed,  the  general  slaughter  at 
the  end  of  Hamlet  make  a  tremendous  climax  of  action.  Mere 
action,  however,  does  not  necessarily  give  climax.  The  writer 
of  the  scenario  just  quoted,  missing  a  real  climax,  tried  to 
offset  this  by  the  gay  dance.  Whether  a  dance,  parade,  or 
tableau  is  a  genuine  climax  depends  on  whether  it  illustrates 
attainment  of  that  in  regard  to  which  suspense  has  been 
created.  No  mere  dance  in  costume,  no  spectacular  parade 
or  brilliant  tableau  is  ever  an  adequate  substitute  for  a  cli- 
max which  brings  to  the  greatest  intensity  emotionalized 
interest  already  awakened  in  an  audience.  Such  climax 
by  action  may,  then,  be  as  purely  theatrical  as  in  revues, 
much  musical  comedy,  or  pure  melodrama,  or  as  simple  and 
true  as  in  Heijermans*  The  Good  Hope.  The  women,  Joe  and 
Kneirtje,  are  left  alone,  wild  with  anxiety  for  their  fisherman- 
lover  and  son.   A  storm  rages  outside. 

Jo.  {Beating  her  head  on  the  table.)  The  wind!  It  drives  me 
mad,  mad! 


ARRANGEMENT  219 

Kncirtje.  (Opens  the  prayerbook,  touches  Jo's  arm.   Jo  looks  up, 

sobbing  passionately,  sees  the  prayerbook,  shakes  her  head  fiercely. 

Again  wailing,  drops  to  the  floor,  which  she  beats  with  her  hands. 

rtje's  trembling  voice  sounds.)  O  Merciful  God !   I  trust!   With 

a  firm  faith,  I  trust. 

(The  wind  races  with  wild  lashings  about  the  house.) 
Curtain.1 

Climax  may  come  through  surprise,  as  the  discussion  of 
su>i>ense  shows  (pp.  212-214).  Such  surprise  may  be  theat- 
rical, as  in  Home2  where  it  is  obviously  an  arranged  effect, 
or  genuinely  dramatic  because  justified  by  the  preceding 
characterization,  as  in  The  Clod, 

(Mary  goes  to  the  cupboard;  returns  to  the  table  with  the  salt.  Almost 
ready  to  drop,  she  drags  herself  to  the  window  nearer  back,  and  leans 
against  it,  watching  the  Southerners  like  a  hunted  animal.  Thaddeus 
sits  nodding  in  the  corner.  The  Sergeant  and  Dick  go  on  devouring 
food.  The  Sergeant  pours  the  coffee.  Puts  his  cup  to  his  lips,  takes 
one  swallow;  then,  jumping  to  his  feet  and  upsetting  his  chair  as  he  does 
so,  he  hurls  his  cup  to  the  floor.  The  crash  of  china  stirs  Thaddeus. 
Mary  shakes  in  terror.) 

Sergeant.  (Bellowing  and  pointing  to  the  fluid  trickling  on  the 
floor.)  Have  you  tried  to  poison  us,  you  God  damn  hag? 

(Mary  screams,  and  the  faces  of  the  men  turn  white.   It  is 
like  the  cry  of  the  animal  goaded  beyond  endurance.) 
Mary.  (Screeching.)  Call  my  coffee  poison,  will  ye?    Call  me  a 
hag?  I'll  learn  ye!  I'm  a  woman,  and  ye're  drivin'  me  crazy. 

(Snatches  the  gun  from  the  wall,  points  it  at  the  Sergeant, 
and  fires.  Keeps  on  screeching.  The  Sergeant  falls  to  the 
floor.  Dick  rushes  for  his  gun.) 
Thaddeus.  Mary!  Mary! 

Mary.  (Aiming  at  Dick,  and  firing.)  I  ain't  a  hag.  I'm  a  woman, 
but  ye're  killin'  me. 

(Dick  falls  fust  as  he  reaches  his  gun.  Thaddeus  is  in  the 
corner  with  his  hands  over  his  ears.  Mary  continues  to 
pull  the  trigger  of  the  empty  gun.  The  Northerner  is 
motionless  for  a  moment ;  then  he  goes  to  Thaddeus,  and 
shakes  him.) 

1  The  Good  Dope.  Act  m.  Herman  Heijermans.  The  Drama,  November,  1912. 
1  See  pp.  48-30. 


220  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Northerner.  Go  get  my  horse,  quick! 

(Thaddeus  obeys.  The  Northerner  turns  to  Mary.  She  gazes 
at  him,  but  does  not  understand  a  word  he  says.) 
Northerner.  (With  great  fervor.)  I'm  ashamed  of  what  I  said. 
The  whole  country  will  hear  of  this,  and  you. 

(Takes  her  hand,  and  presses  it  to  his  lips;  then  turns  and 

hurries  out  of  the  house.   Mary  still  holds  the  gun  in  her 

hand.    She  pushes  a  strand  of  gray  hair  back  from  her 

face,  and  begins  to  pick  up  the  fragments  of  the  broken 

coffee  cup.) 

Mary.  (In  dead,  fiat  tone.)  I'll  have  to  drink  out  the  tin  cup  now. 

(The  hoof -beats  of  the  Northerner's  horse  are  heard.) 

Curtain.1 

Note  the  wholly  unexpected  turn  after  the  final  speech 
of  the  Northerner.  Yet  this  surprise  merely  rounds  out  the 
characterization  of  Mary. 

This  kind  of  climax  by  surprise  recalls  one  of  the  principles 
in  acting  which  Joseph  Jefferson  laid  down  for  himself: 
"Never  anticipate  a  strong  effect;  in  fact,  lead  your  audi- 
ence by  your  manner,  so  that  they  shall  scarcely  suspect  the 
character  capable  of  such  emotion;  then  when  some  sudden 
blow  has  fallen,  the  terrible  shock  prepares  the  audience  for 
a  new  and  striking  phase  in  the  character;  they  feel  that 
under  these  new  conditions  you  would  naturally  exhibit  the 
passion  which  till  then  was  not  suspected."  2 

Before  the  present  insistence  on  reality  held  sway,  it  was 
possible  to  close  a  play  of  pretended  truth  to  life  with  a  tag. 
Here  is  the  quiet  ending  of  Still  Waters  Run  Deep  (1855) : 

Potter.  My  dear  boy,  you  astonish  me!  But,  however,  there's 
an  old  proverb  that  says  that  "All  is  not  gold  that  glitters.'* 

MUdmay.  Yes,  and  there  is  another  old  proverb  and  one  much 
more  to  the  purpose  that  says,  "Still  waters  run  deep." 

The  convention  which  made  that  sort  of  ending  desirable 

1  Washington  Square  Plays;  The  Clod.  Lewis  Beach.  Drama  League  Series,  No.  XX. 
Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  New  York. 

*  The  Autobiography  of  Joseph  Jeferson,  pp.  210-211.  Century  Co.,  New  York. 


ARRANGEMENT  221 

has  passed.  However,  today  another  convention,  —  the 
quiet  ending,  —  might  make  it  possible  to  end  this  same  play 
with  the  speech  just  preceding  the  two  quoted. 

Patter.  John  Mildmay  the  master  of  this  house?  Emily,  my 
dear,  has  your  aunt  been  —  I  mean  has  your  aunt  lost  her  wits? 

Mrs.  Mildmay.  No,  she  has  found  them,  papa,  as  I  have  done, 
thanks  to  dear  John.  Ask  his  pardon,  papa,  as  we  have,  for  the 
cruel  injustice  we  have  done  him. 

Potter.  Oh,  certainly,  if  you  desire  it.  John  Mildmay,  I  ask  your 
pardon  —  Jane  and  Emily  say  I  ought;  though  what  I  have  done, 
or  what  there  is  to  ask  pardon  for  — 

Mildmay.  Perhaps  you'll  learn  in  time.  But  we're  forgetting 
dinner  —  Langford,  will  you  take  my  wife?  {He  does  so.)  Markham, 
you'll  take  Mrs.  Sterahold?  l 

Add  to  this,  "They  all  go  out  to  dinner,"  and  you  have 
one  of  the  "quiet  endings"  dear  to  the  hearts  of  some  recent 
dramatists.  These  writers,  after  an  act  has  swept  to  a  strong 
emotional  height,  add  some  very  quiet  ending  such  as  going 
out  to  dinner  or  the  conventional  farewells  of  the  group  as- 
sembled, as  if  for  some  reason  either  were  more  artistic  than 
to  close  on  the  moment  of  strong  emotion.  This  is  bad.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  the  quiet  ending  carries  characterization, 
or  irony,  to  point  the  scene,  act,  or  play,  or  really  illustrates 
the  meaning,  this  and  not  the  absence  of  strong  emotion  or 
physical  action  is  what  gives  both  real  value  and  genuine 
climax.  For  instance,  at  the  end  of  Act  I  of  Monsieur 
Poirier's  Son-in-Law,  by  Augier,  this  is  the  dialogue: 

Enter  a  Servant. 

Servant.  Dinner  is  served. 

Poirier.  (To  the  Servant.)  Bring  up  a  bottle  of  1811  Pomard  — 
(To  the  Duke.)  The  year  of  the  comet,  Monsieur  le  due  —  fifteen 
francs  a  bottle!  The  king  drinks  no  better.  (Aside  to  Verdelet.) 
You  mustn't  drink  any  —  neither  will  I! 

Gaston.  (To  the  Duke.)  Fifteen  francs,  bottle  to  be  returned 
when  empty! 

»  The  DeWitt  Publishing  House,  New  York. 


222  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Verdelet.  {Aside  to  Poirier.)  Are  you  going  to  allow  him  to  make 
fun  of  you  like  that? 

Poirier.  (Aside  to  Verdelet.)  In  matters  of  this  sort,  you  must- 
take  your  time.  (They  all  go  out.) 

Curtain.1 

Here  it  is  not  the  quietude  but  the  particularly  apt,  humor- 
ous illustration  of  Poirier 's  character  which  gives  climax. 
In  The  Amazons,  too,  what  could  better  illustrate  acceptance 
of  the  usual  by  all  the  group  who  have  been  fighting  against 
it  than  the  sedate  and  utterly  commonplace  exeunt? 

Lady  Castle  Jordan.  Lord  Tweenwayes  — 

(Tweenwayes  comes  with  great  dignity  to  Lady  Castlejordan. 
The  girls  fall  back.) 
Lady  Castlejordan.  Lord  Litterly  —  Lady  Noeline.  Monsieur  de 
Grival  —  Lady  Wilhelmina.  Mr.  Minchin  —  Lady  Thomasin. 

(The  couples  are  formed,  and  all  go  out  sedately.)2 

When  quiet  speech  sums  up  the  whole  meaning  of  a  scene 
or  play,  it  too  gives  climax.  Ann's  words  at  the  end  of  Man 
and  Superman,  "John  you  are  still  talking,"  make  a  fine 
ironic  climax.  Irony,  whether  quiet  or  decidedly  dramatic,  is 
a  very  effective  means  to  climax.  At  the  end  of  Act  II,  Herod, 
in  the  play  of  that  name  by  Stephen  Phillips,  has  ordered 
Mariamne  killed.  Completely  infatuated  by  her,  he  has  done 
this  only  when  her  enemies  have  forced  him  to  believe  that 
she  is  utterly  false.  Almost  instantly  his  love  overwhelms  his 
mistrust.   He  tries  to  revoke  his  word,  crying, 

Yet  will  I  not  be  bound,  I  will  break  free, 

She  shall  not  die  —  she  shall  not  die  —  she  shall  not  — 

News  of  the  triumph  he  has  longed  for  interrupts: 
Enter  Attendant. 
Attendant.  O  king,  the  Roman  eagles!  See! 
A  cry.  (Without.)  From  Rome! 

1  Monsieur  Poirier's  Son-in-Law,  Act  i.  Emile  Augier.  Translated  by  B.  H.  Clark. 
A.  Knopf,  New  York. 

1  The  Amazons,  Act  in.  Sir  Arthur  Pinero.  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston. 


ARRANGEMENT  223 

Enter  Roman  Envoy  and  Suite. 
ty.  O  king,  great  Caesar  sent  us  after  you, 
But,  though  we  posted  fast,  you  still  outran  us. 
Thus  then  by  won!  of  mouth  great  Caesar  greets 

I  his  friend.  But  he  would  not  confine 
That  friendship  to  the  easy  spoken  word. 
And  hear  I  bear  a  proof  of  Caesar's  faith. 
Herein  is  added  to  thy  boundaries 
II;[>l>o.  Samaria  and  Gadara, 

high-walled  Joppa,  and  Anthedon's  shore, 
And  Gaza  unto  these,  and  Straton's  towers.  (Mores  down.) 

II  the  scroll,  with  Caesar's  own  hand  signed. 

Herod.  ( Taking  the  scroll  —  at  foot  of  steps.)  Mariamne,  hear  you 
this?  Mariamne,  see  you?  (Turns  to  look  at  scroll.) 

(Servant  enters  and  moves  down  to  Gadias  down  L.) 
(He  goes  up  the  stairs.) 
Hippo,  Samaria  and  Gadara, 
And  high-walled  Joppa,  and  Anthedon's  shore, 
And  Gaza  unto  these,  and  Straton's  towers. 

Servant.  (Aside  to  Gadias.)  O  sir,  the  queen  is  dead! 

Gadias.  (Aside  to  Pheroras,  Cypros,  and  Salome.)  The  queen  is 
dead! 

Herod.  Mariamne,  hear  you  this?  Mariamne,  see  you? 

(Repeating  the  words,  and  going  up  steps.) 
Hippo,  Samaria  and  Gadara, 

And  high-walled  Joppa,  and  Anthedon,  04s  he  moves  up.) 

And  Gaza  unto  these,  and  Straton's  towers! 1 

The  perfect  climax  lies  in  the  irony  of  the  fact  that  all 
Herod  most  desires  as  ruler  comes  to  him  at  just  the  moment 
when  he  has  killed  the  thing  that  most  he  loved. 

At  the  end  of  Act  III  of  Chains,  by  Elizabeth  Baker, 
everybody  —  the  father-in-law  and  mother-in-law,  Percy, 
the  brother-in-law,  and  Sybil,  a  pretty  but  useless  bit  of 
femininity  —  has  been  making  Charlie  entirely  miserable 
because  no  one  can  understand  that  his  expressed  desire  to 
try  his  fortunes  in  Australia  and  then  send  for  his  wife, 

1  Herod,  A  Tragedy,  Act.  u.  Stephen  Phillips.  John  Lane,  New  York. 


224  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Lily,  is  not  a  pretext  for  abandoning  her.  Percy,  with  next 
to  nothing  a  year,  is  just  engaged  to  Sybil.  Foster  wants 
to  marry  Margaret,  Charlie's  sister-in-law,  who  is  dissatis- 
fied with  her  lot. 

Enter  Lily,  dressed  for  going  out,  also  Mrs.  Massey.  Lily  goes 
round,  kissing  and  shaking  hands,  with  a  watery  smile  and  a 
forced  tearful  cheerfulness. 

Charley.  {Without  going  all  around  and  calling  from  the  door.) 
Good  night,  all!  {Exeunt  Lily  and  Charley.) 

Mrs.  Massey.  Well,  I  must  say  — 

Percy.  O,  let's  drop  it,  mother.  Play  something,  Maggie. 

Maggie.  I  don't  want  to. 

Mrs.  Massey.  Walter  would  like  to  hear  something,  wouldn't 
you,  Walter? 

Foster.  If  Maggie  feels  like  it. 

Maggie.  She  doesn't  feel  like  it. 

Massey.  Be  as  pleasant  as  you  can,  my  girl  —  Charley's  enough 
for  one  evening. 

{Maggie  goes  to  the  piano  and  sitting  down  plays  noisily, 
with  both  pedals  on,  the  chorus,  "Off  to  Philadelphia") 

Mrs.  Massey.  Maggie,  it's  Sunday! 

Maggie.  I  forgot! 

Mrs.  Massey.  You  shouldn't  forget  such  things  —  Sybil,  my 
dear  — 

Sybil.  I  don't  play. 

Massey.  Rubbish!  Come  on! 

{Sybil  goes  to  the  piano  and  Percy  follows  her.) 

Percy.  {Very  near  to  Sybil  and  helping  her  to  find  the  music.) 
Charley  is  a  rotter!  What  d'ye  think  he  was  telling  me  the  other 
day? 

Sybil.  I  don't  know. 

Percy.  Told  me  to  be  sure  I  got  the  right  girl. 

Sybil.  Brute! 

Percy.  What  do  you  think  I  said?  Darling! 

(Kisses  her  behind  music.) 

Massey.  (Looking  around.)  Take  a  bigger  sheet. 

(Sybil  sits  at  piano  quickly  and  plays  the  chorus  to  "Count 
Your  Many  Blessings"  To  which  they  all  sing:) 


ARRANGEMENT  225 

Count  your  many  blessings,  count  them  one  by  one, 
Count  your  hlcssirms,  sc<-  what  God  has  done. 
Count  your  blessings,  count  tliem  one  by  one, 
And  it  will  surprise  you  what  the  Lord  has  done.1 

1^  not  the  irony  of  this  group  of  unsatisfied  or  dissatisfied 
people  singing  "  Count  your  many  blessings,"  fully  cli- 
mactic? 

Not  quietness  of  speech  or  action,  then,  but  appropri- 
ateness makes  any  of  these  approved  endings  climactic  and 
artistic. 

There  can  hardly  be  any  question  that  the  original  ending 
of  Still  Waters  Run  Deep  is  theatrical  in  the  sense  that  it  is 
climactic  only  by  the  dramatic  convention  of  its  time.  Ex- 
cept when  theatricality  is  intentionally  part  of  the  artistic 
design,  it  is,  of  course,  undesirable.  Rostand,  letting  the 
figures  in  The  Romancers  comment  on  their  own  play  as 
a  kind  of  epilogue,  has  a  really  artistic  though  theatrical 
climax. 

Sykette.  (Summoning  the  actors  abovt  her.)  And  now  we  five  — 
if  Master  Straforel  please  — 
Let  us  expound  the  play  in  which  we've  tried  to  please. 

(She  comes  down  stage  and  addresses  the  audience,  marking 
time  with  her  hand.) 
Light,  easy  rhymes;  old  dresses,  frail  and  light; 
Love  in  a  park,  fluting  an  ancient  tune.  (Soft  music.) 

Bergamin.  A  fairy-tale  quintet,  mad  as  Midsummer-night. 

Pasquin.  Some  quarrels.  Yes!  —  but  all  so  very  slight! 

Straforel.  Madness  of  sunstroke;  madness  of  the  moon! 
A  worthy  villain,  in  his  mantle  dight. 

Sylvette.  Light,  easy  rhymes;  old  dresses,  frail  and  light; 
Love  in  a  park,  fluting  an  ancient  tune. 

Percinet.  A  Watteau  picture  —  not  by  Watteau,  quite; 
Release  from  many  a  dreary  Northern  rune; 
Lovers  and  fathers;  old  walls,  flowery-bright; 
A  brave  old  plot  —  with  music  —  ending  soon. 

1  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston;  Sidgwick  &  Jackson,  Ltd.,  London. 


226  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Sylvette.  Light,  easy  rhymes;  old  dresses,  frail  and  light. 

(The  stage  gradually  darkens;  the  last  lines  are  delivered  in 
voices  that  grow  fainter  as  the  actors  appear  to  fade  away 
into  mist  and  darkness.) 

Curtain.1 

So  light  the  finale,  as  in  London,  that  the  figures  fade 
from  sight  till  only  their  voices  are  faintly  heard,  and  theat- 
ricality helps  to  place  the  play  as  a  mere  bit  of  fantasy.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  is  something  like  genuine  theatrical- 
ity at  the  end  of  Sudermann's  Fritzschen.  Fritz  is  going  to 
his  death  in  a  prospective  duel  with  a  man  who  is  an  unerr- 
ing shot.  Though  the  others  present  suspect  or  know  the 
truth,  his  mother  thinks  he  is  going  to  new  and  finer  fortunes. 
Isn't  the  following  the  real  climax? 

Fritz.  (Stretching  out  his  hand  to  her  cheerfully^)  Dear  Ag — 
(Looks  into  her  face,  and  understands  that  she  knows.  Softly,  ear- 
nestly.) Farewell,  then. 

Agnes.  Farewell,  Fritz! 

Fritz.  I  love  you. 

Agnes.  I  shall  always  love  you,  Fritz! 

Fritz.  Away,  then,  Hallerpfort!  Au  revoir,  papa!  Au  revoir! 
Revoir!  (Starts  for  the  door  on  the  right.) 

Fran  von  Drosse.  Go  by  the  park,  boys  —  there  I  have  you 
longer  in  sight. 

Fritz.  Very  well,  mamma,  we  will  do  it!  (Passes  with  Haller- 
pfort through  the  door  at  the  centre;  on  the  terrace,  he  turns  with  a  cheer- 
ful gesture,  and  calls  once  more.)  Au  Revoir!  (His  voice  is  still  au- 
dible.) Au  revoir! 

(Frau  von  Drosse  throws  kisses  after  him,  and  waves  her 
handkerchief  then  presses  her  hand  wearily  to  her  iieart 
and  sighs  heavily.) 2 

Because  the  history  of  the  theatre  shows  that  the  con- 
tained appeal  always  moves  an  audience,  Sudermann  adds 

1  The  Fantasticks,  Act  in.  Edmond  Rostand.  Translated  by  Geo.  Fleming.  R.  H.  Rus- 
■ell&Co,  New  York. 

»  Morituri,  Fritzschen,  Hennan-Sudermann.  Translated  by  Archibald  Alexander.  Copy- 
right, 1910,  by  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


ARRANGEMENT  227 

one  more  touch  of  misery  as  the  mother  dweUs  on  her  dream 
of  the  night  before: 

(Agnes  hurries  to  her,  and  leads  her  to  a  chair,  then  goes  over 

to  the  Major,  who,  with  heaving  breast,  is  lost  in  thought.) 

Frau  ron  Drosse.  Thank  you,  my  darling!  —  Already,  I  am  quite 

well  again!  .  .  .  God,  the  boy!  How  handsome  he  looked!  And  so 

brown  and  so  healthy.  .  . .  You  see,  I  saw  him  exactly  like  that 

list  night.  .  .  .  No,  that  is  no  illusion!  And  I  told  you  how  the 

ieror  led  him  in  among  all  the  generals!  And  the  Emperor 

—  {More  softly,  looking  far  away  with  a  beatific  smile.)  And 

the  Emperor  said  — 

Curtain.1 

Though  a  new  twist  is  given  our  emotions,  is  not  something 
lost  to  the  artistry  of  the  play? 

If  the  means  to  climax  be  various,  the  ways  in  which  it 
may  elude  a  writer  are  several.  If  an  audience  foresees  it, 
much  of  the  value  of  climax,  perhaps  all,  disappears.  Bulwer- 
Lytton,  in  writing  Money ,  recognized  this: 

And  principally  with  regard  to  Act  5  I  don't  feel  easy.  The  first 
idea  suggested  by  you  &  worked  on  by  me  was  of  course  to  carry 
on  Evelyn's  trick  to  the  last  —  &  bring  in  the  creditors  &c  when  it 
is  discovered  that  he  is  as  rich  as  ever.  I  so  made  Act  5  at  first. 
But  .  .  .  the  trick  was  so  palpable  to  the  audience  that  having  been 
carried  thro'  Acts  3  &  4,  it  became  stale  in  Act  5  —  &  the  final  dis- 
covery was  much  less  comic  than  you  w<?  suppose.2 

If  anticipating  a  climax  will  impair  it  for  an  audience,  re- 
petition may  kill  it.  In  the  civic  masque,  Caliban,3  as  per- 
formed, many  of  the  historical  scenes  were  introduced  in 
the  same  way:  Ariel  asked  his  master,  Prospero,  wThat  he 
should  show  him  next,  and  at  his  bidding  summoned  the 
episode.  No  variety  in  phrasing  could  surmount  the  monot- 
ony of  this.  There  was  consequent  loss  in  suspense  and 
climax. 

»  Idem. 

*  Letter*  qf  Bulvxr-Lytton  to  Macready,  Brooder  Matthews,  ed. 

»  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co.,  New  York. 


228  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

It  is  easy,  also,  to  miss  possible  climax  by  using  more  at  a 
given  point  than  is  absolutely  necessary.  Sometimes  it  is 
wiser  to  postpone  part  or  all  of  thoroughly  desirable  material 
for  later  treatment.  In  the  novel,  Les  Oberleyl  father  and 
daughter  sympathize  with  the  Germans,  mother  and  son 
with  the  old  French  tradition.  In  patriarchal  fashion,  the 
half-paralytic  grandfather,  as  head  of  the  house,  keeps  the 
keys.  When  a  young  German  officer,  favored  by  the  daugh- 
ter, asks  her  hand,  feeling  becomes  intense  and  strained 
between  the  parents  and  the  brother  and  the  sister.  Sud- 
denly the  old  paralytic  enters,  half-supported  by  his  at- 
tendant. Furious  to  think  of  his  granddaughter  as  the  wife 
of  a  German  he  cries,  with  a  superb  gesture  of  dismissal, 
"Clear  out!  This  is  my  house!"  (Vat' en!  Id  chez  moi!) 
The  dramatizer  saw  that  with  the  accompanying  action 
of  all  concerned,  especially  the  silent  going  of  the  German 
suitor,  "Ici  chez  moi"  made  a  sufficient  climax.  Therefore, 
with  a  touch  of  real  genius,  he  saved  the  "  Va  t'en"  for  a  cli- 
max to  a  totally  different  scene.  Later  in  the  play,  Jean, 
who  has  determined  to  escape  across  the  French  bound- 
ary rather  than  serve  longer  in  the  German  army,  has  been 
locked  in  his  room  by  his  outraged  father.  As  usual,  after 
the  house  has  been  locked  up  for  the  night,  the  keys  have 
been  handed  to  the  old,  half -paralytic  grandfather,  who  lies 
sleepless  in  a  room  near  Jean's.  Learning  from  Uncle  Ulrich 
what  has  occurred,  the  grandfather  totters  into  the  living- 
room  with  his  keys.  Unlocking  Jean's  door,  with  a  fine  ges- 
ture of  affection,  and  command  toward  the  outer  door,  he 
cries  to  Jean,  "Va."  Here  the  dramatist  gets  two  fine  cli- 
maxes where  the  novelist  gained  but  one. 

Sometimes  a  very  effective  climax  at  a  given  point  should 
be  postponed  because  it  will  be  even  more  effective  later, 

1  Les  OberlS.  Ren6  Bazin.   Dramatized  by  E.  Haraucourt.   L'Dlustration  The&trale,  De» 
cenaber  9,  1905,  p.  14. 


ARRANGEMENT  229 

aril  if  given  the  first  position  would  check  preferable  move- 
ment in  the  play.  At  the  end  of  Act  IV  of  Magda  (Heimat) 
\)\-  Sudermann,  we  seem  all  ready  for  a  scene  in  which  Magda 
confesses  the  truth  about  her  past  life  to  her  father. 

Schwartze.  Magda,  —  I  want  Magda. 

Marie.  (Goes  to  the  door  and  opens  it.)  She's  coming  now, — 
down  the  stairs. 
'  irartze.  So!     (Pulls  himself  together  with  an  effort.) 
Marie.   (Clasping  her  hands.)  Don't  hurt  her! 

(Pauses  with  the  door  open.   Magda  is  seen  descending  the 
stairs.    She  enters  in  travelling  dress,  hat  in  hand,  very 
pale  but  calm.) 
Magda.  I  heard  you  call,  father. 
Schwartze.  I  have  something  to  say  to  you. 
Magda.  And  I  to  you. 
Schwartze.  Go  in,  —  into  my  room. 
Magda.  Yes,  father. 

(She  goes  to  the  door  left.  Schwartze  follows  her.  Marie, 
who  has  drawn  back  frightened  to  the  dining-room,  makes 
an  unseen  gesture  of  entreaty.) l 

Now,  any  interview  between  Magda  and  her  father  will 
both  unduly  lengthen  an  act  already  long  and  bring  the 
play  well  into  its  final  climax.  Stopping  the  act  here  creates 
superb  suspense.  Starting  a  new  act  under  slightly  differ- 
ent conditions  keeps  all  the  suspense  created  by  Act  IV 
and  intensifies  it  by  new  details.  The  new  act  gives  us  the 
chance  easily  to  introduce  von  Keller,  who  is  needed  if  the 
play  is  to  be  more  than  another  treatment  of  the  erring 
daughter  confessing  her  sin  to  her  father.  Just  through  him 
comes  emphasis  which  gives  special  meaning  to  the  play. 
Therefore,  we  gain  by  postponing  the  full  confession  from 
the  end  of  Act  IV  till  well  toward  the  end  of  Act  V. 

Evidently,  climax  rests  on  (a)  right  feeling  for  order  in 
presenting  ideas ;  (6)  a  correct  sense  of  what  is  weaker  and  what 
is  stronger  in  phrasing  emotions;  and  (c)  just  appreciation  of 

1  Magda.  Translated  by  C.  E.  A.  Winslow.  Lamson,  Wolffe  &  Co.,  Boston. 


230 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


the  feeling  of  the  audience  toward  the  emotions  presented. 
For  both  clearness  and  climax  it  is  usually  a  wise  rule  to  con- 
sider but  one  idea  at  a  time.  In  the  following  illustration, 
column  1  shows  confusion,  because  three  subjects  —  the  fan, 
the  greeting,  and  the  compliment  of  Lady  Windermere  — 
are  started  at  the  same  time.  In  column  2,  quoted  from 
Miss  Anglin's  acting  version  of  Lady  Windermere' 's  Fan, 
treating  each  of  these  subjects  in  its  natural  sequence  brings 
both  clearness  and  climax. 


Parker.  Mrs.  Erlynne. 

{Lord    Windermere    starts. 
Mrs.  Erlynne  enters,  very 
beautifully    dressed    and 
very  dignified.  Lady  Win- 
dermere   clutches   at   her 
fan,  then  lets  it  drop  on  the 
floor.    She  bows  coldly  to 
Mrs.  Erlynne,  who  bows 
to  her  sweetly  in  turn,  and 
sails  into  the  room.) 
Lord   Darlington.  You   have 
dropped  your  fan,  Lady  Win- 
dermere. 

(Picks  it  up  and  hands  it  to 

her.) 

Mrs.  Erlynne.  (C.)  How  do 

you  do  again,  Lord  Windermere? 

How  charming  your  sweet  wife 

looks!  Quite  a  picture! 

Lord  Windermere.  (In  a  low 
voice.)  It  was  terribly  rash  of 
you  to  come! 

Mrs.  Erlynne.  (Smiling.)  The 
wisest  thing  I  ever  did  in  my 
life.  And,  by  the  way,  you  must 
pay  me  a  good  deal  of  attention 
this  evening. 


Parker.  Mrs.  Erlynne. 

(Lord    Windermere    starts. 
Mrs.  Erlynne  enters,  very 
beautifully    dressed,    and 
very  dignified.  Lady  Win- 
dermere   clutches   at   her 
fan,  then  lets  it  drop  on  the 
floor.    She  bows  coldly  to 
Mrs.  Erlynne,  who  bows 
to   her   sweetly   in  turn, 
and  sails  into  the  room.) 
Mrs.  Erlynne.  (C.)  How  do 
you   do   again,   Lord   Winder- 
mere? 

Lord  Darlington.  You  have 
dropped  your  fan,  Lady  Win- 
dermere. 

(Picks  it  up,  and  hands  it  to 
her.) 
Lord  Windermere.  (In  a  low 
voice.)  It  was  terribly  rash  of 
you  to  come! 

Mrs.  Erlynne.  (Smiling.)  The 
wisest  thing  I  ever  did  in  my  life. 
How  charming  your  sweet  wife 
looks!  Quite  a  picture !  And,  by 
the  way,  you  must  pay  me  a  good 
deal  of  attention  this  evening.1 


1  Lady  Windermere's  Fan,  Act  n.  Oscar  Wilde.  Acting  version  as  arranged  by  Miss  Mar- 
garet Anglin. 


ARRANGEMENT 


22>l 


In  the  next  extract,  note  that  omission  of  "I  want  to 
live  childless  still"  and  shifting  the  position  of  the  words 
r  t wenty  years,  as  you  say,  I  have  lived  childless"  per- 
mit an  actress  to  work  up  to  the  strongest  climax  of  the 
ech,  when  spoken,  "They  made  me  suffer  too  much." 
Miss  Anglin,  trained  by  years  of  experience  to  great  sensi- 
tiveness to  the  emotional  values  of  words,  has  here  arranged 
the  sentences  better  than  the  author  himself. 


Windermere.  What  do 
you  mean  by  coming  here  this 
morning?  What  is  your  object? 
(Crossing  L.  C.  and  sitting.) 
Iff*.  Erlynne.  (With  a  note  of 
irony  in  her  voice.)  To  bid  good- 
bye to  my  dear  daughter,  of 
course.  (Lord  Windermere  bites 
his  underlip  in  anger.  Mrs.  Er- 
lynne looks  at  him,  and  her  voice 
and  manner  become  serious.  In 
her  accents  as  she  talks  there  is  a 
note  of  deep  tragedy.  For  a  mo- 
ment she  reveals  herself.)  Oh, 
don't  imagine  I  am  going  to  have 
a  pathetic  scene  with  her,  weep 
on  her  neck  and  tell  her  who  I 
am,  and  all  that  kind  of  thing. 
I  have  no  ambition  to  play  the 
part  of  mother.  Only  once  in  my 
life  have  I  known  a  mother's 
feelings.  That  was  last  night. 
They  were  terrible  —  they  made 
me  suffer  —  they  made  me  suffer 
too  much.  For  twenty  years, 
as  you  say,  I  have  lived  child- 
less —  I  want  to  live  childless 
still. 


Lord    Windermere.  What   do 

you  mean  by  coming  here  this 

morning?  What  is  your  object? 

(Crossing  L.  C.  and  sitting.) 

Mrs.  Erlynne.  (With  a  note  of 
irony  in  her  voice.)  To  bid  good- 
bye to  my  dear  daughter,  of 
course.  (Lord  Windermere  bites 
his  underlip  in  anger.  Mrs.  Er- 
lynne looks  at  him,  and  her  voice 
and  manner  become  serious.  In 
her  accents  as  she  talks  there  is  a 
note  of  deep  tragedy.  For  a  mo- 
ment she  reveals  herself.)  Oh, 
don't  imagine  I  am  going  to 
have  a  pathetic  scene  with  her, 
weep  on  her  neck  and  tell  her 
who  I  am,  and  all  that  kind  of 
thing.  I  have  no  ambition  to 
play  the  part  of  mother.  For 
twenty  years,  as  you  say,  I  have 
lived  childless.  Only  once  in  my 
life  have  I  known  a  mother's 
feelings.  That  was  last  night. 
They  were  terrible  —  they  made 
me  suffer  —  they  made  me  suffer 
too  much.1 


Idem,  Act  iv.  Acting  version  as  arranged  by  Miss  Margaret  Anglin. 


232  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

When  an  eighteenth-century  manager,  in  his  production  of 
The  School  for  Scandal,  had  colored  fire  set  off  in  the  wings 
as  the  falling  screen  revealed  Lady  Teazle,  he  failed  of  his  in- 
tended effect  because  he  thought  that  for  his  audience  the 
falling  of  the  screen  was  climactic.  Really,  of  course,  the  en- 
joyment of  the  audience,  as  it  listens  to  the  dialogue,  know- 
ing that  Lady  Teazle  overhears,  is  the  chief  source  of  pleas- 
ure. It  is  the  dismay  of  Sir  Peter,  when  he  sees  who  is  really 
behind  the  screen,  which  makes  the  climax.  That  dismay  is 
not  greater  against  a  background  of  red  fire.  Crowded  with 
action  as  the  end  of  Hamlet  is,  we  close  it  in  acting,  not  on 
the  fatal  wounding  of  Hamlet,  but  either  on  his  words,  "  The 
rest  is  silence/ '  or  as  the  soldiers  of  Fortinbras  march  out 
with  Hamlet's  body  on  their  shields.  Experience  has  proved 
that  a  stronger  climax  for  an  audience  lies  in  those  words  or 
in  seeing  the  procession  which  passes  among  the  kneeling 
courtiers,  stronger  than  from  all  the  noisy  emotions  which 
have  just  preceded.  In  brief,  except  when  we  feel  sure  that 
we  have  made  our  feeling  as  to  the  emotions  of  a  scene  or  act 
the  public's,  it  is  they  who  must  determine  where  the  climax 
lies.  Where  it  rests  we  must  in  all  cases  of  doubt  decide  from 
our  past  experience  of  the  public  and  present  observation  of  it. 

From  all  these  illustrations  it  must  be  clear  that  the  only 
rule  for  finding  climax  is :  Understand  clearly  the  audience 
for  which  you  intend  your  play;  create  in  it  the  sympathetic 
relation  toward  your  characters  you  wish;  then  you  may  be 
sure  that  what  seems  to  you  a  climax  for  your  scene  will  be 
so  for  your  audience. 

Movement  depends,  then,  on  clearness,  unity,  emphasis, 
and  a  right  feeling  for  suspense  and  climax.  This  movement 
may  be  steadily  upward,  as  in  the  last  scene  of  Hamlet,  or 
it  may  have  the  wave-like  advance  found  in  Sigurjonsson's 
Eyvind  of  the  Hills  1  or  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  The  Gay  Lord 

1  Eyvind  of  the  Hills,  J.  Sigurjonsson.  American  Scandinavian  Society,  New  York. 


ARRANGEMENT  233 

Quer.  The  emotional  interest  in  each  of  these  sweeps  up  to 
a  pure  climax,  drops  back  part  way  for  a  fresh  start,  and 
then  advances  to  a  stronger  climax. 

Granted  that  a  would-be  playwright  understands  the  pro- 
portioning of  his  work  and  the  correct  development  of  it  for 
rness,  emphasis  and  movement,  he  is  ready  to  repeat  the 
words  of  Ibsen:  "I  have  just  completed  a  play  in  five  acts, 
that  is  to  say,  the  rough  draft  of  it.  Now  comes  the  elabora- 
tion, the  more  energetic  individualization  of  the  persons,  and 
their  modes  of  expression.** l  He  is  ready  to  perfect  his  char- 
acterization and  dialogue. 

»  From  Ibten'i  Worhhop,  p.  8.  Copyright,  1911,  by  Chaa.  Scriboer's  Sons,  N«w  York. 


V 


CHAPTER  VII 

CHARACTERIZATION 

In  drama,  undoubtedly  the  strongest  immediate  appeal  to 
the  general  public  is  action.  Yet  if  a  dramatist  is  to  commu- 
nicate with  his  audience  as  he  wishes,  command  of  dialogue 
is  indispensable.    The  permanent  value  of  a  play,  however, 
rests  on  its  characterization.  Characterization  focuses  atten- 
tion.   It  is  the  chief  means  of  creating  in  an  audience  sym- 
pathy for  the  subject  or  the  people  of  the  play.   "A  Lord," 
"A  Page,"  in  a  pre-Shakespearean  play  usually  was  merely 
a  speaker  of  lines  and  little,  if  at  all,  characterized.    When 
Robert  Greene  or  his  contemporaries  adapted  such  sources 
for  their  stage,  with  sure  instinct  for  creating  a  greater  inter- 
est in  their  public,  they  changed  these  prefixes  to  "Eustace," 
"Jacques,"  "Nano,"  etc.    Merely  changing  the  name  from 
type  to  individual  called  for  individualization  of  character 
and  usually  brought  it.  Indeed,  in  drama,  individualization 
is  always  the  sign  of  developing  art.  In  any  country,  the  his- 
tory of  modern  drama  is  a  passing,  under  the  influence  of  the 
audience,  from  abstractions  and  personifications,  through 
type,  to  individualized  character.   In  the  Trope,  cited  p.  17, 
one  Mary  cannot  be  distinguished  from  another.   In  a  later 
form  it  is  not  a  particular  unguent   seller  who  meets  the 
Maries  on  the  way  to  the  tomb,  but  a  type,  —  Unguent  Seller. 
JVhen  a  writer  of  a  Miracle  Play  first  departed  a  little  from 
the  exact  actions  and  dialogue  of  the  Bible,  it  was  to  add 
.  abstractions  —  Justice,  Virtue,   etc.  —  or   types :    soldiers, 
shepherds,  etc.  From  these  he  moved  quickly  or  slowly,  as  he 
was  more  or  less  endowed  dramatically,  to  figures  individual- 
ized from  types,  such  as  the  well-characterized  shepherds  of 


( 


CHARACTERIZATION  235 

the  Second  Towneley  Play.  The  Morality  illustrates  this  same 
evolution  even  more  clearly.  Beginning  with  the  pure  abstrac- 
tions of  Mundtu  ct  Infans  or  Mankind  it  passes  through  type 
characterization  in  Lusty  Juventus  or  Hyckescorner  to  as 
well  individualized  figures  as  Delilah  and  Ishmael  in  The 
Wanton.1  Abstractions  permit  an  author  to  say  what  he 
pleases  with  the  least  possible  thought  for  characterization. 
type  presents  characteristics  so  marked  that  even  the  un- 
observant cannot  have  failed  to  discern  them  in  their  fellow 
men.  Individualization  differentiates  within  the  types,  run- 
ning from  broad  distinctions  to  presentation  of  very  subtle 
differences.  Because  individualization  moves  from  the  known 
to  the  less  known  or  the  unknown,  it  is  harder  for  an  audi- 
ence to  follow  than  type  characterization,  and  far  more 
difficult  to  write.  However,  he  who  cannot  individualize 
character  must  keep  to  the  broader  kinds  of  melodrama 
and  farce,  and  above  all  to  that  last  asylum  of  time-honored 
types  —  musical  comedy. 

Fundamentally,  type  characterization  rests  on  a  false  prem- 
ise, namely,  that  every  human  being  may  be  adequately 
represented  by  some  dominant  characteristic  or  small  group 
of  closely  related  characteristics.  All  the  better  recent  drama 
emphasizes  the  comic  or  tragic  conflict  in  human  beings 
caused  by  many  contradictory  impulses  and  ideas,  some 
mutually  exclusive,  some  negativing  others  to  a  considerable 
extent,  some  apparently  dormant  for  a  time,  yet  ready 
to  spring  into  great  activity  at  unforeseen  moments.  Ben 
Jonson  carried  the  false  idea  to  an  extreme  when  he  wrote 
of  his  " humour "  comedies: 

In  every  human  body, 
The  choler,  melancholy,  phlegm,  and  blood, 
By  reason  that  they  flow  continually 

1  For  all  of  these  except  Hyrketcorner  see  Specimen*  qf  Pre-Shakerpearean  Drama.  J.  M. 
Manly,  i  vols.  Ginn  &  Co.,  Boston.  For  Hyrkescorner  see  The  Origin  qf  the  English  Drama. 
Vol.  1.    T.  Hawkins,  ed.   Clarendon  Press,  Oxford. 


236  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

In  some  one  part  and  are  not  continent, 
Receive  the  name  of  humours.  Now  thus  far 
It  may,  by  metaphor,  apply  itself 
Unto  the  general  disposition: 
As  when  some  one  peculiar  quality 
Doth  so  possess  a  man  that  it  doth  draw 
All  his  affects,  his  spirits  and  his  powers, 
In  his  confluctions,  all  to  run  one  way, 
This  may  be  truly  said  to  be  a  humour.1 

Were  Ben  Jonson's  physiology  sound,  we  should  have,  not 
occasional  cranks  and  neurotics  as  now,  but  a  race  of  nothing 
else.  Today  modern  medical  science  has  proved  the  bad 
physiology  of  his  words,  and  dramatists  have  followed  its 
lead. 

What  gave  the  type  drama  its  great  hold,  in  the  Latin 
comedy  of  Plautus  and  Terence,  in  Ben  Jonson  and  other 
Elizabethans,  what  keeps  it  alive  today  in  the  less  artistic 
forms  —  broad  farce,  pure  melodrama  —  is  fourfold.  Type 
characterization,  exhibiting  a  figure  wholly  in  one  aspect, 
or  through  a  small  group  of  closely  related  characteristics, 
is  easy  to  understand.  Secondly,  it  is  both  easy  to  create, 
and,  as  Ben  Jonson's  great  following  between  1605  and 
1750  proves,  even  easier  to  imitate.  Thirdly,  farce  and 
melodrama,  indeed  all  drama  depending  predominantly  on 
mere  situation,  may  succeed,  though  lacking  individualiza- 
tion of  character,  with  any  audience  which,  like  the  Roman 
or  the  Elizabethan,  gladly  hears  the  same  stories  or  sees 
the  same  figures  handled  differently  by  different  writers. 
Much  in  the  plays  of  Reade,  Tom  Taylor,  and  Bulwer- 
Lytton  2  which  passed,  in  the  mid-nineteenth  century,  for 
real  life,  depending  as  it  did  on  a  characterization  which 
barely  rose  above  type,  was  only  thinly  disguised  melo- 
drama.   The  recent  increasing  response  of  the  public  to 

1  Indtidion,  Every  Man  in  His  Hum.our.  Mermaid  Series  or  Everyman's  Library. 

2  See  Two  Loves  and  a  Life,  The  Ticket  of  Leave  Man,  The  Lady  of  Lyons.   All  published 
by  Samuel  French,  New  York. 


CHARACTERIZATION  237 

vi  characterization  in  both  farce  and  melodrama  has 
tended  to  lift  the  former  into  comedy,  the  latter  into  story- 
play  and  tragedy.  Just  here  appears  a  fourth  reason  for  the 
popularity  of  characterization  by  types.  Though  entertain- 
ing plays  may  be  presented  successfully  with  type  character- 
ization only,  no  dramatist  with  inborn  or  acquired  ability 
to  characterize,  can  hold  consistently  to  types.  Observa- 
tion, interpretative  insight,  or  a  flash  of  sympathy  will  ad- 
vance him  now  and  again,  as  Jonson  was  advanced  more 
than  once,  to  real  individualization  of  character.  Contrast 
the  thoroughly  real  Subtle,  Face,  and  Doll  of  The  Alchemist1 
with  the  types,  Ananias  and  Sir  Epicure  Mammon;  con- 
trast the  masterly,  if  very  brief,  characterization  of  Ursula 
in  Bartholomew  Fair2  with  the  mere  type  of  Zeal-of-t he-Land 
Busy.  An  uncritical  audience  responding  to  the  best 
characterization  in  a  play,  overlooks  the  merely  typical 
quality  of  the  other  figures.  That  is,  the  long  vogue  of  types 
upon  the  stage  rests  upon  ease  of  comprehension,  entire 
adequacy  for  some  crude  dramatic  forms,  ease  of  imitation, 
and  a  constant  tendency  in  a  dramatist  of  ability  to  rise 
to  higher  levels  of  characterization.  Now  that  we  are  more 
and  more  dissatisfied  with  types  in  plays  making  any  claim 
to  realism,  the  keen  distinction  first  laid  down  by  Mr. 
William  Archer  in  his  Play-Making  becomes  essential.  If 
type  presents  a  single  characteristic  or  group  of  intimately 
related  characteristics,  "character  drawing  is  the  present- 
ment of  human  nature  in  its  commonly  recognized,  under- 
stood, and  accepted  aspects;  psychology  is,  as  it  were,  the 
exploration  of  character,  the  bringing  of  hitherto  unsur- 
veyed  tracts  within  the  circle  of  our  knowledge  and  com- 
prehension."3 Mr.  Galsworthy  in  The  Silver  Box  and  Justice 

1  Belles-Lettres  Series.  F.  E.  ScheUing,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.;  Mermaid  Series,  vol.  m, 
or  Everyman's  Library. 

8  Mrrtnaiil  Bam*,  vol.  it.  Cha-i.  Soribncr's  Sons,  New  York. 
•  Play-Making,  pp.  376,  378.  Sniafl.  Mayoard  &  Co.,  Boston. 


238  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Mr.  Archer  regards  as  a  drawer  of  character;  in  Strife 1  as 
a  psychologist.  He  holds  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  a  character- 
izer  of  great  versatility  who  becomes  a  psychologist  in  some 
of  his  studies  of  feminine  types  —  in  Iris,  in  Letty,  in  the 
heroine  of  Mid-Channel.2  By  this  distinction,  most  good 
drama  shows  character  drawing;  only  the  great  work, 
psychology. 

Drama  which  does  not  rise  above  interest  in  its  action 
rests,  as  has  been  said,  on  the  idea  that  most  people  are 
simple,  uncomplicated,  and  easy  to  understand.  Great 
drama  depends  on  a  firm  grasp  and  sure  presentation  of 
complicated  character,  but  of  course  a  dramatist  has  a  per- 
fect right  to  say  that,  though  he  knows  his  hero  —  Cyrano 
de  Bergerac,  for  instance  —  may  have  had  many  character- 
istics, it  is  enough  for  the  purpose  of  his  play  to  represent 
the  vanity,  the  audacity,  and  the  underlying  tenderness  of 
the  man.  It  is  undeniable,  too,  that  particular  characteris- 
tics of  ours  may  be  so  strong  that  other  characteristics  will 
not  prevent  them  from  taking  us  into  sufficient  dramatic 
complications  to  make  a  good  play.  In  such  a  case,  the 
dramatist  who  is  not  primarily  writing  for  characterization 
will  present  the  characteristics  creating  his  desired  situations, 
and  let  all  others  go.  Conversely,  he  who  cares  most  for 
characterization  will  try  so  to  present  even  minor  qualities 
that  the  perfect  portrait  of  an  individual  will  be  recognized. 
Often,  however,  the  happenings  of  a  play  may  seem  to  an 
'  audience  incompatible,  that  is,  the  character  in  one  place 
may  seem  to  contradict  himself  as  presented  elsewhere. 
Just  here  is  where  the  psychologist  in  the  dramatist,  step- 
ping to  the  front,  must  convince  his  audience  that  there  is 
only  a  seeming  contradiction.  Otherwise,  the  play  falls 
promptly  to  the  level  of  simple  melodrama  or  farce.   That 

1  Plays.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 

2  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston;  W.  Heinemann,  London. 


CHARACTERIZATION  239 

Is,  the  character-drawer  paints  his  portrait,  knowing  that, 

if  it  is  well  done,  its  life-likeness  will  at  once  be  recognized. 

psychologist,  knowing  that  the  life-likeness  will  not  be 

lily  admitted,  by  illustrative  action  throws  light  on  his 

character  till  his  point  is  won.   Our  final  judgment  of  char- 

rization  must  depend  on  whether  the  author  is  obviously 

trying  to  present  a  completely  rounded  figure  or  only  chosen 

•  cts. 

Thus  the  old  statement,  "Know  thyself,"  becomes  for  the 
dramatist  "Know  your  characters  as  intimately  as  possi- 
ble." Too  many  beginners  in  play- writing  who  care  more  for 
situation  than  for  character,  sketch  in  a  figure  with  the  idea 
that  they  may  safely  leave  it  to  the  actor  to  "fill  out  the 
part."  When  brought  to  book  they  say:  "I  felt  sure  the 
actor  in  his  larger  experience,  catching  my  idea  —  you  do 
think  it  was  clearly  stated,  don't  you?  —  would  fill  it  out 
perfectly,  and  be  glad  of  the  freedom."  Were  modesty  the 
real  basis  for  this  kind  of  work,  there  might  be  good  in  it; 
but  what  really  lies  behind  it  are  two  great  foes  of  good 
dramatic  writing:  haste  or  incompetence.  The  interest  and 
the  delight  of  a  dramatist  in  studying  people  should  he  in 
accurate  conveying  to  others  of  their  contradictions,  their 
deterioration  or  growth  as  time  passes,  the  outcropping  of 
characteristics  in  them  for  which  our  observation  has  not 
prepared  us.  Nobody  who  really  cares  for  characterization 
wants  somebody  else  to  do  it  for  him.  Nobody  who  has 
really  entered  into  his  characters  thoroughly  wTill  for  a 
moment  be  satisfied  to  sketch  broad  outlines  and  let  the 
actor  fill  in  details.  Rarely,  however,  does  the  self-deceived 
author  of  such  slovenly  work  deceive  his  audience.  It  meets 
at  their  hands  the  condemnation  it  deserves.  Such  an 
author  assumes  that  in  all  the  parts  of  his  play,  actors  of 
marked  ability  and  keen  intelligence  will  be  cast.  Only  in 
the  rarest  cases  does  that  happen.    Many  actors  may  not 


240  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

see  the  full  significance  of  the  outlines.  Others,  whether 
they  see  them  or  not,  will  develop  a  character  so  as  to  get 
as  swiftly  as  possible  effects  not  intended  by  the  author  but 
for  which  they,  as  actors,  are  specially  famous.  Such  a 
playwright  must,  then,  contend,  except  in  specially  fortu- 
nate circumstances,  against  possible  dullness,  indifference, 
and  distortion.  It  is  the  merest  common  sense  so  to  present 
characters  that  a  cast  of  average  ability,  or  a  stage  manager 
of  no  extraordinary  imagination  may  understand  and  repre- 
sent them  with  at  least  approximate  correctness,  rather 
than  so  to  write  that  only  a  group  of  creative  artists  can  do 
any  justice  to  the  play.  Clear  and  definitive  characteriza- 
tion never  hampers  the  best  actors:  for  actors  not  the  best 
it  is  absolutely  necessary  unless  intended  values  are  to  be 
blurred. 

It  frequently  happens  that  a  writer  whose  dialogue  is 
good  and  who  has  enough  dramatic  situations  finds  himself 
unable  to  push  ahead.  He  knows  broadly  what  he  wants  a 
scene  to  be,  but  somehow  cannot  make  his  characters  move 
freely  and  naturally  in  it.  Above  all,  the  minor  transitional 
scenes  prove  strangely  difficult  to  write.  Of  course  a  scene 
or  act  may  be  thus  clogged  because  the  writer  is  mentally 
fagged.  If,  when  a  writer  certainly  is  not  tired,  or  when, 
after  rest,  he  cannot  with  two  or  three  sustained  attempts 
develop  a  scene,  the  difficulty  is  not  far  to  seek.  In  real 
life  do  we  surely  find  out  about  people  at  our  first,  sec- 
ond, or  even  third  meeting?  Only  if  the  people  are  of  the  sim- 
plest and  most  self -revelatory  kind.  The  difficulty  in  these 
clogged  scenes  usually  is  that  the  author  is  treating  the 
situation  as  if  it  were  not  the  creation  of  the  people  in  it,  and 
as  if  a  skilful  writer  could  force  any  group  of  people  into  any 
situation.  As  Mr.  Galsworthy  has  pointed  out,  "  character 
is  situation."  *  The  latter  exists  because  some  one  is  what  he 

»  Some  Platitudes  Concerning  Drama,  Atlantic  Monthly,  December,  1909. 


CHARACTERIZATION 


241 


is  and  so  has  inner  conflict,  or  clashes  with  another  person, 
or  with  his  environment.  Change  his  character  a  little  and  f- 

it nation  must  change.  Involve  more  people  in  it,  and 
Immediately  their  very  presence,  affecting  the  people) 
originally  in  the  scene,  will  change  the  situation.  In  the 
loft  hand  column  of  what  follows,  the  Queen,  though  she 
has  one  speech,  in  no  way  affects  the  scene:  the  situation 
is  treated  for  itself,  and  barely.  In  the  right-hand  column, 
the  Queen  becomes  an  individual  whose  presence  affects 
the  speeches  of  the  King  and  Hamlet.  Because  she  is  what 
she  is,  Hamlet  addresses  to  her  some  of  the  lines  which  in 
the  first  version  he  spoke  to  the  King:  result,  a  scene  far 
more  effective  emotionally. 


King.  And  now  princely 
Sonne  Hamlet, 

What  meanes  these  sad  and 
melancholy  moodes? 

For  your  intent  going  to  Wit- 
tenberg, 

Wee  hold  it  most  unmeet  and 
unconvenient, 

Being  the  Joy  and  halfe  heart 

of  your  mother. 
Therefore  let  mee  intreat  you 

stay  in  Court, 
All  Denmarkes  hope  our  coosin 

and  dearest  Soone 


King.  But    now    my    Cosin 

Hamlet,  and  my  sonne. 
Ham.  A  little  more  than  kin, 

and  lesse  then  kind. 
King.  How    is    it    that    the 

clowdes  still  hang  on  you. 
Ham.  Not  so  much  my  Lord, 
I    am    too   much    in    the 
sonne. 
Queene.  Good    Hamlet    cast 
thy  nighted  colour  off 
And  let  thine  eye  looke  like  a 

friend  on  Denmarke, 
Doe  not  forever  with  thy  vailed 

lids 
Seeke  for  thy  noble  Father  in 

the  dust, 
Thou  know'st  'tis  common  all 

that  lives  must  die, 
Passing  through  nature  to  eter- 
nitie. 
Ham.  I  Maddam,  it  is  com- 
mon. 
Quee.  If  it  be 


242 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


Earn.  My  lord,  'tis  not  the 

sable  sute  I  weare : 
No  nor  the  teares  that  still  stand 

in  my  eyes, 
Nor  the  distracted  haviour  in 

the  visage, 
Nor  all  together  mixt  with  out- 
ward semblance, 
Is  equall  to  the  sorrow  of  my 

heart, 
Him  have  I  lost  I  must  of  force 

forgoe, 
These  but  the  ornaments  and 

sutes  of  woe. 


King.  This  shewes  a  loving 

care  in  you,  Sonne  Hamlet, 
But  you  must  thinke  your  father 

lost  a  father, 
That  father  dead,  lost  his,  and 

so  shalbe  untill  the 
Generall    ending.        Therefore 

cease  laments, 
It  is  a  fault  gainst  heaven,  fault 

gainst  the  dead, 
A  fault  gainst  nature,  and  in 

reasons 
Common  course  most  certaine, 
None  lives  on  earth,  but  hee  is 

borne  to  die. 


Why   seemes   it   so   perticuler 

with  thee. 
Ham.  Seemes  Maddam,  nay 

it  is,  I  know  not  seemes, 
Tis  not  alone  my  incky  cloake 

coold  mother 
Nor  customary  suites  of  solembe 

blacke 
Nor  windie  suspiration  of  forst 

breath 
No,  nor  the  fruitf ull  river  in  the 

eye, 
Nor  the  dejected  havior  of  the 

visage 
Together     with     all     formes, 

moodes,  chapes  of  griefe 
That   can   denote   me   truely, 

these  indeede  seeme, 
For  they  are  actions  that  a  man 

might  play 
But  I  have  that  within  which 

passes  showe 
These  but  the  trappings  and  the 

suites  of  woe. 
King.  Tis  sweete  and  com- 
mendable  in  your  nature 

Hamlet, 
To  give  these  mourning  duties 

to  your  father 
But  you  must  knowe  your  fa- 
ther lost  a  father, 
That  father  lost,  lost  his,  and 

the  surviver  bound 
In  filliall  obligation  for  some 

tearme 
To  do  obsequious  sorrowe,  but 

to  persever 
In  obstinate  condolement,  is  a 

course 
Of  impious  stubbornes  .  .  .  etc* 


CHARACTERIZATION  243 

Que.  Let  not  thy  mother  loose  Quce.  Let    not    thy    mother 

her  praiera  Hamlet,  loose  her  prayers  Hamlet, 

Stay  here  with  us,  go  not  to  I  pray  thee  stay  with  us,  goe 

Wittenberg.  not  to  Wittenberg. 

Hum.  I  shall  in  all  my  best  Ham.  I  shall  in  all  my  best 

obay  you  madam.  obay  you  Madam.1 

Inexperienced   dramatists  too  often  forget  that  a  char- 
acter who  is  simply  one  of  several  in  a  scene  may  not  act  as 
v  he  would  alone. 

Mr.  Macready's  Bentevole  is  very  fine  in  its  kind.  It  is  natu- 
ral, easy,  and  forcible.  Indeed,  we  suspect  some  parts  of  it  were 
too  natural,  that  is,  that  Mr.  Macready  thought  too  much  of  what 
his  feelings  might  dictate  in  such  circumstances,  rather  than  of 
what  the  circumstances  must  have  dictated  to  him  to  do.  We  allude 
particularly  to  the  half  significant,  half  hysterical  laugh  and  dis- 
torted jocular  leer,  with  his  eyes  towards  the  persons  accusing  him 
of  the  murder,  when  the  evidence  of  his  guilt  comes  out.  Either  the 
author  did  not  intend  him  to  behave  in  this  manner,  or  he  must 
have  made  the  other  parties  on  the  stage  interrupt  him  as  a  self- 
convicted  criminal.  * 

Stevenson  clearly  recognized  this  truth: 

I  have  had  a  heavy  case  of  conscience  of  the  same  kind  about  my 
Braxfield  story.  Braxfield  —  only  his  name  is  Hermiston  —  has  a 
son  who  is  condemned  to  death;  plainly  there  is  a  fine  tempting 
fitness  about  this;  and  I  meant  he  was  to  hang.  But  now,  on  con- 
sidering my  minor  characters,  I  saw  there  were  five  people  who 
would  —  in  a  sense  who  must  —  break  prison  and  attempt  his 
rescue.  They  are  capable,  hardy  folks,  too,  who  might  very  well 
succeed.  Why  should  they  not,  then?  Why  should  not  young 
Hermiston  escape  clear  out  of  the  country?  and  be  happy  if  he 
could  with  his  —  But  soft !  I  will  betray  my  secret  or  my  heroine.3 

When  a  scene  clogs,  don't  hold  the  pen  waiting  for  the 
impulse  to  write :  don't  try  to  write  at  all.  Study  the  situa- 
tion, not  for  itself,  but  for  the  people  in  it.  "The  Dramatist 
who  depends  his  characters  to  his  plot,"  says  Mr.  Gals- 

1  The  Devonshire  HamleU,  Act  I,  pp.  9-10. 

'  Dramatic  Essays.    William  Hazlitt. 

»  The  Stage  in  America,  pp.  81-84.  N.  Hapgood.  The  Maemillan  Co. 


244  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

worthy,  "instead  of  his  plot  to  his  characters,  ought  him- 
self to  be  depended."  l  If  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the 
characters  in  the  particular  situation  does  not  bring  a  solu- 
tion, study  them  as  the  scene  relates  itself  to  what  must 
precede  in  characterization.  More  than  once  a  dramatist 
has  found  that  he  could  not  compose  some  scene  satisfacto- 
rily till  he  had  written  carefully  the  previous  history  of  the 
important  character  or  characters.  The  detailed  knowledge 
thus  gained  revealed  whether  or  not  the  characters  could 
enter  the  desired  situation,  and  if  so,  how.  Pailleron,  author 
of  Le  Monde  oil  Von  s'ennuie  declared  that,  in  his  early 
drafts,  he  always  had  three  or  four  times  the  material  in 
regard  to  his  dramatis  persona?  ultimately  used  by  him. 

Intimate  knowledge  of  his  characters  is  the  only  safe 
foundation  for  the  ambitious  playwright.  It  is  well-nigh  use- 
less to  ask  managers  and  actors  to  pass  finally  on  a  mere 
statement  of  a  situation  or  group  of  situations,  without 
characterization.  All  they  can  say  is:  "Bring  me  this  again 
as  an  amplified  scenario,  or  a  play,  which  shows  me  to 
what  extent  the  people  you  have  in  mind  give  freshness  of 
interest  to  this  story,  which  has  been  used  again  and  again 
in  the  drama  of  different  nations,  and  I  will  tell  you  what 
I  will  do  for  you."  Reduce  any  dramatic  masterpiece  to 
simple  statement  of  its  plot  and  the  story  will  seem  so  trite 
as  hardly  to  be  worth  dramatization.  For  instance :  a  man 
of  jealous  nature,  passionately  in  love  with  his  young  wife, 
is  made  by  the  lies  and  trickery  of  a  friend  to  believe  that 
his  wife  has  been  intriguing  with  another  of  his  friends. 
The  fact  is  that  the  calumniator  slanders  because  he  thinks 
his  abilities  have  not  been  properly  recognized  by  the  hus- 
band and  he  has  been  repulsed  by  the  wife.  In  a  fury  of 
jealousy  the  husband  kills  his  innocent  wife  and  then  him- 
self.   That  might  be  recognized  as  the  story  of  any  one  of 

1  Some  Platitudes  Concerning  Drama,  Atlantic  Monthly,  December,  1909. 


CHARACTERIZATION  24; 

fifty  French,  German,  Italian,  English,  or  American  plays 
the  last  hundred  years.    It  is,  of  course,  the  story  of 
Othello  —  a  masterpiece  because  Shakespeare  knew  Othello,      * 

Desdemona,  and  Cassio  so  intimately  that  by  their  f*\  icrf} ; 

interplay  of  character  upon  character  they  shape  every 

perfectly.    In  other  words,  though  a  striking  dramatic 

•J  ion  is  undoubtedly  dramatic  treasure  trove,  whether 

an  l>e  developed  into  anything  fresh  and  contributive 

ends  on  a  careful  study  of  the  people  involved.    What 

must  they  be  to  give  rise  to  such  a  situation  —  not  each 

imself,  but  when  brought  together  under  the  conditions 

of  the  scene?    Even  if  a  writer  knows  this,  he  must  work 

backward  into  the  earlier  history  of  his  people  before  he 

can  either  move  through  the  particular  scene  or  go  forward 

into  other  scenes  which  should  properly  result  from  it. 

Far  too  often  plays  are  planned  in  this  way.  A  writer 
thinks  of  some  setting  that  will  permit  him  a  large  amount 
of  local  color  —  a  barroom,  a  dance  hall,  the  wharf  of  an 
incoming  ocean  liner.  Recognizing  or  not  that  most  of  this 
local  color  is  unessential  to  the  real  action  of  the  play,  he 
does  see  that  one  or  two  incidents  which  are  necessary  and 
striking  may  be  set  against  this  background.  Knowing 
broadly,  how  he  wants  to  treat  the  scene,  instead  of  study- 
ing the  main  and  minor  characters  in  it  till  he  knows  them 
so  intimately  that  he  can  select  from  a  larger  amount  of 
material  than  he  can  possibly  use,  he  moves,  not  where  the 
characters  lead  him,  but  whither,  vi  et  armis,  he  can  drive 
them.  Rarely  to  him  will  come  the  delightful  dilemma,  so 
commonly  experienced  by  the  dramatist  who  really  cares 
for  character,  when  he  must  choose  between  what  he  was 
going  to  do  and  the  scene  as  developed  by  the  creatures  of 
his  imagination  who,  as  they  become  real,  take  the  scene 
away  from  him  and  shape  it  to  vastly  richer  results.1 

1  Sec  the  quotation  from  Stevenson,  p.  S43,  as  to  Weir  qf  BervKtton. 


246  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

When  the  dramatist  interested  only  in  situation  shapes  the 
acts  preceding  his  most  important  scene,  he  searches  simply 
for  conditions  of  character  which  will  permit  this  important 
scene  to  follow.  Result:  earlier  acts,  largely  of  exposition 
and  talk,  or  of  illustrative  action  slight  and  unconvincing 
because  characters  forced  into  a  crucial  situation  can  hardly 
reveal  how  they  brought  themselves  to  it.  There  is  no 
'middle  way  for  the  dramatist  who  seeks  truth  in  character- 
ization. Given  a  situation,  either  it  must  grow  naturally 
out  of  the  characters  in  it,  or  the  people  originally  in  the  mind 
of  the  author  must  be  remodeled  till  they  fit  naturally  into 
the  situation.  In  the  latter  case,  all  that  precedes  and  follows 
the  central  situation  must  be  re-worked,  not  as  the  dramatist 
may  wish,  but  as  the  remodeled  characters  permit.  A  critic 
met  a  well-known  dramatist  on  the  Strand.  The  dramatist 
looked  worried.  "What's  the  matter,"  queried  the  critic, 
"anything  gone  wrong?"  "Yes.  You  remember  the  play 
I  told  you  about,  and  that  splendid  situation  for  my  hero- 
ine?" "Yes.  Well?"  "Well!  She  won't  go  into  it,  con- 
found her,  do  the  best  I  can."  "Why  make  her?"  "Why? 
Because  if  I  don't  there's  an  end  to  that  splendid  situation." 
"Well?"  "Oh,  that's  just  why  I'm  bothered.  I  don't  want 
to  give  in,  I  don't  want  to  lose  that  situation;  but  she's 
right,  of  course  she's  right,  and  the  trouble  is  I  know  I've 
got  to  yield." 

At  first  sight  the  problem  may  seem  different  in  an  histori- 
cal play,  for  here  a  writer  is  not  creating  incident  but  is  often 
baffled  by  the  amount  of  material  from  which  he  must  select, 
—  happenings  that  seem  equally  dramatic,  speeches  that 
cry  out  to  be  transferred  to  the  stage,  and  delightful  bits  of 
illustrative  action.  Yet,  whether  his  underlying  purpose 
is  to  convey  an  idea,  depict  a  character,  or  tell  a  story,  how 
can  he  decide  which  bits  among  his  material  make  the  best 
illustrative  action  before  he  has  minutely  studied  the  im- 


CHARACTERIZATION  247 

nit  figures?  Above  all  others,  the  dramatist  working 
with  history  is  subject  to  the  principles  of  characterization 
already  laid  down.  Lessing  stated  the  whole  case  suc- 
cinctly: 

!v  if  he  chooses  other  and  even  opposed  characters  to  the 
historical,  he  should  refrain  from  using  historical  names,  and 
rather  credit  totally  unknown  personages  with  well-known  facts 
than  invent  characters  to  well-known  personages.  The  one  mode 
enlarges  our  knowledge  or  seems  to  enlarge  it  and  is  thus  agreeable. 
The  other  contradicts  the  knowledge  that  we  already  possess  and 
is  thus  unpleasant.  We  regard  the  facts  as  something  accidental,  as 
something  that  may  be  common  to  many  persons;  the  characters 
we  regard  as  something  individual  and  intrinsic.  The  poet  may 
take  any  liberties  he  likes  with  the  former  so  long  as  he  does  not 
put  the  facts  into  contradiction  with  the  characters;  the  characters 
he  may  place  in  full  light  but  he  may  not  change  them,  the  smallest 
change  seems  to  destroy  their  individuality  and  to  substitute  in 
their  place  other  persons,  false  persons,  who  have  usurped  strange 
names  and  pretend  to  be  what  they  are  not.1 

There  is,  however,  a  contrasting  danger  to  insufficient 
characterization.  Any  one  profoundly  interested  in  charac- 
ter may  easily  fill  a  scene  with  delicate  touches  which  never- 
theless swell  the  play  to  undue  length.  When  careful  exam- 
ination of  a  play  which  is  too  long  makes  obvious  that  no  act 
or  scene  can  be  spared  in  whole  or  in  part,  and  that  the 
dialogue  is  nowhere  wordy  or  redundant,  watch  the  best 
characterized  scenes  to  discover  whether  something  has  not 
been  conveyed  by  two  strokes  rather  than  one.  If  so,  choose 
the  better.  Watch  the  scenes  also  lest  delicate  and  sure 
touches  of  characterization  may  have  been  included  which, 
delightful  though  they  be,  are  not  absolutely  necessary  to 
our  understanding  of  the  character.  If  so,  select  what  most 
swiftly  yet  clearly  gives  the  needed  information.  Over- 
detail  in  characterization  is  the  reason  why  certain  modern 

.  l  Hamburg  Dramaturgy,  p.  334.  Leasing.   Bobn  ed. 


248  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

plays  have  sagged,  or  hitched  their  way  to  a  conclusion, 
instead  of  producing  the  effect  desired  by  the  author. 
/  For  ultimate  convincingness  no  play  can  rise  above  the 
f  level  of  its  characterization.  The  playwright  who  works  for 
only  momentary  success  may  doubtless  depend  upon  the 
onward  rush  of  events,  in  a  play  of  strong  emotion,  to  blind 
his  audience  to  lack  of  motivation  in  his  characters.  John 
Fletcher  is  the  great  leader  of  these  opportunists  of  the 
theatre.  Evadne,  in  The  Maid's  Tragedy,1  killing  the  King, 
is  a  very  different  woman  from  the  Evadne  who  gladly 
became  his  mistress.  Nor  are  the  reproaches  and  exhorta- 
tions of  her  brother  Melantius  powerful  enough  to  change 
a  woman  of  her  character  so  swiftly  and  completely.  An 
audience,  absorbed  in  the  emotion  of  the  moment,  may  over- 
look such  faults  of  characterization  in  the  theatre.  As  it 
reviews  the  play  in  calmer  mood,  however,  it  ranks  it,  no 
matter  how  poetic  as  a  whole  or  how  well  characterized  in 
particular  scenes,  not  as  a  drama  which  interprets  life, 
but  as  mere  entertainment.  Even  perfect  characterization 
of  some  figures,  when  the  chief  are  mere  puppets,  cannot 
make  us  accept  the  play  as  more  than  pure  fiction.  In 
Thomas  Heywood's  A  Woman  Killed  with  Kindness  and 
English  Traveler,2  if  the  erring  wives  and  their  lovers  were 
only  as  well  characterized  as  the  fine-spirited  husbands,  the 
servants,  and  youths  like  Young  Geraldine,  the  plays  might 
hold  the  stage  today.  Doubtless  the  actor's  art  in  the  days 
of  Elizabeth  and  James  gave  to  villains  like  Wendoll  and 
women  like  Mrs.  Frankford  enough  verisimilitude  to  make 
the  plays  far  more  convincing  than  they  are  in  the  reading. 
But  try  as  we  may,  we  cannot  understand  from  the  text 
either  of  these  characters.  Their  motivation  is  totally  inade- 
quate; that  is,  their  conduct  seems  not  to  grow  out  of  their 

1  Belle-Lettres  Series.  A.  H.  Thoradike,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  New  York. 
*  Mermaid  Series  for  both  plays.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


CHARACTERIZATION  249 

characters.   Rather,  they  are  the  creatures  of  any  situation 
into  which  the  dramatist  wishes  to  thrust  them. 

need  of  motivation  may  be  fundamental,  that  is,  the 
racters  may  seem  to  an  audience  unconvincing  from  the 
rt;  <>r  may  be  evident  in  some  insufficiently  explained 
transition  in  character;  or  may  appear  only  in  the 
uist  scene  of  the  play,  where  characters  hitherto  consistent 
ate  made  to  act  in  a  way  which  seems  to  the  audience  im- 
probable.   When  Nathaniel  Rowe  produced  his  Ambitious 
•mother  in  1700,  Charles  Gildon  bitterly  attacked  it  as 
unconvincing  in  its  very  fundamentals. 

Mirza  is  indeed  a  Person  of  a  peculiar  Taste;  for  a  Cunning 
Man  to  own  himself  a  Rogue  to  the  Man  he  shou'd  keep  in  igno- 
rance, and  whom  he  was  to  work  to  his  ends,  argues  little  pretence 
to  that  Name;  but  he  laughs  at  Honesty,  and  professes  himself  a 
Knave  to  one  he  wou'd  have  honest  to  him.  .  .  . 

In  the  second  Act,  he  talks  of  Memnon's  having  recourse  to  Arms, 
of  which  Power  we  have  not  the  least  Word  in  the  first:  All  that  we 
know  is,  that  he  returns  from  Banishment  on  a  day  of  Jubilee, 
when  all  was  Safe  and  Free.  .  .  -1 

For  similar  reasons,  Mr.  Eaton  criticises  unfavorably 
The  Fighting  Hope: 

One  of  the  best  (or  the  worst)  examples  of  false  ethics  in  such  a 
play  is  furnished  by  The  Fighting  Hope,  produced  by  Mr.  Belasco 
in  the  Autumn  of  1908,  and  acted  by  Miss  Blanche  Bates.  In  this 
play  a  man,  Granger,  has  been  jailed,  his  wife  and  the  world  be- 
lieve for  another  man's  crime.  The  other  man,  Burton  Temple,  is 
president  of  the  bank  Granger  has  been  convicted  of  robbing.  A 
district  attorney,  hot  after  men  higher  up,  is  about  to  reopen  the 
case.  It  begins  to  look  bad  for  Temple.  Mrs.  Granger,  disguised  as 
a  stenographer,  goes  to  his  house  to  secure  evidence  against  him. 
What  she  secures  is  a  letter  proving  that  not  he,  but  her  husband, 
was  after  all  the  criminal. 

Of  course  this  letter  is  a  knockout  blow  for  her.  She  realizes  that 
the  "father  of  her  boys"  is  a  thief,  that  the  man  she  would  send 

1  A  New  Rekeareal,  or  Bay  the  Younger.  Charles  Gildon.  17U-13. 


250  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

to  jail  (and  with  whom  you  know  the  dramatist  is  going  to  make 
her  finally  fall  in  love)  is  innocent.  Still,  in  her  first  shock,  her 
instinct  to  protect  the  "father  of  her  boys"  persists,  and  she  burns 
the  letter. 

So  far,  so  good,  but  Mrs.  Granger  is  represented  as  a  woman  of 
fine  instincts  and  character.  That  she  should  persist  in  cooler  blood 
in  her  false  and  immoral  supposition  that  her  boys'  name  will  be 
protected  or  their  happiness  preserved  —  to  say  nothing  of  her 
own  —  by  the  guilt  of  two  parents  instead  of  one,  is  hard  to  believe. 
Yet  that  is  exactly  what  the  play  asks  you  to  believe,  and  it  asks 
you  to  assume  that  here  is  a  true  dilemma.  A  babbling  old  house- 
keeper, whose  chief  use  in  the  house  seems  to  be  to  help  the  plot 
along,  after  the  manner  of  stage  servants,  tells  Mrs.  Granger  that 
she  must  not  atone  for  her  act  by  giving  honest  testimony  in  court, 
that  of  course  she  must  let  an  innocent  man  go  to  jail,  to  "save 
her  boys'  name." 

It  would  be  much  more  sensible  should  Mrs.  Granger  here  strike 
the  immoral  old  lady,  instead  of  saving  her  blows  for  her  cur  of  a 
husband,  in  the  last  act,  who,  after  all,  was  the  "  father  of  her  boys." 
But  she  listens  to  her.  She  appears  actually  in  doubt  not  only  as  to 
which  course  she  will  pursue,  but  which  she  should  pursue.  She  is 
intended  by  the  dramatist  as  a  pitiable  object  because  on  the  one 
hand  she  feels  it  right  to  save  an  innocent  man  (whom  she  has  be- 
gun to  love),  and  on  the  other  feels  it  her  duty  to  save  her  sons' 
happiness  by  building  their  future  on  a  structure  of  lies  and  deceit. 
And  she  reaches  a  solution,  not  by  reasoning  the  tangle  out,  not  by 
any  real  thought  for  her  boys,  their  general  moral  welfare,  not  by 
any  attention  to  principles,  but  simply  by  discovering  that  her  hus- 
band has  been  sexually  unfaithful  to  her.  Further,  he  becomes  a 
cad  and  charges  her  with  infidelity.  Then  she  springs  upon  him 
and  beats  him  with  her  fists,  which  is  not  the  most  effective  way  of 
convincing  an  audience  that  she  was  a  woman  capable  of  being 
torn  by  moral  problems. 

Of  course  as  the  play  is  written,  there  is  no  moral  problem. 
The  morality  is  all  of  the  theatre.  It  belongs  to  that  strange  world 
behind  the  proscenium,  wherein  we  gaze,  and  gazing  sometimes 
utter  chatter  about  "strong  situations,"  "stirring  climaxes,"  and 
the  like,  as  people  hypnotized.  There  might  have  been  a  moral 
problem  if  Mrs.  Granger,  before  she  discovered  her  husband's 
guilt,  had  been  forced  to  fight  a  rising  tide  of  passion  for  Temple  in 
her  own  heart.  There  might  have  been  a  moral  problem  after  the 


CHARACTERIZATION  251 

very  and  her  first  hasty,  but  natural,  destruction  of  the  letter, 
if  the  had  felt  that  her  desire  to  save  Temple  was  prompted  by  a 
passion  still  illicit,  rather  than  by  justice.  But  no  such  real  prob- 
lems were  presented.  The  lady  babbles  eternally  of  "saving  her 
s'  good  name,"  while  you  are  supposed  to  weep  for  her  plight. 
Unless  you  have  checked  your  sense  of  reality  in  the  cloak  room, 
yon  scorn  lur  perceptions  and  despise  her  standards.  How  much 
finer  had  she  continued  to  love  her  husband!  But  he,  after  all, 
was  only  the  "father  of  her  boys."  l 

It  is  insufficiently  motivated  characterization  which  Mr. 
Eaton  censures  in  The  Nigger: 

Obviously,  the  emotional  interest  in  this  play  is  —  or  should  be, 
rather  —  in  the  tragedy  of  the  proud,  ambitious  Morrow,  who  wakes 
suddenly  to  find  himself  a  "nigger,"  an  exile  from  his  home,  and 
hopes,  from  his  sweetheart  and  his  dreams.  Yet,  as  Mr.  Sheldon  has 
written  it,  and  as  it  was  played  by  Mr.  Guy  Bates  Post  in  the  part 
of  Morrow,  and  by  the  other  actors,  the  play  is  most  poignant  in 
its  moments  of  sheer  theatrical  appeal,  almost  of  melodrama,  such 
as  the  suspense  of  the  cross-examination  of  the  old  mammy  and 
her  cry  of  revelation,  or  the  pursuit  of  the  fugitive  in  act  one.  Be- 
tween his  interest  in  the  suspense  of  his  story  and  in  the  elucidation 
of  the  broader  aspects  of  the  negro  question  in  the  South,  Mr.  Shel- 
don neglected  too  much  his  chief  figure,  as  a  human  being.  Unless 
the  figures  live  and  suffer  for  the  audience,  unless  their  personal  fate 
is  followed,  their  minds  and  hearts  felt  as  real,  the  naturalistic 
drama  of  contemporary  life  can  have  but  little  value,  after  all.  That 
is  what  makes  its  technique  so  difficult  and  so  baffling.  From  the 
moment  when  Morrow  learned  of  his  birth,  he  became  a  rather 
nebulous  figure,  not  suffering  so  much  as  listening  to  theories  which 
were  only  said  by  the  dramatist  to  have  altered  his  character  and 
point  of  view.  2 

Perhaps  it  would  be  more  strictly  accurate  to  say  that 
the  comment  on  The  Nigger  points  to  inadequate  treatment 
of  character  changing  as  the  play  progresses.  The  favorite 
place  of  many  so-called  dramatists  for  a  change  of  character 

1  At  Ike  Nm  Theatre,  pp.  18&-192.  W.  P.  Eaton.  Small,  Maynard  &  Co.,  Boston. 
'  Idem,  pp.  47-48. 


252  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

is  in  their  vast  silences  between  the  acts.  There,  the  authors 
expect  us  to  believe  that  marked  and  necessary  changes 
take  place.  They  show  us  in  clear-cut  dramatic  action  the 
good  character  before  he  became  bad  and  after  he  has  be- 
come bad,  but  for  proof  that  the  changes  took  place,  we 
must  look  off  stage  in  the  entr'acte.  Read  Lady  Bountiful  and 
note  that  between  the  last  and  the  next  to  the  last  acts  large 
changes  have  taken  place  in  the  main  characters.  Iris  would 
be  a  far  greater  play  than  it  is  could  we  have  seen  how  its 
central  figure  passes  from  the  taking  of  the  check  book  to  the 
state  of  mind  which  makes  her  accept  Maldonado's  apart- 
ment. Contrast  with  these  plays  the  thoroughly  motivated 
change  in  the  Sergeant  of  The  Rising  of  the  Moon  or  of 
Nora  in  A  DolVs  House. 

Where  American  plays  too  frequently  break  down  is  in 
what  may  be  called  the  logic  of  character.  Even  when  actions 
have  been  properly  motivated  up  to  the  last  act  or  scene,  this 
is  handled  in  such  a  way  as  rather  to  please  the  audience  than 
to  grow  inevitably  out  of  what  has  preceded.  Rumor  has  it 
that  when  Secret  Service  was  produced  in  one  of  the  central 
cities  of  New  York  State,  the  hero  at  the  end  chose  his 
country  rather  than  the  girl.  The  public,  with  that  fine 
disregard  in  the  theatre  for  the  values  it  places  on  action 
outside,  disapproved.  Promptly,  the  ending  was  so  changed 
that  the  two  lovers  could  be  started  on  that  sure  road 
to  happiness  ever  after  which  all  men  know  an  engage- 
ment is  —  upon  the  stage.  In  a  play  such  as  Secret  Service, 
planned  primarily  to  entertain,  such  a  shift  may  be  pardon- 
able, but  even  in  such  a  case  it  must  be  done  with  skill  if 
it  is  not  to  jar.  The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona  in  some  fifty 
lines  at  its  close  shows  Proteus  madly  in  love  with  Silvia, 
and  Valentine  longing  for  her  also;  Valentine  threatening  the 
life  of  Proteus  when  he  discovers  the  latter 's  perfidy,  but 
forgiving  him  instantly  when  Proteus  merely  asks  pardon; 


CHARACTERIZATION  253 

and  Proteus,  when  he  discovers  that  the  page  who  has  been 
following  him  is  Julia,  turning  instantly  away  from  Silvia 
to  her.  Here  is  faulty  characterization  in  two  respects:  each 
change  is  not  sufficiently  motived;  each  does  not  accord  with 
the  characterization  of  Proteus  and  Valentine  in  the  earlier 
scenes. 

Proteus.  Nay,  if  the  gentle  spirit  of  moving  words 
Can  no  way  change  you  to  a  milder  form, 
I'll  woo  you  like  a  soldier,  at  arms'  end, 
And  love  you  'gainst  the  nature  of  love,  —  force  ye. 

Silvia.  O  heaven! 

Pro.  I'll  force  thee  yield  to  my  desire. 

Valentine.  Ruffian,  let  go  that  rude  uncivil  touch, 
Thou  friend  of  an  ill  fashion! 

Pro.  Valentine! 

Vol.  Thou  common  friend,  that's  without  faith  or  love, 
For  such  is  a  friend  now!  Treacherous  man, 
Thou  hast  beguil'd  my  hopes!  Nought  but  mine  eye 
Could  have  persuaded  me.   Now  I  dare  not  say 
I  have  one  friend  alive;  thou  wouldst  disprove  me. 
Who  should  be  trusted  now,  when  one's  right  hand 
Is  perjured  to  the  bosom?  Proteus, 
I  am  sorry  I  must  never  trust  thee  more, 
But  count  the  world  a  stranger  for  thy  sake. 
The  private  wound  is  deepest.  O  time  most  accurst, 
'Mongst  all  foes  that  a  friend  should  be  the  worst! 

Pro.  My  shame  and  guilt  confounds  me. 
Forgive  me,  Valentine;  if  hearty  sorrow 
Be  a  sufficient  ransom  for  offence, 
I  tender' t  here;  I  do  as  truly  suffer 
As  e'er  I  did  commit. 

Vol.  Then  I  am  paid; 

And  once  again  I  do  receive  thee  honest. 
Who  by  repentance  is  not  satisfied 
Is  nor  of  heaven  nor  earth,  for  these  are  pleas'd. 
By  penitence  the  Eternal's  wrath's  appeas'd; 
And,  that  my  love  may  appear  plain  and  free, 
All  that  was  mine  in  Silvia  I  give  thee. 

Julia.  0  me  unhappy!  (Svxxms.) 


254  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Pro.  Look  to  the  boy. 

Vol.  Why,  boy!  why,  wag!  how  now!  What's  the  matter?  Look 
up;  speak. 

Jul.  O  good  sir,  my  master  charg'd  me  to  deliver  a  ring  to 
Madame  Silvia,  which,  out  of  my  neglect,  was  never  done. 

Pro.  WThere  is  that  ring,  boy? 

Jul.  Here  'tis;  this  is  it. 

Pro.  How?  let  me  see! 
Why  this  is  the  ring  I  gave  to  Julia. 

Jul.  O,  cry  you  mercy,  sir,  I  have  mistook; 

Pro.  But  how  cam'st  thou  by  this  ring?  At  my  depart 
I  gave  this  unto  Julia. 

Jul.  And  Julia  herself  did  give  it  me; 
And  Julia  herself  hath  brought  it  hither. 

Pro.  How!  Julia! 

Jul.  Behold  her  that  gave  aim  to  all  thy  oaths, 
And  entertain'd  'em  deeply  in  her  heart. 
How  oft  hast  thou  with  perjury  cleft  the  root! 
O  Proteus  let  this  habit  make  thee  blush! 
Be  thou  asham'd  that  I  have  took  upon  me 
Such  an  immodest  raiment,  if  shame  live 
In  a  disguise  of  love. 
It  is  the  lesser  blot,  modesty  finds, 
Women  to  change  their  shapes  than  men  their  minds. 

Pro.  Than  men  their  minds!  'tis  true.  O  heaven!  were  man 
But  constant,  he  were  perfect.  That  one  error 
Fills  him  with  faults;  makes  him  run  through  all  the  sins. 
Inconstancy  falls  off  ere  it  begins. 
What  is  Silvia's  face,  but  I  may  spy 
More  fresh  in  Julia's  with  a  constant  eye? 

Val.  Come,  come,  a  hand  from  either. 
Let  me  be  blest  to  make  this  happy  close; 
'Twere  pity  two  such  friends  should  be  long  foes. 

Pro.  Bear  witness,  Heaven,  I  have  my  wish  for  ever. 

Jul.  And  I  mine. 

Similar  inconsistencies  are  in  many  modern  plays. 
A  dramatist  has  a  particularly  striking  scene  which  he 
wishes  to  make  the  climax  of  his  play.  Into  it  he  forces  his 
figures  regardless.   Lessing  made  fun  of  this  fault. 


CHARACTERIZATION  2J5 

.  .  .  Tn  another  still  worse  tragedy  where  one  of  the  principal 
characters  died  quite  casually,  a  spectator  ttked  his  neighbor, 
"Hut  what  did  she  die  of?"  — "Of  what?  Of  the  fifth  act,"  was 
th<>  reply.  In  very  truth  the  fifth  act  is  an  ugly  evil  disease 
that  carries  off  many  a  one  to  whom  the  first  four  acts  promised  a 
vr  life.1 

Or  it  may  be,  as  in  the  case  of  Shakespeare  just  cited, 
that  a  dramatist  feels  certain  changes  of  character  are  nec- 
try  if  the  play  is  to  end  as  promptly  as  it  must.  Such 
changes,  therefore,  he  brings  about  even  if  it  means  throw- 
ing character  or  truth  to  the  winds.  English  and  Ameri- 
can plays  of  the  1880  and  1890  periods  show  many  in- 
stances of  theatrically  effective  endings  either  forced  upon 
the  characters  or  only  one  of  several  possible  endings  —  and 
not  the  most  probable.  According  to  the  conventions  of  the 
time,  any  young  woman  who  had  parted  with  her  virtue, 
no  matter  what  the  circumstances,  must  make  reparation 
by  death.  This  usually  came  from  some  wasting  but  not 
clearly  diagnosed  disease.  There  wras  not  always  a  clear 
distinction  between  inanition  and  inanity.  A  similar  con- 
vention usually  saved  from  death  the  male  partners  of  these 
"faults,"  provided  they  indulged  at  the  right  moment  in 
self-repentant  speeches.  Sir  Arthur  Pinero,  writing  what 
he  regarded  as  the  logical  ending  of  The  Profligate,  was 
forced  by  the  sentimentality  of  his  public  to  keep  Dunstan 
Renshaw  alive.  Here  are  the  two  endings: 

THE  ENDING  AS  ACTED 

Dunstan.  (He  is  raising  the  glass  to  his  lips  when  he  recoils  with 
a  cry  of  horror.)  Ah!  stop,  stop!  This  is  the  deepest  sin  of  all  my 
life  —  blacker  than  that  sin  for  which  I  suffer!  No,  I'll  not!  I'll 
not !  (He  dashes  the  glass  to  the  ground.)  God,  take  my  wretched  life 
when  You  will,  but  till  You  lay  Your  hand  upon  me,  I  will  live  on! 
Help  me!  Give  me  strength  to  live  on!  Help  me!  Oh,  help  me! 

1  Hamburg  Dramaturgy,  p.  238.  Bobn  ed. 


256  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

(He  falls  on  his  knees  and  buries  his  face  in  his  hands.  Les- 
lie enters  softly,  carrying  a  lamp  which  she  places  on  the 
sideboard;  then  she  goes  to  Dunstan.) 

Leslie.  Dunstan!  Dunstan! 

Dunstan.  You!  You! 

Leslie.  I  have  remembered.  When  we  stood  together  at  our 
prayerless  marriage,  my  heart  made  promises  my  lips  were  not 
allowed  to  utter.  I  will  not  part  from  you,  Dunstan. 

Dunstan.  Not  —  part  —  from  me? 

Leslie.  No. 

Dunstan.  I  don't  understand  you.  You  —  will  —  not  —  relent? 
You  cannot  forget  what  I  am! 

Leslie.  No.  But  the  burden  of  the  sin  you  have  committed  I  will 
bear  upon  my  shoulders,  and  the  little  good  that  is  in  me  shall  enter 
into  your  heart.  We  will  start  life  anew,  always  seeking  for  the 
best  that  we  can  do,  always  trying  to  repair  the  worst  that  we  have 
done.  (Stretching  out  her  hand  to  him.)  Dunstan!  (He  approaches 
her  as  in  a  dream.)  Don't  fear  me!  I  will  be  your  wife,  not  your 
judge.  Let  us  from  this  moment  begin  the  new  life  you  spoke  of. 

Dunstan.  (He  tremblingly  touches  her  hand  as  she  bursts  into  tears.) 
WTife!  Ah,  God  bless  you!  God  bless  you,  and  forgive  me! 

(He  kneels  at  her  side,  and  she  bows  her  head  down  to  his.) 

Leslie.  Oh,  my  husband! 

THE  ENDING  AS  PRINTED 

Dunstan.  Fool!  Fool!  Why  couldn't  you  have  died  in  Florence? 
Why  did  you  drag  yourself  here  all  these  miles  —  to  end  it  here?  I 
should  have  known  better — I  should  have  known  better.  (He  takes 
a  phial  from  his  pocket  and  slowly  pours  some  poison  into  a  tumbler.) 
When  I've  proved  that  I  could  not  live  away  from  her,  perhaps 
she'll  pity  me.  I  shall  never  know  it,  but  perhaps  she'll  pity  me 
then.  (About  to  drink.)  Supposing  I  am  blind!  Supposing  there  is 
some  chance  of  my  regaining  her.  Regaining  her!  How  dull  sleep- 
lessness makes  me!  How  much  could  I  regain  of  what  I've  lost! 
Why,  she  knows  me  —  nothing  can  ever  undo  that  —  she  knows 
me.  Every  day  would  be  a  dreary,  hideous  masquerade;  every 
night  a  wakeful,  torturing  retrospect.  If  she  smiled,  I  should  whis- 
per to  myself  —  "  yes,  yes,  that's  a  very  pretty  pretence,  but  — 
she  knows  you !  "  The  slamming  of  a  door  would  shout  it,  the  creak- 
ing of  a  stair  would  murmur  it  "  she  knows  you !  "    And  when  she 


CHARACTERIZATION  257 

thoughl  herself  alone,  or  while  she  lay  in  her  deep,  I  should  he  al- 

Ithily  spying  for  that  dreadful  look  upon  her  face,  and 
I  should  find  it  again  and  again  as  I  see  it  now  —  the  look  which 
out  so  plainly  "Profligate!  you  taught  one  good  woman  to 
believe  in  you,  but  now  she  knows  youi"  No,  no — no,  no!  (He 
drains  the  contents  of  the  tumbler.)  The  end  —  the  end.  (Pointing 
trd*  the  clock-.)  The  hour  at  which  we  used  to  walk  together  in 
thr  garden  at  Florence  —  husband  and  wife  —  lovers.  (He  pulls 
vp  the  window-blind  and  looks  out.)  The  sky  —  the  last  time  — 
tin'  sky.  (He  rests  drowsily  against  the  piano.)  Tired  —  tired.  (He 
walks  rather  unsteadily  to  the  table.)  A  line  to  Murray.  (Writing.) 
A  line  to  Murray  —  telling  him  —  poison  —  morphine  —  message 

—  (The  pen  falls  from  his  hand  and  his  head  drops  forward.)  The 
light  is  going  out.   I  can't  see.  Light — I '11  finish  this  when  I  wake 

—  I  '11  rest.    (He  staggers  to  the  sofa  and  falls  upon  it.)   I  shall  sleep 
tonight.    The  voice  has  gone.  Leslie  —  wife  —  reconciled  — 

(Leslie  enters  softly  and  kneels  by  his  side.) 
Leslie.  Dunstan,  I  am  here.  (He  partly  opens  his  eyes,  raises  him- 
self, and  stares  at  her;  then  his  head  falls  back  quietly.  Leslie's  face 
airrted.)  Dunstan,  I  have  returned  to  you.  We  are  one  and  we  will 
make  atonement  for  the  past  together.  I  will  be  your  Wife,  not 
your  Judge  —  let  us  from  this  moment  begin  the  new  life  you  spoke 
of.  Dunstan !  (She  sees  the  paper  which  has  fallen  from  his  hand, 
and  reads  it.)  Dunstan!  Dunstan!  No,  no!  Look  at  me!  Ah!  (She 
catches  him  in  her  arms.)   Husband!  Husband!  Husband!  > 

It  is  of  course  true,  as  M.  Brieux  maintains  in  regard  to 
the  two  endings  of  his  early  play,  Blanchette,2  that  some- 
times more  than  one  ending  may  be  made  plausible.  Con- 
sequently he  changed  a  tragic  close  to  something  more 
pleasing  to  his  audience.  Belief  grows,  however,  that  when 
a  play  has  been  begun  and  developed  with  a  tragic  end- 
ing in  mind,  this  cannot  with  entire  convincingness  be 
changed  to  something  else  unless  the  play  is  rewritten  from 
the  start.  There  is  inevitableness  in  the  conduct  on  the 
stage  of  the  creatures  of  our  brains  even  as  with  people  of 
real  life.  So  strongly  does  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  feel  this  as  the 

1  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston;  W.  Heinemann,  London. 

*  P.  V.  Stock,  Paris.  Published  in  translation  by  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston. 


258  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

result  of  his  long  experience  that,  though  he  changed  the 
ending  of  The  Big  Drum  in  1915  in  accordance  with  public 
demand,  he  restored  the  original  version  when  printing  the 
play.  He  says  in  his  Preface: 

The  Big  Drum  is  published  exactly  as  it  was  written,  and  as  it 
was  originally  performed.  At  its  first  representation,  however,  the 
audience  was  reported  to  have  been  saddened  by  its  "unhappy 
ending."  Pressure  wTas  forthwith  put  upon  me  to  reconcile  Philip 
and  Ottoline  at  the  finish,  and  at  the  third  performance  of  the  play 
the  curtain  fell  upon  the  picture,  violently  and  crudely  brought 
about,  of  Ottoline  in  Philip's  arms. 

I  made  the  alteration  against  my  principles  and  against  my 
conscience,  and  yet  not  altogether  unwillingly.  For  we  live  in  de- 
pressing times;  and  perhaps  in  such  times  it  is  the  first  duty  of  a 
writer  for  the  stage  to  make  concessions  to  his  audience  and, 
above  everything,  to  try  to  afford  them  a  complete,  if  brief,  dis- 
traction from  the  gloom  which  awaits  them  outside  the  theatre. 

My  excuse  for  having  at  the  start  provided  an  "unhappy"  end- 
ing is  that  I  was  blind  enough  not  to  regard  the  ultimate  break 
between  Philip  and  Ottoline  as  really  unhappy  for  either  party. 
On  the  contrary,  I  looked  upon  the  separation  of  these  two  people 
as  a  fortunate  occurrence  for  them  both;  and  I  conceive  it  as  a  piece 
of  ironic  comedy  which  might  not  prove  unentertaining  that  the 
falling  away  of  Philip  from  his  high  resolves  was  checked  by  the 
woman  he  had  once  despised  and  who  had  at  last  grown  to  know 
and  to  despise  herself. 

But  comedy  of  this  order  has  a  knack  of  cutting  rather  deeply, 
of  ceasing,  in  some  minds,  to  be  comedy  at  all;  and  it  may  be  said 
that  this  is  what  has  happened  in  the  present  instance.  Luckily 
it  is  equally  true  that  certain  matters  are  less  painful,  because  less 
actual,  in  print  than  upon  the  stage.  The  "wicked  publisher" 
therefore,  even  when  bombs  are  dropping  round  him,  can  afford 
to  be  more  independent  than  the  theatrical  manager;  and  for  this 
reason  I  have  not  hesitated  to  ask  my  friend  Mr.  Hejnemann  to 
publish  The  Big  Drum  in  its  original  form.1 

What  Ibsen  thought  of  the  ultimate  effect  of  changing  an 
ending  to  aceord  with  public  sentiment,  these  words  about 
A  DoWs  House  show : 

1  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston;  W.  Heinemann,  London. 


CHARACTERIZATION  259 

t  he  time  when  A  Doll's  House  was  quite  new,  I  was  obliged  to 

my  consent  to  an  alteration  of  the  last  scene  for  Frau  Hedwig 

be,  who  was  to  play  the  part  of  Nora  in  Berlin.   At 

that  time  I  had  no  choice.  I  was  entirely  unprotected  by  copyright 
in  Germany,  and  could,  consequently,  prevent  nothing.  Be- 
.  the  play  in  its  original,  uncorrupted  form  was  accessible  to 

the  German  public  in  a  German  edition  which  was  already  printed 

and  published.    With  its  altered  ending  it  had  only  a  short  run. 

In  its  unchanged  form  it  is  still  being  played.1 

Dumas  fils  was  even  more  severe  in  his  strictures: 

If  at  the  second  performance  you  are  ready  to  modify  your  cen- 
tral idea,  your  development  or  your  conclusion  to  please  the  pub- 
lic whom  the  night  before  you  were  pretending  to  teach  something 
fresh,  you  may  be,  perhaps,  an  ingenious  worker  in  the  theatre,  an 
admit  impresario,  a  facile  inventor;  you  will  never  be  a  dramatist. 
You  can  make  mistakes  in  details  of  execution;  you  have  no  right 
to  make  a  mistake  in  the  logic  of  your  play,  its  co  rrelations  of  emo- 
tions and  acts,  and  least  of  all,  in  their  outcome.2 

Characterization,  then,  should  be  watched  carefully  in 
its  fundamentals,  all  changes,  and  especially  for  its  logical 
outcome.   Long  ago,  Diderot  summed  up  the  subject  thus : 

One  can  form  an  infinitude  of  plans  on  the  same  subject  and 
developed  around  the  same  characters.  But  the  characters  being 
once  settled,  they  can  have  but  one  manner  of  speaking.  Your 
figures  will  have  this  or  that  to  say  according  to  the  situation  in 
which  you  may  have  placed  them,  but  being  the  same  human  be- 
bga  in  all  the  situations,  they  will  not,  fundamentally,  contradict 
themselves.3 

How  may  wc  know  whether  our  motivation  is  good  or 
not?  First  of  all,  it  must  be  clear.  If  an  audience  cannot 
make  out  why  one  of  our  characters  does  what  he  is  doing, 
from  that  moment  the  play  weakens.  It  is  on  this  ground 
that  William  Archer  objected  to  the  Becket  of  Tennyson: 

1  LtHert  of  Henrik  Ibsen,  p.  437. 

1  An  Public,  La  Princette  Oeorget.  Calmann  Levy,  Paris. 

1  CEutrtt,  vol.  vii,  p.  3*0.  Gamier  Freres,  Pari*. 


260  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

"Some  gents,"  says  the  keeper,  in  Punch,  to  the  unsuccessful 
sportsman,  "goes  a-wingin'  and  a-worritin'  the  poor  birds;  but  you, 
sir  —  you  misses  'em  clane  and  nate!"  With  the  like  delicate  tact 
criticism  can  only  compliment  the  poet  on  the  "clane  and  nate" 
way  in  which  he  has  missed  the  historical  interest,  the  psychologi- 
cal problem,  of  his  theme.  What  was  it  that  converted  the  Becket 
of  Toulouse  into  the  Becket  of  Clarendon  —  the  splendid  warrior- 
diplomatist  into  the  austere  prelate?  The  cowl,  we  are  told, 
does  not  make  the  monk;  but  in  Lord  Tennyson's  psychology  it 
seems  that  it  does.  Of  the  process  of  thought,  the  development  of 
feeling,  which  leads  Becket,  on  assuming  the  tonsure,  to  break  with 
the  traditions  of  his  career,  with  the  friend  of  his  heart  and  with 
his  own  worldly  interest  —  of  all  this  we  have  no  hint.  The  social 
and  political  issues  involved  are  left  equally  in  the  vague.  Of  the 
two  contending  forces,  the  Church  and  the  Crown,  which  makes 
for  good,  and  which  for  evil?  With  which  ought  we  to  sympathize? 
It  might  be  argued  that  we  have  no  right  to  ask  this  question,  and 
that  it  is  precisely  a  proof  of  the  poet's  art  that  he  holds  the  balance 
evenly,  and  does  not  write  as  a  partisan.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact 
this  is  not  so.  The  poet  is  not  impartial;  he  is  only  indefinite.  We 
are  evidently  intended  to  sympathize,  and  we  do  sympathize,  with 
Becket,  simply  because  we  feel  that  he  is  staking  his  life  on  a  prin- 
ciple; but  what  that  principle  precisely  is,  and  what  its  bearings  on 
history  and  civilization,  we  are  left  to  find  out  for  ourselves.  Thus 
the  intellectual  opportunity,  if  I  may  call  it  so,  is  missed  "clane 
and  nate."1 

Contrast  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth  acts  of  Michael  and 
His  Lost  Angel 2  with  the  first  and  second.  So  admirable  is 
the  characterization  of  Acts  I  and  II  that  a  reader  under- 
stands exactly  what  Audrie  and  Michael  are  doing  and  why. 
In  the  other  acts,  though  what  they  are  doing  is  clear,  *srhy 
the  Audrie  and  Michael  of  the  first  two  acts  behaved  thus 
is  by  no  means  clear  and  plausible.  Indeed,  plausibility  and 
clearness  go  hand  in  hand  as  tests  of  motivation.  Account- 
ing for  the  deeds  of  any  particular  character  is  easy  if  the 
conduct  rests  on  motives  which  any  audience  will  immedi- 

1  The  Theatrical  World  for  1893,  pp.  46-47.  W.  Archer.  Walter  Scott,  Ltd.,  London. 
*  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York. 


CHARACTERIZATION  261 

ately  recognize  as  both  widespread  and  likely  to  produce 
the  situation.  It  is  just  here,  however,  that  national  taste 
and  literary  convention  complicate  the  work  of  the  drama- 
tist. An  American,  watching  a  performance  of  Simone1 
by  M.  Brieux,  hardly  understood  the  loud  protests  which 
bunt  from  the  audience  when  the  heroine,  at  the  end  of  the 
play,  sternly  denounced  her  father's  conduct.  To  him,  it 
seemed  quite  natural  that  an  American  girl  should  assume 
this  right  of  individual  judgment.  The  French  audience 
felt  that  a  French  girl,  because  of  her  training,  would  not, 
under  the  circumstances,  thus  attack  her  father.  M.  Brieux 
admitted  himself  wrong  and  changed  the  ending.  It  is  this 
fact,  that  conduct  plausible  for  one  nation  is  not  always 
equally  plausible  for  another,  which  makes  it  hard  for  an 
American  public  to  understand  a  goodly  number  of  the 
masterpieces  of  recent  Continental  dramatic  literature. 

What  literary  convention  may  do  in  twisting  conduct 
from  the  normal,  the  pseudo-classic  French  drama  of  Cor- 
neille  and  Racine,  and  its  foster  child,  the  Heroic  Drama  of 
England,  illustrate.  Dryden  himself  points  out  clearly  the 
extent  to  which  momentary  convention  among  the  French 
deflected  the  characters  in  their  tragedies  from  the  normal : 

The  French  poets  .  .  .  would  not,  for  example,  have  suffer'd 
I  >atra  and  Octavia  to  have  met;  or,  if  they  had  met,  there  must 
only  have  passed  betwixt  them  some  cold  civilities,  but  no  eagerness 
of  repartee,  for  fear  of  offending  against  the  greatness  of  their  char- 
acters, and  the  modesty  of  their  sex.  This  objection  I  foresaw,  and 
at  the  same  time  contemn'd;  for  I  judg'd  it  both  natural  and  prob- 
ahle  that  Octavia,  proud  of  her  new-gain'd  conquest,  would  search 
out  Cleopatra  to  triumph  over  her;  and  that  Cleopatra,  thus  at- 
tack'd,  was  not  of  a  spirit  to  shun  the  encounter:  and  'tis  not  un- 
likely that  two  exasperated  rivals  should  use  such  satire  as  I  have 
put  into  tluir  mouths;  for,  after  all.  tho'  the  one  were  a  Roman,  and 
the  other  a  queen,  they  were  both  women. 

»  P.  V.  Stock,  Paris. 


262  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Thus,  their  Hippolytus  is  so  scrupulous  in  point  of  decency  that 
he  will  rather  expose  himself  to  death  than  accuse  his  stepmother 
to  his  father;  and  my  critics  I  am  sure  will  commend  him  for  it: 
but  we  of  grosser  apprehensions  are  apt  to  think  that  this  excess  of 
generosity  is  not  practicable,  but  with  fools  and  madmen.  This  was 
good  manners  with  a  vengeance;  and  the  audience  is  like  to  be  much 
concern'd  at  the  misfortunes  of  this  admirable  hero;  but  take  Hip- 
polytus out  of  his  poetic  fit,  and  I  suppose  he  would  think  it  a  wiser 
part  to  set  the  saddle  on  the  right  horse,  and  choose  rather  to  live 
with  the  reputation  of  a  plain-spoken,  honest  man,  than  to  die  with 
the  infamy  of  an  incestuous  villain.  In  the  meantime  we  may  take 
notice  that  where  the  poet  ought  to  have  preserv'd  the  character 
as  it  was  deliver'd  to  us  by  antiquity,  when  he  should  have  given 
us  the  picture  of  a  rough  young  man,  of  the  Amazonian  strain,  a 
jolly  huntsman,  and  both  by  his  profession  and  his  early  rising 
a  mortal  enemy  to  love,  he  has  chosen  to  give  him  the  turn  of 
gallantry,  sent  him  to  travel  from  Athens  to  Paris,  taught  him 
to  make  love,  and  transformed  the  Hippolytus  of  Euripides  into 
Monsieur  Hippolyte.1 

One  of  the  chief  elements  in  the  genius  of  Shakespeare  is 
his  power  to  transcend  momentary  conventions,  fads,  and 
theories,  and  to  discern  in  his  material,  whether  history  or 
fiction,  eternal  principles  of  conduct.  Thus  he  wrote  for 
all  men  and  for  all  time.  In  Love's  Labor's  Lost  he  wrote  for 
a  special  audience,  appealing  to  its  ideas  of  style  and  humor. 
In  Twelfth  Night  he  let  his  characters  have  full  sway. 
Which  is  the  more  alive  today? 

Nor  is  it  only  the  literary  conventions  of  an  audience 
which  affect  the  problem  of  plausibility  set  an  author.  The 
French  public  of  1841  which  came  to  the  five-act  play  of 
Eugene  Scribe,  Une  Chaine,2  asked,  not  a  convincing  pic- 
ture of  life,  but  mere  entertainment.  Therefore  they  ac- 
cepted insufficient  motivation  and  artificiality  in  handling 
the  scenes.  Louise,  the  wife,  discovering  from  words  of  her 

1  Selected  Dramas  of  John  Dryden,  p.  230.  Preface,  All  for  Love.  G.  B.  Noyes,  ed.  Scott, 
Foresman  &  Co.,  New  York. 
»  T/Udtre,  vol.  u.   Michel  Levy  Freres,  Paris. 


CHARACTERIZATION  263 

husband  as  she  enters  the  room  that  her  former  lover, 
Emmeric,  now  prefers  Aline  to  her,  sits  down  and  dashes 
ned  letter  releasing  him.  Just  why  is  not  clear.  In 
r  that  she  may  do  this  writing  unobserved  by  her  hus- 
!,  two  characters  must,  for  some  time,  be  so  managed 
as  to  stand  between  him  and  her.  In  order  that  the  hus- 
band may  never  know  she  has  been  in  love  with  Emmeric, 
the  letter  must  be  kept  out  of  his  hands,  and  read  only  by 
the  guardian  of  Aline,  Clerambeau.  All  this  requires  con- 
stant artifice.  Sidney  Grundy  made  a  one-act  adaptation  of 
Une  Chaine  called  In  Honor  Bound.1  In  this,  Lady  Carlyon, 
waking  from  sleep  on  the  divan  in  her  husband's  study,  hears, 
Unobserved  by  Philip  and  Sir  George,  the  young  man's  ad- 
mission that  he  no  longer  cares  for  her.  When  her  cry  re- 
veals her,  Sir  George,  her  husband,  thinking  her  unwell,  goes 
to  bring  her  niece,  Rose,  to  her  aid.  Lady  Carlyon  learns 
promptly  from  Philip  that  the  guardian  of  the  girl  he  is 
engaged  to  demands  a  letter  releasing  him  from  any  former 
entanglement.  Lady  Carlyon,  to  cover  her  chagrin,  with 
seeming  willingness  writes  and  signs  a  letter.  Thus  the  writ- 
ing takes  place  when  the  husband  is  off  stage,  and  the  evi- 
dent chagrin  of  Lady  Carlyon  motivates  it  better.  The 
relation  of  the  husband  to  the  letter  is  also  handled  better 
than  in  the  original.  He,  unlike  St.  Geran,  strongly  suspects 
that  his  wife  has  cared  for  the  younger  man.  Lady  Carlyon 
is  unaware  that  Sir  George  is  the  guardian  in  question  and 
that  the  girl  is  her  niece,  Rose.  Consequently  she  lets  slip 
that  Philip  possesses  the  desired  letter.  Sir  George  demands 
it  as  his  right,  noting  her  disturbance  when  she  learns  that 
her  husband  is  involved  in  the  situation.  When  Philip  re- 
fines to  surrender  the  letter,  Sir  George  courteously  permits 
him  to  read  it  aloud.  Just  before  the  signature  is  reached,  he 
stops  Philip,  asking  him  if  the  letter  is  signed.  When  Philip 

1  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston. 


264  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

admits  that  it  is,  Sir  George  insists  on  having  the  letter, 
then,  without  looking  at  it,  burns  it  at  the  lamp  with  words 
of  sympathy  for  the  writer.  All  this  turns  the  husband  in 
this  scene  from  a  mere  lay  figure  into  a  character,  and 
greatly  lessens  the  artificiality  of  the  original.  By  means  of 
better  characterization  a  motivation  fundamentally  more 
plausible  is  provided.  Why?  Because  an  English  audience 
of  1880-90  expected  much  more  probability  in  a  play  than 
did  a  French  or  English  audience  of  1841. 

Of  course,  conduct  initially  unconvincing  may  be  so 
treated  as  to  become  entirely  satisfactory.  One  of  the  de- 
lights in  characterization  is  so  preparing  for  an  exhibition 
of  character  likely  to  seem  unreal  of  itself  that  when  it  is 
presented  it  is  accepted  either  at  once  or  before  the  scene 
closes.  Any  motive  which  a  dramatist  can  make  acceptable 
to  his  audience  is  ultimately  just  as  good  as  one  accepted 
unquestioningly.  Shylock's  demand  for  the  pound  of  flesh 
is  in  itself  unplausible  enough  —  the  act  of  one  demented 
or  insane.  But  Shakespeare's  emphasis  on  his  racial  hate 
lends  it  possibility.  His  presentation  of  the  other  people 
in  the  play  as  accepting  the  bond  with  the  minimum  of 
question  makes  it  seem  probable.  If  a  would-be  dramatist 
were  to  rule  out  as  material  not  to  be  treated  whatever  at 
the  outset  seems  improbable  or  impossible,  think  what  our 
drama  would  lose:  such  plays  as  Faust,  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream,  The  Blue  Bird,  and  even  Hamlet. 

Repeatedly  in  treating  plausibility  it  has  been  implied 
or  stated  that  what  is  said  or  done  must  be  "in charac- 
ter."   This    suggests    another    test    of    good    motivation. 
/What  happens  must  be  plausible,  not  only  in  that  it  ac- 
/  cords  with  known  human  experience,  but  with  what  has 
v    been  done  by  the  character  in  preceding  portions  of  the 
play.  In  The  Masqueraders,  when  Sir  Brice  and  David  stake 
Dulcie  and  her  child  against  the  fortune  of  the  latter,  and 


CHARACTERIZATION  265 

ill  I  urn  upon  a  game  of  cards,  a  reader  is  skeptical,  for 
1   if   it   ho  admitted  that  Sir   Brice   might  do  this,  it 
g  not  accord  with  what  we  know  of  David  from  the 
r  scenes  of  the  play. 

(Exit  Dulric.    The  two  men  are  left  alone.    Another  slight 

pause.  Sir  Brice  walks  very  deliberately  up  to  David. 

The  two  men  stand  close  to  each  other  for  a  moment  or  two.) 

You've  come  to  settle  your  little  account,  I  suppose? 

David.  I  owe  you  nothing. 

But  I  owe  you  six  thousand  pounds.  I  haven't  a  penny 
in  the  world.   I'll  cut  you  for  it,  double  or  quits. 
David.  I  don't  play  cards. 
Sir  Brice.  You'd  better  begin. 

(Rapping  on  the  table  with  the  cards.) 
Darid.  (Very  firmly.)  I  don't  play  cards  with  you. 
Sir  Brice.  And  I  say  you  shall. 

David.  (Very  stern  and  contemptuous.)  I  don't  play  cards  with 
you.  (Going  towards  door  ;  Sir  Brice  following  him  up.) 

Sir  Brice.  You  refuse? 
David.  I  refuse. 

Sir  Brice.  (Stopping  him.)  Once  for  all,  will  you  give  me  a  chance 
of  paying  back  the  six  thousand  pounds  that  Lady  Skene  has  bor- 
rowed from  you?  Yes  or  no? 
David.  No. 
Sir  Brice.  No? 

David.  (Very  emphatically.)  No.  (Goes  to  door,  suddenly  turns 
round,  comes  up  to  him.)  Yes.  (Comes  to  the  table.)  I  do  play  cards 
with  you.  You  want  my  money.  Very  well.  I'll  give  you  a  chance 
of  winning  all  I  have  in  the  world. 

Sir  I) rice.  (After  a  look  of  astonishment.)  Good.  I'm  your  man. 
Any  game  you  like,  and  any  stakes. 

David.  (Very  calm,  cold,  intense  tone  all  through.)  The  stakes  on 
my  side  are  some  two  hundred  thousand  pounds.  The  stakes  on 
side  are  —  your  wife  and  child. 
Sir  Brice.  (Taken  aback.)  My  wife  and  child. 
David.  Your  wife  and  child.    Come  —  begin! 

(Points  to  the  cards.) 
Sir  Brier.  (Getting  flurried.)  My  wife  and  child?  (Puts  his  hand 
ssly  through  his  hair,  looks  intently  at  David.  Pause.)  All  right. 
(Pause.  Cunningly.)  I  value  my  wife  and  child  very  highly. 


266  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

David.  I  value  them  at  all  I  have  in  the  world.  (Pointing  to  the 
cards.)  Begin! 

Sir  Brice.  You  seem  in  a  hurry. 

David.  I  believe  I  haven't  six  months  to  live.  I  want  to  make  the 
most  of  those  six  months.  If  I  have  more  I  want  to  make  the  most 
of  all  the  years.  Begin! 

Sir  Brice.  (Wipes  his  face  with  his  handkerchief.)  This  is  the 
first  time  I've  played  this  game.   We'd  better  arrange  conditions. 

David.  There's  only  one  condition.  We  play  till  I 'm  beggared  of 
every  farthing  I  have,  or  till  you're  beggared  of  them.  Sit  down! 

Sir  Brice.  (Sits  down.)  Very  well.  (Pause.)  What  game? 

David.  The  shortest. 

Sir  Brice.  Simple  cutting? 

David.  WThat  you  please.  Begin ! 

Sir.  Brice.  There's  no  hurry.  I  mean  to  have  a  night's  fun  out 
of  this. 

David.  Look  at  me.  Don't  trifle  with  me!  I  want  to  have  done 
with  you.  I  want  them  to  have  done  with  you.  I  want  to  get  them 
away  from  you.  Quick!  I  want  to  know  now  —  now  —  this  very 
moment  —  whether  they  are  yours  or  mine.  Begin. 

Sir  Brice.  (Shuffles  the  cards.)  All  right.  What  do  we  cut  for? 

David.  Let  one  cut  settle  it. 

Sir  Brice.  No.  It's  too  much  to  risk  on  one  throw. 

David.  One  cut.  Begin. 

Sir  Brice.  It's  too  big.  I  can't.  (Gets  up,  walks  a  pace  or  two.)  I 
like  high  play,  but  that's  too  high  for  me.  (David  remains  at  back  of 
table,  very  calm  ;  does  not  stir  all  through  the  scene ;  Sir  Brice  walking 
about.)  No,  by  Jove!  I'll  tell  you  what  I'll  do.  Three  cuts  out  of 
five.  Damn  it  all!  I'm  game!  Two  out  of  three.  By  Jove,  two  out 
of  three!  Will  that  do? 

David.  So  be  it!  Shuffle.  Sit  down! 

(Sir  Brice  sits  down ;  begins  shuffling  the  cards.  All  through 
the  scene  he  is  nervous,  excited,  hysterical,  laughing.  David 
as  cold  as  a  statue.)1 

An  almost  similar  situation  in  a  play  set  in  a  remote  part 
of  the  West,  Believe  Me,  Xantippe,  is  more  convincing.  A 
loutish  beast  agrees  to  gamble  for  a  woman  he  is  kidnapping 
with  a  young  adventurer  who  sees  at  the  moment  no  other 
way  to  save  her  from  the  other  man's  clutches.  The  scene 

1  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York.   Act  m. 


CHARACTERIZATION  267 

is  not  at  all  improbable  for  either  man.  In  The  Princess  and 
the  Butterfly,  all  the  preceding  acts  are  but  a  preparation  for 
what  the  world  will  call  the  unreason,  in  the  last  act,  of  the 
marriages  of  Sir  George  and  the  Princess  Pannonia,  —  of 
middle  age  with  youth.  Their  final  conduct  would  seem  un- 
plausible  were  it  not  entirely  in  keeping  with  their  characters 
as  carefully  developed  in  the  earlier  parts  of  the  play.  The 
Rising  of  the  Moon  of  Lady  Gregory  shows  a  final  situation 
for  the  Police  Sergeant  which,  at  the  opening  of  the  play, 
would  seem  impossible  for  him.  In  a  few  pages,  however, 
the  dramatist  so  develops  the  character  that  we  are  per- 
fectly ready  to  accept  his  sacrifice  of  the  "hundred  pounds 
reward  "  which  he  so  coveted  at  the  outset. 

Motivation  should  not,  however,  be  allowed  to  obtrude 
itself,  but  should  be  subordinated  to  the  emotional  purpose 
of  the  scene.  The  modern  auditor  prefers  to  gather  it  almost 
unconsciously  as  the  action  of  the  play  proceeds  rather  than 
to  have  it  emphasized  for  him,  as  does  Iago,  at  the  end 
of  several  acts  of  Othello.  Another  instance  of  this  frank 
motivation  among  the  Elizabethans  may  be  found  in  the 
soliloquy  from  The  Duchess  of  Malfi: 

Cardinal.  The  reason  why  I  would  not  suffer  these 
About  my  brother  is  because  at  midnight 
I  may  with  better  privacy  convay 
Julias  body,  to  her  owne  lodging.  O,  my  conscience! 
I  would  pray  now:  but  the  divell  takes  away  my  heart 
For  having  any  confidence  in  praier. 
About  this  hour  I  appointed  Bosola 
To  fetch  the  body:  when  he  hath  serv'd  my  turne, 
He  dies.1 

Good  motivation,  then,  must  be  clear;  either  plausible 
naturally  or  made  so  by  the  art  of  the  dramatist;  should  in 
each  particular  instance  comport  with  the  preceding  actions 
and  speech  of  the  character;  and  should  not  be  so  stressed 

»  Bellet-Lettxes  Series,  p.  373.  M.  W.  Sampson,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston. 


268  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

as  to  draw  attention  away  from  the  emotional  significance 


of  the  scene. 


c 


It  is  by  well-motived  characterization  that  drama  passes 
from  melodrama  to  story-play  and  so  to  tragedy;  or,  from 
the  broadest  farce  or  extravaganza  through  low  comedy  to 
high.  As  long  as  we  care  little  what  the  people  in  our  play 
are,  and  greatly  for  comic  or  serious  happenings,  we  may 
string  situations  together  almost  at  will.  The  moment  that 
our  figures  come  alive,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  selection 
in  our  possible  material  has  begun.  Some  of  the  incidents  in 
our  melodrama  or  broad  farce  will  drop  out  as  wholly  im- 
possible for  these  figures  which  have  come  to  life.  Others 
must  be  modified  if  the  figures  are  to  take  part  in  them. 
Give  a  melodrama  sustaining,  convincing  characterization 
and  it  must  at  least  turn  into  a  story-play,  something  which 
after  a  mingling  of  the  serious  and  the  comic  does  not  end 
tragically.  So  characterize  in  a  story  with  a  serious  ending 
(that  the  tragic  result  develops  inevitably  from  the  sequence 
iQf  preceding  scenes,  and  tragedy  is  born.  Watch  the  way 
in  which  Shakespeare  lifts  the  Hubert  and  Arthur  scene 
of  the  old  play  of  King  John  by  the  infused  characteriza- 
tion. In  the  old  play  the  author  presents  us  with  puppets 
depending  for  their  effect  on  the  contained  horror  of  the 
scene.  Shakespeare  creates  a  winsome,  brave  young  prince, 
and  a  very  human  Hubert.  The  scene  moves  us,  not  simply 
from  our  dread  of  physical  torture,  but  because  of  our  grow- 
ing intense  sympathy  for  the  lad  who  is  fighting  for  his  life. 

ACT  IV.  SCENE  1.  North- 
ampton. A  Room  in  the  castle 

Enter  Hubert  de  Burgh  with  Enter  Hubert  and  two  Attendants 

three  men  Eyh   Heatme  these  irons  hot, 

Hub.  My    masters,    I    have  and  look  thou  stand 

shewed   you   what   warrant   I  Within  the  arras :  when  I  strike 

have  of  this  attempt;  I  perceive  my  foot 


CHARACTERIZATION 


269 


ie   countenances, 
ad  rather  be  otherwise  im- 
bfeyed,  and  for  my  owne  part, 
I   would   the    King   had  made 
•  of  some  other  execution- 
er; ondy   this  is  my  comfort, 
King  commaunds,  whose 
:>ts  neglected  or  omitted, 
kneth  torture  for  the  de- 
fault. Therefore  in  briefe,  leave 
A  be  readie  to  attend  the 
adventure:    stay    within    that 
entry,  and  when  you  hear  me 
crie.  God  save  the  King,  issue 
soda  inly  foorth,  lay  handes  on 
Arthur,  set  him  in  his  chayre, 
wherein  (once  fast  bound)  leave 
him  with  me  to  finish  the  rest. 
ndants.  We  goe,  though 
loath.  (Exeunt.) 

Hub.  My  Lord,  will  it  please 
your  Honour  to  take  the  bene- 
fice of  the  faire  evening? 

Enter  Arthur  to  Hubert  de  Burgh 

Arth.  Gramercie  Hubert  for 

thy  care  of  me, 
In  or  to  whom  restraint  is  newly 

knowen, 
The  jov  of  walking  is  small  bene- 
fit. 
Yet  will  I  take  thy  offer  with 

small  thankes, 
I  would  not  loose  the  pleasure 

of  the  eye. 
But  tell  me  curteous  Keeper  if 

you  can, 
How  long  the  King  will  have  me 

tarrie  here. 
Hub.  I  know  not  Prince,  but 

as  I  gesse,  not  long. 


Upon  the  bosom  of  the  ground, 

rush  forth, 
And  bind  the  boy,  which  you 

shall  find  with  me, 
Fast  to  the  chair:  be  heedful. 
Hence,  and  watch. 
1.  Attend.  I  hope,  your  war- 
rant will  bear  out  the  deed. 
Hub.  Uncleanly  scruples :  fear 
not  you :  look  to't.  — 

{Exeunt  Attendants.) 
Young  lad,  come  forth;  I  have 
to  say  with  you. 

Enter  Arthur 

Arth.  Good  morning,  Hubert. 
Hub.  Good  morrow, 

little  prince. 
Arth.  As  little  prince  (having 

so  great  a  title 
To  be  more  prince,)  as  may  be. 

—  You  are  sad. 
Hub.  Indeed  I  have  been  mer- 
rier. 
Arth.  Mercy  on  me! 
Methinks  nobody  should  be  sad 

but  I: 
Yet,  I  remember,  when  I  was  in 

France, 
Young  gentlemen  would  be  as 

sad  as  night, 
Only  for  wantonness.  By  my 

Christendom, 
So  I  were  out  of  prison  and  kept 

sheep, 
I  should  be  as  merry  as  the  day 

is  long; 
And  so  I  would  be  here,  but  that 

I  doubt 
My  uncle  practises  more  harm 

to  me: 


270 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


God  send  you  freedome,  and 
God  save  the  King. 

{They  issue  forth.) 
Arth.  Why   now   sirs,   what 
may  this  outrage  meane? 

0  help    me     Hubert,    gentle 

Keeper  helpe; 

God  send  this  sodaine  mutinous 
approach 

Tend  not  to  reave  a  wretched 
guiltless  life. 
Hub.  So    sirs,    depart,    and 

leave  the  rest  for  me. 
Arth.    Then    Arthur    yeeld, 
death  f rowneth  in  thy  face, 

What  meane th  this?  Good  Hu- 
bert plead  the  case. 
Hub.    Patience   yong    Lord, 
and  listen  words  of  woe, 

Harmful  and  harsh,  hells  hor- 
ror to  be  heard : 

A  dismall  tale  fit  for  a  furies 
tongue. 

1  faint  to  tell,  deepe  sorrow  is 

the  sound. 
Arth.  What,  must  I  die? 
Hub.  No  newes  of  death,  but 

tidings  of  more  hate, 
A  wrathfull  doome,  and  most 

unluckie  fate: 
Deaths  dish  were  daintie  at  so 

fell  a  feast  J 
Be  deafe,  heare  not,  its  hell  to 

tell  the  rest. 
Arth.  Alas,  thou  wrongst  my 

youth  with  words  of  feare, 
Tis  hell,  tis  horror,  not  for  one 

to  heare: 
What  is  it  man  if  needes  be  don, 
Act  it,  and  end  it,  that  the  paine 

were  gon. 


He  is  afraid  of  me  and  I  of  him. 
Is  it  my  fault  that  I  was  Gef- 
frey's son? 
No,  indeed,  is't  not;  and  I  would 

to  heaven, 
I  were  your  son,  so  you  would 

love  me,  Hubert. 
Hub.  {Aside.)  If   I   talk   to 

him,  with  his  innocent  prate 
He  will  awake  my  mercy,  which 

lies  dead: 
Therefore  I  will  be  sudden,  and 

dispatch. 
Arth.  Are  you  sick,  Hubert? 

you  look  pale  today. 
In  sooth,  I  would  you  were  a 

little  sick; 
That  I  might  sit  all  night,  and 

watch  with  you: 
I  warrant  I  love  you  more  than 

you  do  me. 
Hub.  {Aside.)  His  words  do 

take     possession    of     my 

bosom.  — 
Read  here,  young  Arthur, 

{Showing  a  paper.) 
{Aside.)   How    now,    foolish 

rheum! 
Turning  dispiteous  torture  out 

of  door? 
I  must  be  brief;  lest  resolution 

drop 
Out   at   mine   eyes   in   tender 

womanish  tears. — 
Can  you  read  it?  Is  it  not  fair 

writ? 
Arth.  Too  fairly,  Hubert,  for 

so  foul  effect. 
Must  you  with  hot  irons  burn 

out  both  mine  eyes? 
Hub.  Young  boy,  I  must. 


CHARACTERIZATION 


271 


Hub.  I  will  not  chaunt  such 
dolour  with  my  tongue, 
■11st  I  act  the  outrage  with 
my  hand. 
My  heart,  my  head,  and  all  my 
powers  beside, 

le  the  office  have  at  once 
deride. 

this    Letter,    lines    of 
treble  woe, 
Reade  ore  my  charge,  and 
pardon  when  you  know. 

Hubert,  these  are  to  commaund 
thee,  as  thou  tendrest  our 
quiet  in  minde,  and  the 
estate  of  our  person,  that 
presently  upon  the  receipt 
of  our  commaund,  thou 
put  out  the  eies  of  Arthur 
Plantaginet. 

Arth.  Ah,  monstrous  damned 
man!  his  very  breath  in- 
fects the  elements. 

Contagious  venyme  dwelleth  in 
his  heart; 

Effecting  meanes  to  poyson  all 
the  world. 

Unreverent  may  I  be  to  blame 
the  heavens 

Of  great  injustice,  that  the  mis- 
creant 

Lives  to  oppresse  the  innocents 
with  wrong. 

Ah,  Hubert!  makes  he  thee  his 
instrument, 

To  sound  the  tromp  that 
causeth  hell  triumph? 

Heaven  weepes,  the  6aints  do 
shed  celestiall  teares, 


Arth.  And  will  you? 

Huh.  And  I  will. 

Arth.  Have  you  the  heart? 

When  your  head  did  but 

ache, 
I  knit  my  handkerchief  about 

your  brows, 
(The   best   I   had,   a   princess 

wrought  it  me,) 
And  I  did  never  ask  it  you  again : 
And  with  my  hand  at  midnight 

held  your  head, 
And,  like  the  watchful  minutes 

to  the  hour, 
Still  and  anon  cheer'd  up  the 

heavy  time, 
Saying,   What  lack  you?  and, 

Where  lies  your  grief? 
Or,  What  good  love  may  I  per- 
form for  you? 
Many  a  poor  man's  son  would 

have  lain  still, 
And  ne'er  have  spoken  a  loving 

word  to  you; 
But  you  at  your  sick  service 

had  a  prince. 
Nay  you  may  think  my  love  was 

crafty  love, 
And  call  it  cunning:  do,  an  if 

you  will. 
If  heaven  be  pleas'd  that  you 

will  use  me  ill, 
Why,  then  you  must.  —  Will 

you  put  out  mine  eyes? 
These  eyes  that  never  did,  nor 

never  shall 
So  much  as  frown  on  you? 
Hvb.  I  have 

sworn  to  do  it, 
And  with  hot  irons  must  I  burn 

them  out. 


272 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


They  feare  thy  fall,  and  cyte 
thee  with  remorse, 

To  knock  thy  conscience,  mov- 
ing pitie  there, 

Willing  to  fence  thee  from  the 
range  of  hell, 


Hell,  Hubert,  trust  me  all  the 

plagues  of  hell 
Hangs  on  performance  of  this 

damned  deede. 
This  seale,  the  warrant  of  the 

bodies  blisse, 
Ensureth   Satan   chieftaine   of 

thy  soule: 
Subscribe  not  Hubert,  give  not 

Gods  part  away, 
I  speake  not  only  for  eyes  priv- 

iledge, 
The  chief  e  exterior  that  I  would 

enjoy: 
But  for  they  perill,  farre  be- 
yond my  paine, 
Thy  sweetes  soules  losse,  more 

than  my  eyes  vaine  lack : 
A  cause  internall,  and  eternall 

too, 
Advise  thee  Hubert,  for  the  case 

is  hard, 
To  loose  salvation  for  a  Kings 

reward. 
Hub.  My    Lord,    a    subject 

dwelling  in  the  land 
Is  tyed  to  execute  the  Kings 

commaund. 
Arth.  Yet   God   commaunds 

whose  power  reacheth  fur- 
ther, 


Arth.  Ah!  none  but  in  this 
iron  age  would  do  it. 

The  iron  of  itself,  though  heat 
red-hot, 

Approaching   near   these   eyes 
would  drink  my  tears, 

And  quench  this  fiery  indigna- 
tion, 

Even  in  the  matter  of  mine  in- 
nocence: 

Nay,  after  that,  consume  away 
in  rust, 

But  for  containing  fire  to  harm 
mine  eye. 

Are  you  more  stubborn  hard 
than  hammered  iron? 

An  if  an  angel  should  have  come 
to  me, 

And  told  me  Hubert  should  put 
out  mine  eyes, 

I  would  not  have  believ'd  him; 
no  tongue  but  Hubert's. 
Hub.  Come  forth.    (Stamps.) 

Re-enter  Attendants,  with  Cord, 
Irons,  &c. 

Do  as  I  bid  you  do. 

Arth.  Oh!  save  me,  Hubert, 

save  me!  my  eyes  are  out, 
Even  with  the  fierce  looks  of 

these  bloody  men. 
Hub.  Give  me  the  iron,  I  say, 

and  bind  him  here. 
Arth.  Alas!  what   need   you 

be  so  boisterous-rough? 
I  will  not  struggle;  I  will  stand 

stone-still. 
For  heaven's  sake,  Hubert,  let 

me  not  be  bound. 
Nay,  hear  me    Hubert:  drive 

these  men  away, 


CHARACTERIZATION 


2'/3 


That    do    commaund    should 
md  in  force  to  mnrther. 

Huh.  Hut  that  same  Essence 
hath  ordained  a  law, 
th  for  guilt,  to  keepe  the 

world  in  awe. 

Arth.  I   pleade,  not  guiltie, 

t  reason  1  esse  and  free. 
Huh.  Hut  that  appeale,  my 

•1,  conccrnes  not  me. 
Arth.  Why  thou  art  he  that 

maist  omit  the  perill. 
Huh.    I,    if    my    Soveraigne 

would  remit  his  quarrell. 
Arth.  His  quarrell  is  unlial- 

lowed  false  and  wrong. 
Hub.  Thou  l>e  tlie  blame  to 

whom  it  doth  belong. 
Arth,  Why  thats  to  thee  if 
thou  as  they  proceede, 
Conclude  their  judgement  with 
so  vile  a  deede. 
Hub.  Why  then  no  execution 
can  be  lawfull, 
If  Judges  doomes  must  be  re- 
puted doubtfull. 
Arth.  Yes  where  in  forme  of 
Lawe  in  place  and  time, 
The  offended  is  convicted  of  the 
crime. 
Hub.  My  Lord,  my  Lord,  this 
long  expostulation, 
Heapes   up  more  griefe,   than 

promise  of  redresse; 
For  this  I  know,  and  so  reso- 

lude  I  end, 
That   subjects  lives  on  Kings 

commaunds  depend. 
I  must  not  reason  why  he   is 
your  foe, 


And   I  will  sit  as  quiet   as  a 

lamb; 
I  will  not  stir  nor  wince,  nor 

speak  a  word, 
Nor  look  upon  the  iron  angerly. 
Thrust  but  these  men  away,  and 

I  '11  forgive  you, 
Whatever  torment  you  do  put 
me  to. 
Hub.  Go,  stand   within:   let 

me  alone  with  him. 
1.  Attend.  I  am  best  pleas'd 
to  be  from  such  a  deed. 

{Exeunt  Attendants.) 
Arth.  Alas!  I  then  have  chid 
away  my  friend: 
He  hath  a  stern  look,  but  a  gen- 
tle heart.  — 
Let  him  come  back  that  his  com- 
passion may 
Give  life  to  yours. 
Hub.  Come,  boy, 

prepare  yourself. 
Arth.  Is  there  no  remedy? 
Hub.  None 

but  to  lose  your  eyes. 
Arth.  O  heaven!  —  that  there 
were  but  a  mote  in  yours, 
A  grain,  a  dust,  a  gnat,  a  wan- 
dering hair, 
Any  annoyance  in  that  precious 

sense! 
Then,  feeling  what  small  things 

are  boisterous  there, 
Your   vile   intent   must  needs 
seem  horrible. 
Hub.  Is  this  your  promise?  go 

to;  hold  your  tongue. 
Arth.  Hubert,  the  utterance 
of  a  brace  of  tongues 


274 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


But  doo  his  charge  since  he  com- 
maunds  it  so. 
Arth.  Then  doo  thy  charge, 
and  charged  be  thy  soule 

With  wrongf  ull  persecution  don 
this  day. 

You  rowling  eyes,  whose  super- 
ficies yet 

I  doo  behold  with  eyes  that  Na- 
ture lent: 

Send  foorth  the  terror  of  your 
Moovers  frowne, 

To  wreake  my  wrong  upon  the 
murtherers 

That  rob  me  of  your  faire  re- 
flecting view: 

Let  hell  to  them  (as  earth  they 
wish  to  me) 

Be  darke  and  direfull  guerdon 
for  their  guylt, 

And  let  the  black  tormenters  of 
deepe  Tartary 

Upbraide      them     with      this 
damned  enterprise, 

Inflicting  change  of  tortures  on 
their  soules. 

Delay  not  Hubert,  my  orisons 
are  ended, 

Begin  I  pray  thee,  reave  me  of 
my  sight: 

But  to  performe  a  tragedie  in- 
deede, 

Conclude  the  period  with  a  mor- 
tal stab. 

Constance  farewell,  tormenter 
come  away, 

Make  my  dispatch  the  Tyrants 
feasting  day. 
Hub.  I  faint,  I  feare,  my  con- 
science bids  desist: 


Must  needs  want  pleading  for  a 

pair  of  eyes: 
Let  me  not  hold  my  tongue;  let 

me  not,  Hubert: 
Or  Hubert,  if  you  will,  cut  out 

my  tongue. 
So  I  may  keep  mine  eyes.    0! 

spare  mine  eyes; 
Though  to  no  use,  but  still  to 

look  on  you. 
Lo!  by  my  troth,  the  instrument 

is  cold, 
And  would  not  harm  me. 
Hub.  I  can 

heat  it,  boy. 
Arth.  No,  in  good  sooth;  the 

fire  is  dead  with  grief, 
Being  create  for  comfort,  to  be 

us'd 
In  undeserv'd  extremes:  see  else 

yourself; 
There  is  no  malice  in  this  burn- 
ing coal; 
The    breath    of    heaven    hath 

blown  his  spirit  out, 
And  strew'd  repentant  ashes  on 

his  head. 
Hub.  But  with  my  breath  I 

can  revive  it,  boy. 
Arth.  And  if  you  do,  you  will 

but  make  it  blush, 
And  glow  with  shame  of  your 

proceedings,  Hubert: 
Nay,  it,  perchance,  will  sparkle 

in  your  eyes; 
And  like  a  dog  that  is  com- 

pell'd  to  fight, 
Snatch  at  his  master  that  doth 

tarre  him  on. 
All  things  that  you  should  use 

to  do  me  wrong, 


CHARACTERIZATION 


275 


Faint  did  I  say?  fear  was  it  that 
rned: 

I :  ng  commaunds,  that  war- 

rant  sets  me  free: 
Hut  God  forbids,  and  he  com- 

mandeth  Kings, 
That  great  Commaunder  coun- 

hecks  my  charge. 
He  staves  my  hand,  he  maketh 

my  heart. 
Goe  cursed  tooles,  your  oflfice  is 

exempt, 
CfcMfle  thee  young  Lord,  thou 

shalt  not  loose  an  eye, 
Though  I  should  purchase  it 

with  losse  of  life, 
lie  to  the  King  and  say  his  will 

is  done, 
And  of  the  langor  tell  him  thou 

art  dead, 
Goe  in  with  me,  for  Hubert  was 

not  borne 
To  blinde   those   lampes   that 

nature  pollisht  so. 
Arih.  Hubert,  if  ever  Arthur 

be  in  state, 
Looke  for  amends  of  this  re- 
ceived gift, 
I   tooke  my  eyesight   by  thy 

curtesie, 
Thou  lentst  them  me,  I  will  not 

be  ingrate. 
But  now  procrastination  may 

offend 
The   issue   that   thy   kindness 

undertakes: 
Depart  we  Hubert,  to  prevent 

the  worst.  (Exeunt.)1 


Deny  their  office:  only  you  do 
lack 

That  mercy,  which  fierce  fire, 
and  iron,  extends, 

Creatures  of   note  for  mercy- 
lacking  uses. 
Hub.  Well,  see  to  live;  I  will 
not  touch  thine  eyes 

For  all  the  treasures  that  thine 
uncle  owes: 

Yet  I  am  sworn,  and  I  did  pur- 
pose, boy, 

With  this  same  very  iron  to 
burn  them  out. 
Arih.  0!  now  you  look  like 
Hubert;  all  this  while 

You  were  disguised. 

Hubert.  Peace!  no  more. 

Adieu. 

Your  uncle  must  not  know  but 
you  are  dead : 

I'll  fill  these  dogged  spies  with 
false  reports; 

And  pretty  child,  sleep  doubt- 
less, and  secure, 

That  Hubert  for  the  wealth  of 
all  the  world 

Will  not  offend  thee. 

Arih.  O  heaven!  — 

I  thank  you,  Hubert. 
Hub.  Silence!  no  more.    Go 
closely  in  with  me; 

Much  danger  do  I  undergo  for 
thee.  (Exeunt.) 


8hak*rp«tre'$  Library,  vol.  v,  pp.  *67-«71.  W.  C.  Hailitt.  «A 


276  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

For  further  illustration  of  Shakespeare's  clear  under- 
standing that  the  emotions  of  well-characterized  figures  are 
better  means  of  controlling  an  audience  than  a  merely 
horrific  situation,  study  his  handling  of  the  ghost  scene  in 
Richard  III  or  Julius  Caesar  in  contrast  with  similar  places 
in  Hamlet.  What  most  transmuted  the  Ur-Hamlet  of  Thomas 
Kyd  into  one  of  the  greatest  tragedies  of  all  time  was  the 
characterization  Shakespeare  put  into  it.  Certainly,  char- 
acterization makes  for  dramatists  the  stepping-stones  on 
which  they  may  rise  from  dead  selves  to  higher  things. 

How  may  all  this  needed  characterization  best  be  done? 
A  dramatist  should  not  permit  himself  to  describe  his  char- 
acters, for  in  his  own  personality  he  has  no  proper  place  in 
the  text.  There  the  characters  must  speak  and  act  for  them- 
selves. There  has  been,  however,  an  increasing  tendency 
lately  to  describe  the  dramatis  persona?  of  the  play  in  pro- 
grams, either  in  the  list  of  characters  or  in  a  summary  of  the 
plot.  Some  writers  apparently  assume  that  every  auditor 
reads  his  program  carefully  before  the  curtain  goes  up. 
Such  an  assumption  is  false:  more  than  that  it  is  lazy,  in- 
competent, and  thoroughly  vicious,  putting  a  play  on  the 
level  with  the  motion  pictures,  which  cannot  depend  wholly 
on  themselves  but  would  often  be  wholly  vague  without 
explanatory  words  thrown  upon  the  canvas.  Nor  can  the 
practice  of  the  older  dramatists  like  Wycherley  and  Shad- 
well,  who  often  prefixed  to  their  printed  plays  elaborate 
summaries  describing  the  dramatis  personce,  be  cited  as  a 
final  defense. 

Sir  William  Belfond,  a  Gentleman  of  above  3,000  per  annum,  who 
in  his  youth  had  been  a  spark  of  the  town,  but  married  and  re- 
tired into  the  country,  where  he  turned  to  the  other  extreme, 
rigid  and  morose,  most  sordidly  covetous,  clownish,  obstinate, 
positive,  and  froward. 

Sir  Edward  Belfond,  his  Brother,  a  merchant,  who  by  lucky  hits 
had  gotten  a  great  estate,  lives  single,  with  ease  and  pleasure, 


CHARACTERIZATION  277 

reasonably  and  virtuously.  A  man  of  great  humanity  and  gen- 
>s  and    compassion   towards  mankind;  will  read  in  good 
Is  |M>ssesscd  with  all  gentleman-like  qualities. 

Belfond.  S.-ui-.r.  eldest  son  to  Sir  William;  bred  after  his  father's 

rustic  swinish  manner,  with  great  rigour  and  severity;  upon 

whom  his  father's  estate  is  entailed;  the  confidence  of  which 

makes  him  break  out  into  open  rebellion  to  his  father,  and  be- 

lewd,  abominably  vicious,  stubborn,  and  obstinate. 

rid,  Junior,  second  Son  to  Sir  William;  adopted  by  Sir  Ed- 
ward, and  bred  from  his  childhood  by  him,  with  all  tenderness, 
and  familiarity,  and  bounty,  and  liberty  that  can  be,  instructed 
in  all  the  liberal  sciences,  and  in  all  gentlemanlike  education. 
what  given  to  women,  and  now  and  then  to  good  fellowship, 
but  an  ingenious,  well-accomplished  gentleman:  a  man  of  honour, 
and  of  excellent  disposition  and  temper. 

Truman,  his  friend,  a  man  of  honour  and  fortune. 

Cheat ly,  a  rascal,  who  by  reason  of  debts  dares  not  stir  out  of 
Whitefriars,  but  there  inveigles  young  heirs  in  tail,  and  helps 
them  to  goods  and  money  upon  great  disadvantages;  is  bound 
for  them,  and  shares  with  them,  till  he  undoes  them.  A  lewd, 
impudent,  debauched  fellow,  very  expert  in  the  cant  about  town. 

Shamwell,  cousin  to  the  Belfonds,  an  heir,  who  being  ruined  by 
Cheatly.  is  made  a  decoy-duck  for  others;  not  daring  to  stir 
out  of  Alsatia,  where  he  lives.  Is  bound  with  Cheatly  for  heirs, 
and  lives  upon  them  a  dissolute,  debauched  life. 

Captain  Hackum,  a  blockhead ed  bully  of  Alsatia;  a  cowardly,  im- 
pudent, blustering  fellow;  formerly  a  sergeant  in  Flanders,  run 
from  his  colours,  retreated  into  Whitefriars  for  a  very  small  debt, 
where,  by  the  Alsatians,  he  is  dubbed  a  captain;  marries  one 
that  lets  lodgings,  sells  cherry  brandy,  and  is  a  bawd. 

Scrapeall,  a  hypocritical,  repeating,  praying,  psalm-singing,  pre- 

e  fellow,  pretending  to  great  piety,  a  godly  knave,  who  joins 

with  Cheatly,  and  supplies  young  heirs  with  goods  and  money. 

rney  to  Sir  William  Belfond,  who  solicits  his  business  and 
receives  all  his  packets. 

Lolpoop,  a  North-country  fellow,  servant  to  Belfond,  Senior,  much 
displeased  at  his  master's  proceedings.1 

1  Squire  of  AUatia.  Mermaid  Seri«s.  G.  Saintsbury,  ed.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


278  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

It  is  more  than  doubtful  if  anything  so  elaborate  could  be 
found  in  the  manuscripts  of  Wycherley  and  Shadwell.  Their 
purpose  was  doubtless  the  same  as  that  of  certain  modern 
dramatists  who,  with  a  view  to  making  plays  less  difficult 
for  those  unaccustomed  to  reading  them,  greatly  amplify 
the  stage  directions  before  their  plays  go  to  print.  Mr. 
Granville  Barker  in  the  manuscripts  of  his  plays  is  particu- 
larly frugal  of  stage  directions,  but  in  the  printed  form  of 
The  Madras  House,1  practically  the  whole  history  of  Julia  is 
given  in  the  opening  stage  direction: 

Julia  started  life  —  that  is  to  say,  left  school  —  as  a  genius.  The 
head  mistress  had  had  two  or  three  years  of  such  dull  girls  that  really 
she  could  not  resist  this  excitement.  Watercolour  sketches  were  the  me- 
dium. So  Julia  was  dressed  in  brown  velveteen,  and  sent  to  an  art  school, 
where  they  wouldn't  let  her  do  watercolour  drawing  at  all.  And  in  two 
years  she  learnt  enough  about  the  trade  of  an  artist  not  ever  to  want  to 
do  those  watercolour  drawings  again.  Julia  is  now  over  thirty,  and 
very  unhappy.  Three  of  her  watercolours  {early  masterpieces)  hang 
on  the  drawing-room  wall.  They  shame  her,  but  her  mother  won't  have 
them  taken  down.  On  a  holiday  she'll  be  off  now  and  then  for  a  solid 
day's  sketching ;  and  as  she  tears  up  the  vain  attempt  to  put  on  paper 
the  things  she  has  learnt  to  see,  she  sometimes  cries.  It  was  Julia, 
Emma,  and  Jane  who,  some  years  ago,  conspired  to  present  their 
motlier  with  that  intensely  conspicuous  cosy  corner.  A  cosy  corner  is 
apparently  a  device  for  making  a  corner  just  what  the  very  nature  of  a 
corner  should  forbid  it  to  be.  They  beggared  themselves;  but  one  wishes 
that  Mr.  Huxtable  were  more  lavish  with  his  dress  allowances,  then 
they  might  at  least  have  afforded  something  not  quite  so  hideous. 

Such  characterizing  is  an  implied  censure  on  the  ability 
of  most  readers  to  see  the  full  significance  of  deft  touches  in 
the  dialogue.  If  not,  then  it  is  necessary  because  some  part 
of  it  is  not  given  in  the  text  as  it  should  be,  or  it  is  wholly 
unnecessary  and  undesirable,  for  the  text,  repeating  all  this 
detail,  will  be  wearisome  to  an  intelligent  reader.  The  safest 
principle  is,  in  preparing  a  manuscript  for  acting,  to  keep 

*  Mitchell  Kennerley,  New  York. 


CHARACTERIZATION  279 

p  directions  to  matters  of  setting,  lighting,  essential 
ements,  and  the  intonations  which  cannot,  by  the  ut- 
t  efforts  of  the  author,  be  conveyed  by  dialogue.1  In 
this  la^t  group  belong  certain  every-day  phrases  susceptible 
of  so  many  shadings  that  the  actor  needs  guidance.  In  the 
last  line  of  this  extract  from  the  opening  of  Act  III  of  Mrs- 
Dane  s  Defence,  the  "tenderly"  is  necessary. 

Enter  Wilson  rigltf,  announcing  Lady  Eastney.  Enter  Lady 
Eastney.  Exit  Wilson. 

Lady  Eastney.  (Shaking  hands.)  You're  busy? 

Sir  Daniel.  Yes,  trying  to  persuade  myself  I  am  forty  —  solely 
on  your  account. 

Lady  Eastney.  That's  not  necessary.  I  like  you  well  enough  as 
you  are. 

Sir  Daniel.  (Tenderly.)  Give  me  the  best  proof  of  that. 

Notice  that  the  statement  just  formulated  as  to  stage 
directions  reads,  "cannot  be  conveyed,"  not  "may  not." 
Cross  the  line,  and  differences  between  the  novel  and  the 
play  are  blurred,  for  the  author  runs  a  fair  chance  of  omit- 
ting exposition  needed  in  the  text  and  of  writing  colorless 
dialogue.  A  recently  published  play  prefaces  not  only  every 
speech,  but  even  parts  of  the  speeches  with  careful  state- 
ments as  to  how  they  should  be  given,  even  when  the  text 
is  perfectly  clear.  Nothing  is  left  to  the  imagination,  and 
the  text  is  often  emotionally  colorless. 

Let  it  be  remembered,  then,  that  the  stage  direction  is  not 
a  pocket  into  which  a  dramatist  may  stuff  whatever  expla- 
nation, description,  or  analysis  a  novelist  might  allow  him- 
self, but  is  more  a  last  resort  to  which  he  turns  when  he 
cannot  make  his  text  convey  all  that  is  necessary. 

F™ie  passing  of  the  soliloquy  and  the  aside2  makes  the 
atist  of  today  much  more  limited  than  were  his  prede- 
1  For  illustration  of  good  work,  see  pp.  45-26,  36,  49,  162,  174,  181,  180. 
1  See  for  discussion  of  these,  pp.  S82-96. 


280  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Ccessors  in  letting  a  character  describe  itself.  Today  every- 
thing depends  on  the  naturalness  of  the  self -exposition.  The 
vainglorious,  the  self -centered,  the  garrulous  will  always  talk 
of  themselves  freely.  The  reserved,  the  timid,  and  persons 
under  suspicion  will  be  sparing  of  words.  When  the  ingenu- 
ity of  the  dramatist  cannot  make  self -exposition  plausible, 
the  scene  promptly  becomes  unreal.  The  point  to  be  remem- 
bered is,  as  George  Meredith  once  said,  that  "The  verdict 

/is  with  the  observer."    Not  what  seems  plausible  to  the 
author  but  what,  as  he  tries  it  on  auditors,  proves  accept- 

\able,  may  stand. 

Description  of  one  character  by  another  is  usually  more 
plausible  than  the  method  just  treated.  Even  here,  how- 
ever, the  test  remains  plausibility.  It  requires  persuasive 
acting  to  make  the  following  description  of  Tartuffe  per- 
fectly natural.  There  is  danger  that  it  will  appear  more  the 
detailed  picture  the  dramatist  wishes  to  place  in  our  minds 
than  the  description  the  speaker  would  naturally  give  his 
listeners : 

Organ.  Ah!  If  you'd  seen  him,  as  I  saw  him  first, 
You  would  have  loved  him  just  as  much  as  I. 
He  came  to  church  each  day,  with  contrite  mien, 
Kneeled,  on  both  knees,  right  opposite  my  place, 
And  drew  the  eyes  of  all  the  congregation, 
To  watch  the  fervor  of  his  prayers  to  heaven; 
With  deep-drawn  sighs  and  great  ejaculations. 
He  humbly  kissed  the  earth  at  every  moment; 
And  when  I  left  the  church,  he  ran  before  me 
To  give  me  holy  water  at  the  door. 
I  learned  his  poverty,  and  who  he  was, 
By  questioning  his  servant,  who  is  like  him, 
And  gave  him  gifts;  but  in  his  modesty 
He  always  wanted  to  return  a  part. 
"It  is  too  much,"  he'd  say,  "too  much  by  half? 
I  am  not  worthy  of  your  pity."  Then, 
When  I  refused  to  take  it  back,  he'd  go, 
Before  my  eyes,  and  give  it  to  the  poor. 


CHARACTERIZATION  281 

At  length  Heaven  bade  me  take  him  to  my  home, 

si  nee  that  day,  all  seems  to  prosper  here. 
II    censures  nothing,  and  for  my  sake 
H<  even  takes  great  interest  in  my  wife; 
II(  leta  me  know  who  ogles  her,  and  seems 

times  as  jealous  as  I  am  myself. 
You'd  not  believe  how  far  his  zeal  can  go: 
He  calls  himself  a  sinner  just  for  trifles; 
The  merest  nothing  is  enough  to  shock  him; 
So  much  so,  that  the  other  day  I  heard  him 
Accuse  himself  for  having,  while  at  prayer, 
In  too  much  anger  caught  and  killed  a  flea.1 

The  scene  in  which  Melantius  draws  from  his  friend 
Amintor  {The  Maid's  Tragedy,  Act  in,  Scene  2)  admission 
of  his  wrongs,  shows  admirable  use  of  both  kinds  of  descrip- 
tion —  of  oneself  and  of  another  person. 

Melantius.  You  may  shape,  Amintor, 

Causes  to  cozen  the  whole  world  withall, 
And  you  yourself e  too;  but  tis  not  like  a  friend 
To  hide  your  soule  from  me.  Tis  not  your  nature 
To  be  thus  idle:  I  have  seene  you  stand 
As  you  were  blasted  midst  of  all  your  mirth; 
Call  thrice  aloud,  and  then  start,  faining  joy 
So  coldly!  —  World,  what  doe  I  here?  a  friend 
Is  nothing!  Heaven,  I  would  ha  told  that  man 
My  secret  sinnes!  lie  search  an  unknowne  land, 
And  there  plant  friendship;  all  is  withered  here. 
Come  with  a  complement!  I  would  have  fought, 
Or  told  my  friend  a  lie,  ere  soothed  him  so. 
Out  of  my  bosome! 

Amintor.  But  there  is  nothing. 

Mel.  Worse  and  worse!  farewell. 

From  this  time  have  acquaintance,  but  no  friend. 

Amin.  Melantius,  stay;  you  shall  know  what  that  is. 

Mel.  See;  how  you  plaid  with  friendship!  be  advis'd 
How  you  give  cause  unto  yourselfe  to  say 
You  ha  lost  a  friend. 

1  Tartufe,  Act  i.  Chief  European  DramatieU.  Brander  Matthews,  ed.  Houghton  Mifflin 
Co^  Boston. 


282  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Amin.  Forgive  what  I  ha  done; 

For  I  am  so  oregone  with  injuries 
Unheard  of,  that  I  lose  consideration 
Of  what  I  ought  to  doe.  —  Oh!  —  Oh! 

Mel.  Doe  not  weepe. 
What  ist?   May  I  once  but  know  the  man 
Hath  turn'd  my  friend  thus! 

Amin.  I  had  spoke  at  first, 

But  that  — 

Mel.  But  what? 

Amin.  I  held  it  most  unfit 

For  you  to  know.  Faith,  doe  not  know  it  yet. 

Mel.  Thou  seest  my  love,  that  will  keepe  company 
With  thee  in  teares;  hide  nothing,  then,  from  me; 
For  when  I  know  the  cause  of  thy  distemper, 
With  mine  old  armour  He  adorn  myselfe, 
My  resolution,  and  cut  through  my  foes, 
Unto  thy  quiet,  till  I  place  thy  heart 
As  peaceable  as  spotless  innocence. 
What  is  it? 

Amin.       Why,  tis  this  —  it  is  too  bigge 
To  get  out  —  let  my  teares  make  way  awhile. 

Mel.  Punish  me  strangely,  Heaven,  if  he  escape 
Of  life  or  fame,  that  brought  this  youth  to  this.1 

The  cry  with  which  Electra  turns  to  her  peasant  husband 
in  the  play  of  Euripides  is  perhaps  as  fine  an  instance  as 
there  is  of  natural  description  by  one  person  of  her  relations 
to  another. 

Peasant.  What  wouldst  thou  now,  my  sad  one,  ever  fraught 
With  toil  to  lighten  my  toil?  And  so  soft 
Thy  nurture  was!  Have  I  not  chid  thee  oft, 
And  thou  wilt  cease  not,  serving  without  end? 

Electra.  {Turning  to  him  with  impulsive  affection.)  0  friend, 
my  friend,  as  God  might  be  my  friend, 
Thou  only  hast  not  trampled  on  my  tears. 
Life  scarce  can  be  so  hard,  'mid  many  fears 
And  many  shames,  when  mortal  heart  can  find 
Somewhere  one  healing  touch,  as  my  sick  mind 
1  Act  in,  Scene  2.  Belles-Lettres  Series.  A.  H.  Thorndike,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co. 


CHARACTERIZATION  283 

Finds  thee.  .  .  .  And  should  I  wait  thy  word,  to  endure 
A  little  f.»r  thine  easing,  yea,  or  ixmr 

strength  out  in  thy  toiling  fellowship? 
1  hast  enough  with  fields  and  kine  to  keep; 
mine  to  make  all  bright  within  the  door. 
•v  to  him  that  toils,  when  toil  is  o'er, 
To  find  home  waiting,  full  of  happy  things. 
Peasant.  If  so  it  please  thee,  go  thy  way.1 

Unquestionably,  however,  the  best  method  of  characteri- 
zation is  by  action.  In  the  first  draft  of  Ibsen's  A  DolVs 
i\rogstad  uses  with  his  employer  Helmar,  because  he 
is  an  old  school  fellow,  the  familiar  "tu."  This  under  the 
circumstance  illustrates  his  tactlessness  better  than  any 
amount  of  description.  When  Helmar  is  irritated  by  this 
familiarity,  his  petty  vanity  is  perfectly  illustrated.  Any 
one  who  recalls  the  last  scene  of  Louis  XI  as  played  by  the 
late  Sir  Henry  Irving  remembers  vividly  the  restless,  greed- 
ily moving  fingers  of  the  praying  King.  They  told  far  more 
than  words.  The  way  in  which  Mrs.  Lindon,  throughout 
the  opening  scene  of  Clyde  Fitch's  The  Truth,11  touches  any 
small  article  she  finds  in  her  way  perfectly  indicates  her 
fluttering  nervousness. 

At  Mrs.  Warder's.  .  .  .  A  smart,  good-looking  man-servant,  Jenks, 
shows  in  Mrs.  Lindon  and  Laura  Fraser.  The  former  is  a  handsome, 
nervous,  overstrung  woman  of  about  thirty-four,  very  fashionably 
dressed;  Miss  Fraser,  on  the  contrary,  a  matter-of-fact,  rather  com- 
monplace type  of  good  humor  —  wholesomeness  united  to  a  kind  of 
sense  of  humor.  .  .  . 

Mrs.  Lindon  nervously  picks  up  check-book  from  the  writing-table, 
looks  at  it  but  not  in  it,  and  puts  it  down.  .  .  . 

She  opens  the  cigar  box  on  the  writing-table  behind  her  and  then 
bangs  it  shut.  .  .  . 

She  picks  up  stamp  box  and  bangs  it  down. 

Rises  and  goes  to  mantel,  looking  at  the  fly-leaves  of  two  books  on  a 
table  which  she  passes. 

1  Act  1.  Tr.  Gilbert  Murray.  Geo.  Allen  &  Sons,  London.         *  The  MacmilUn  Co.,N.Y. 


284  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Does  not  the  action  of  this  extract  from  Middleton's 
A  Chaste  Maid  in  Cheapside  help  most  in  depicting  the 
greed  and  dishonesty  of  Yellowhammer,  as  well  as  the 
humor  and  ingenuity  of  the  suitor? 

Touchwood  junior.   (Aside.)   'Twere  a  good  mirth  now  to  set 
him  a- work 
To  make  her  wedding-ring;  I  must  about  it: 
Rather  than  the  gain  should  fall  to  a  stranger, 
'Twas  honesty  in  me  t'  enrich  my  father. 

YeUowhammer.  (Aside.)  The  girl  is  wondrous  peevish.    I  fear 
nothing 
But  that  she 's  taken  with  some  other  love, 
Then  all's  quite  dashed:  that  must  be  narrowly  looked  to; 
We  cannot  be  too  wary  in  our  children.  — 
What  is't  you  lack? 

Touch,  jun.  O,  nothing  now;  all  that  I  wish  is  present: 
I'd  have  a  wedding-ring  made  for  a  gentlewoman 
With  all  speed  that  may  be. 

Yel.    Of  what  weight,  sir? 

Touch,  jun.  Of  some  half  ounce,  stand  fair 
And  comely  with  the  spark  of  a  diamond; 
Sir,  'twere  pity  to  lose  the  least  grace. 

Yel.  Pray,  let's  see  it.     (Takes  stone  from  Touchwood  junior.) 
Indeed,  sir  'tis  a  pure  one. 

Touch,  jun.  So  is  the  mistress. 

Yel.  Have  you  the  wideness  of  her  finger,  sir? 

Touch,  jun.  Yes,  sure,  I  think  I  have  her  measure  about  me: 
Good  faith,  'tis  down,  I  cannot  show  it  to  you; 
I  must  pull  too  many  things  out  to  be  certain. 
Let  me  see  —  long  and  slender,  and  neatly  jointed; 
Just  such  another  gentlewoman  —  that's  your  daughter,  sir? 

Yel.  And  therefore,  sir,  no  gentlewoman. 

Touch,  jun.  I  protest. 
I  ne'er  saw  two  maids  handed  more  alike; 
I'll  ne'er  seek  farther,  if  you  '11  give  me  leave,  sir. 

Yel.  If  you  dare  venture  by  her  finger,  sir. 

Touch,  jun.  Ay,  and  I'll  bide  all  loss,  sir. 

Yel.  Say  you  so,  sir? 
Let  us  see.  —  Hither,  girl. 


CHARACTERIZATION  285 

Touch,  jun.  Shall  I  main  i>old 
With  vour  finger,  gentlewoman? 

Ifoff,  Vour  pleasure,  >ir. 

Touch,  jun.  That  fits  her  to  a  hair,  sir. 

(Trying  ring  on  MoWs  finger.) 

}*</.  What's  your  posy,  now,  sir? 

Touch,  jun.  Mass,  that's  true:  posy?  i'faith,  e'en  thus,  sir: 
"Love  that's  wise 
Blinds  parents'  eyes." 

Pat  How,  how?  if  I  may  speak  without  offence,  sir,  I  hold 
my  life  — 

Touch,  jun.  What,  sir? 

Fat.  Go  to,  —  you'll  pardon  me? 

Touch,  jun.  Pardon  you?  ay,  sir. 

}>/.  Will  you,  i'  faith? 

Touch,  jun.  Yes,  faith,  I  will. 

Ytl.  You'll  steal  away  some  man's  daughter:  am  I  near  you? 
Do  you  turn  aside?  you  gentlemen  are  mad  wags! 
I  wonder  things  can  be  so  warily  carried, 
And  parents  blinded  so:  but  they're  served  right, 
That  have  two  eyes  and  were  so  dull  a'  sight. 

Touch,  jun.  (Aside.)  Thy  doom  take  hold  of  thee! 

}'<•/.  Tomorrow  noon 
Shall  show  your  ring  well  done. 

Touch,  jun.  Being  so,  'tis  soon.  — 
Thanks,  and  your  leave,  sweet  gentlewoman. 

Moll.  Sir,  you're  welcome.  — 

(Exit  Touchwood  junior.) 
0  were  I  made  of  wishes,  I  went  with  thee!1 

Could  any  description  or  analysis  by  the  author  or  another 
character  paint  as  perfectly  as  does  the  action  of  the  follow- 
ing lines  the  wistful  grief  of  the  child  pining  for  his  mother? 

Enter  Giovanni,  Count  Lodovico. 

Francisco.  How  now,  my  noble  cossin!  what,  in  blacke? 

Giovanni.  Yes,  unckle,  I  was  taught  to  imitate  you 
In  vertue,  and  you  must  imitate  mee 
In  coloures  of  your  garments:  my  sweete  mother 
Is  — 

1  Mermaid  Series.    Vol.  1,  Act.  1,  Scene  1.  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


286  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Fran.  How?  where? 

Giov.  Is  there;  no,  yonder;  indeed,  sir,  He  not  tell  you, 
For  I  shall  make  you  weepe. 

Fran.  Is  dead. 

Giov.  Do  not  blame  me  now, 
I  did  not  tell  you  so. 

Lodovico.  She's  dead,  my  lord. 

Fran.  Dead! 

Monticelso.  Blessed  lady;  thou  art  now  above  thy  woes! 
Wilt  please  your  lordships  to  withdraw  a  little? 

(Exeunt  Ambassadors.) 

Giov.  What  do  the  deade  do,  uncie?  do  they  eate, 
Heare  musicke,  goe  a  hunting,  and  bee  merrie, 
As  wee  that  live? 

Fran.  No,  cose;  they  sleepe. 

Giov.  Lord,  Lord,  that  I  were  dead! 

I  have  not  slept  these  sixe  nights.   When  doe  they  wake? 

Fran.  When  God  shall  please. 

Giov.  Good  God  let  her  sleepe  ever! 

For  I  have  knowne  her  wake  an  hundredth  nights, 
When  all  the  pillow,  where  she  laid  her  head, 
Was  brine-wet  with  her  teares.   I  am  to  complaine  to  you,  sir. 
He  tell  you  how  they  have  used  her  now  shees  dead: 
They  wrapt  her  in  a  cruell  fould  of  lead, 
And  would  not  let  me  kisse  her. 

Fran.  Thou  didst  love  her. 

Giov.  I  have  often  heard  her  say  she  gave  mee  sucke, 
And  it  would  seeme  by  that  shee  deerely  lov'd  mee 
Since  princes  seldome  doe  it. 

Fran.  O,  all  of  my  poore  sister  that  remaines! 
Take  him  away,  for  Gods  sake! 

(Exeunt  Giovanni,  Lodovico,  and  Mar  cello.)1 

In  brief,  then,  understand  your  characters  thoroughly, 

but  do  not,  in  your  own  personality,  describe  them  any- 

/   where.    Let  them  describe  themselves,  or  let  other  people 

\    on  the  stage  describe  or  analyze  them,  when  this  is  naturally 

convincing  or  may  be  made  plausible  by  your  skill.  Trust, 

*  Vittoria  Corambona,  Act  in,  Sc.  2.  Webster.  Belles-Lettres  Series.  M.  W.  Sampson,  ed. 
D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  New  York. 


CHARACTERIZATION  287 

ever,  above  all,  to  letting  your  characters  live  before 

e  the  emotions  which  interest  you,  thus  making 

mvey  their  characters  by  the  best  means  of  com- 

■nmication  tatween  actor  and  audience  —  namely,  action. 

In  the  chapter  (VI)  dealing  with  clearness  in  exposition 

•  me  importance  of  identifying  the  characters  for 

the  audience  has  been  carefully  treated.1  Closely  connected 

with  this  identifying  is  the  matter  of  entrances  and  exits. 

characterizing  value  of  exits  and  entrances  is  usually 
little  understood  by  the  inexperienced  dramatist.    Yet  in 
life,  men  and  women  cannot  enter  or  leave  a  room  with- 
out characterization.    Watch  the  people  in  a  railroad  car 
rs  the  terminus.  The  people  who  rise  and  stand  in 
the  aisles  are  clearly  of  different  natures  from  those  who 
tin  quietly  seated  till  the  train  reaches  its  destination. 
The  twenty  or  thirty  standing  wait  differently  and  leave 
the  car  with  different  degrees  of  haste,  nervousness  or  antici- 
pation.   Those  who  remain  seated  differ  also.    Some  are 
absorbed  in  conversation,  oblivious  of  the  approaching  sta- 
;  others,  somewhat  ostentatiously,  watch  the  waiters  in 
s  with  amused  contempt.    Study,  therefore,  exits 
and  entrances.  Very  few  will  be  found  negative  in  the  sense 
that  they  add  nothing  to  the  knowledge  of  the  characters. 
How  did  Claude  enter  in  the  following  extract  from  a  recent 
?    Claude,  it  should  be  said,  has  been  mentioned  just 
in  passing,  as  a  suitor  of  Marna.   Other  matters,  however, 
have  been  occupying  attention. 

Enter  Claude 

Claude.  (Sitting  beside  her  on  the  settle.)  I  thought  I  should 
not  see  you  tonight. 

Marna.  I  wondered  if  you  would  come. 

Claude  must  really  have  entered  in  character  —  quickly, 
impetuously,  or  ardently.  He  may  have  paused  an  instant 

I  See  pp.  154-161. 


288  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

on  the  threshold;  he  may  have  dashed  in,  leaving  the  door 
ajar;  he  may  have  closed  it  cautiously;  he  may  have  come 
in  through  the  window.  And  how  did  they  get  to  the  settle? 
The  author  may  know  all  this,  but  he  certainly  does  not 
tell.  He  should  visualize  his  figures  as  he  writes,  seeing  them 
from  moment  to  moment  as  they  move,  sit,  or  stand. 
Otherwise,  he  will  miss  much  that  is  significant  and  char- 
acterizing in  their  actions. 

In  a  play  that  was  largely  a  study  of  a  self-indulgent,  self- 
centred  youth,  to  the  annoyance  of  all  he  is  late  at  the 
family  celebration  of  his  cousin's  birthday.  Sauntering  in, 
he  meets  a  disappointing  silence.  Looking  about,  he  says, 
"Nobody  has  missed  me."  And  then,  as  all  wait  for  his 
excuses,  he  shifts  the  burden  of  speech  to  his  mother  with 
the  words,  "Hasn't  her  ladyship  anything  to  say?"  Surely 
this  entrance  characterizes. 

Illusion  disappears,  also,  when  people  needed  on  the  stage, 
from  taxi-cab  drivers  to  ambassadors,  are  apparently  wait- 
ing just  outside  the  door.  A  play  of  very  interesting  sub- 
ject-matter became  almost  ridiculous  because  whenever 
anybody  was  needed,  he  or  she  was  apparently  waiting  just 
outside  one  of  the  doors.  As  some  of  these  were  persons  in- 
volved in  affairs  of  state  and  others  supposedly  lived  at  a 
distance,  their  prompt  appearance  partook  of  wizardry. 
People  should  not  only  come  on  in  character,  but  after  time 
enough  has  been  allowed  or  suggested  to  permit  them  to 
come  from  the  places  where  they  are  supposed  to  have 
been. 
/   How  much  the  entrance  of  a  character  should  be  pre- 

/  pared  for  must  be  left  to  the  judgment  of  the  dramatist. 
Whatever  is  needed  to  make  the  entrance  produce  the  effect 

\  desired  must  be  planted  in  the  minds  of  the  audience  before 
^he  character  appears.  Phormio,  in  Terence's  play  of  that 
name,  does  not  appear  before  the  second  act.    His  entrance 


CHARACTERIZATION  289 

As  undoubtedly  held  back  both  to  whet  curiosity  to  the 
(utmost  before  he  appears,  and  in  order  to  set  forth  clearly 
The  tangle  of  events  which  his  ingenuity  must  overcome. 
Mugda,  in  Sudermann's  lleimaU  also  appears  first  in  the 
»nd  act.  This  is  not  done  because  some  leading  lady 
wished  to  make  as  triumphant  an  entrance  as  possible,  an 
inartistic  but  time-honored  reason  in  some  plays,  but  be- 
et use,  till  we  have  lived  with  Magda's  family  in  the  home 
from  which  she  was  driven  by  her  father's  narrowness  and 
inflexibility,  we  cannot  grasp  the  full  significance  of  her 
character  in  this  environment  when  she  returns.  Usually, 
of  course,  a  character  of  importance  does  appear  in  the  first 
act,  but  naturalness  first  and  theatrical  effectiveness  second 
determine  the  point  at  which  it  is  proper  that  a  character 
should  appear.  The  supposed  need  in  the  audience  for 
detailed  information,  slight  information,  or  no  information 
as  to  a  figure  about  to  enter  must  decide  the  amount  of  per- 
liminary  statement  in  regard  to  him.  If  possible,  a  char- 
acter enters,  identifies  himself,  and  places  himself  with  re- 
gard to  the  other  persons  involved  in  the  action  as  nearly 
as  possible  at  one  and  the  same  time.  The  more  important 
the  character,  the  more  involved  the  circumstances  which 
we  must  understand  before  he  can  enter  properly,  the 
greater  the  amount  of  preliminary  preparation  for  him. 
In  Phormio  l  and  Heimat  (or  Magda)  this  preparation  fills 
an  act;  in  Tartuffe  it  fills  two  acts.  More  often  bits  here 
and  there  prepare  the  way,  or  some  one  passage  of  dialogue, 
as  in  the  introduction  of  Sir  Amorous  La-Foole  in  Ben 
Jonson's  Epiccene.2 

Dauphine.  We  are  invited  to  dinner  together,  he  and  I,  by  one 
that  came  thither  to  him,  Sir  La-Foole. 
(  lerimoni.  I,  that's  a  precious  mannikin ! 
Daup.  Do  you  know  him? 

1  Chief  European  Dramatist*.  Brander  Matthews,  ed.  Houghton  Mifflin  Co.,  Boston. 
1  Act  1,  Scene  1.   Mermaid  Series,  vol.  hi,  or  Everyman's  Library. 


290  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Cler.  Ay,  and  he  will  know  you  too,  if  e'er  he  saw  you  but  once, 
though  you  should  meet  him  at  church  in  the  midst  of  prayers.  He 
is  one  of  the  braveries,  though  he  be  none  of  the  wits.  He  will  salute 
a  judge  upon  the  bench,  and  a  bishop  in  the  pulpit,  a  lawyer  when 
he  is  pleading  at  the  bar,  and  a  lady  when  she  is  dancing  in  a 
masque,  and  put  her  out.  He  does  give  plays  and  suppers,  and  in- 
vite his  guests  to  them,  aloud,  out  of  his  window,  as  they  ride  by 
in  coaches.  He  has  a  lodging  in  the  Strand  for  the  purpose:  or  to 
watch  when  ladies  are  gone  to  the  china-houses,  or  the  Exchange, 
that  he  may  meet  them  by  chance,  and  give  them  presents,  some 
two  or  three  hundred  pounds'  worth  of  toys,  to  be  laughed  at.  He 
is  never  without  a  spare  banquet,  or  sweetmeats  in  his  chamber 
for  their  women  to  alight  at,  and  come  up  to  for  bait. 

Daup.  Excellent!  he  was  a  fine  youth  last  night;  but  now  he  is 
much  finer!  what  is  his  Christian  name?  I  have  forgot. 

Re-enter  Page 
Cler.  Sir  Amorous  La-Foole. 

Page.  The  gentleman  is  here  below  that  owns  that  name. 
Cler.  'Heart,  he's  come  to  invite  me  to  dinner,  I  hold  my  life. 
Daup.  Like  enough:  prithee,  let's  have  him  up. 
Cler.  Boy,  marshall  him. 

In  Scene  1,  Act  I,  of  Becket,  as  written  by  Lord  Tennyson, 
we  have : 

Enter  Rosamund  de  Clifford,  flying  from  Sir  Reginald  Fitz  TJrse, 
drops  her  veil 

Becket.  Rosamund  de  Clifford! 

Rosamund.  Save  me,  father,  hide  me  —  they  follow  me  —  and 
I  must  not  be  known. 

Sir  Henry  Irving  arranged  this  for  the  stage  as  follows: 

Enter  Rosamund  de  Clifford.  Drops  her  veil 

Rosamund.  Save  me,  father,  hide  me. 

Becket.  Rosamund  de  Clifford! 

Rosamund.  They  follow  me  —  and  I  must  not  be  known. 

There  are  real  values  in  these  seemingly  slight  changes. 
With  a  rush  and  in  confusion,  Rosamund  enters.   As  it  is 


CHARACTERIZATION  291 

her  first  appearance  in  the  play,  it  is  of  the  highest  impor- 
tance that  she  be  identified  for  the  audience.  If  Becket 
gives  her  name  as  she  enters,  it  may  be  lost  in  her  onward 
rush.  If  entering,  she  speaks  the  line,  "Save  me,  father,  hide 
me,"  she  centers  attention  on  him  and  he  may  fully  empha- 
size the  identification  in,  "Rosamund  de  Clifford!"  Note 
as  bearing  on  what  has  already  been  said  in  regard  to  un- 
necessary use  of  stage  direction  that  Irving  cut  out  "flying 
from  Sir  Reginald  Fitz  Urse."  He  knew  that  Rosamund's 
speeches  and  her  action  would  make  the  fleeing  clear  enough, 
and  that  the  scene  immediately  following  with  Fitz  Urse 
would  show  who  was  pursuing  her.  Entrances,  when  well 
handled,  therefore,  must  be  in  character,  prepared  for,  and 
properly  motivated. 

Exits  are  just  as  important  as  entrances.  The  exit  of  Cap- 
tain Nat  in  Shore  Acres  has  already  been  mentioned  under 
pantomime.  Mark  the  significance  of  the  exit  of  Hamlet  in 
the  ghost  scene,  as  he  goes  with  sword  held  out  before  him. 
The  final  exit  of  Iris  in  Pinero's  play  is  symbolic  of  her 
passing  into  the  outer  and  under  world. 

Maldonado.  You  can  send  for  your  trinkets  and  clothes  in  the 
morning.  After  that,  let  me  hear  no  more  of  you.  (She  remains 
motionless,  as  if  stricken.)  I  've  nothing  further  to  say. 

(A  slight  shiver  runs  through  her  frame  and  she  resumes  her 
walk.  At  the  door,  she  feels  blindly  for  the  handle;  finding 
it,  she  opens  the  door  narrowly  and  passes  out.) 

The  absurdities  in  which  the  ill-managed  exit  or  entrance 
may  land  us,  Lessing  shows  amusingly: 

Maffei  often  does  not  motivate  the  exits  and  entrances  of  his 
personages:  Voltaire  often  motivates  them  falsely,  which  is  far 
W(  >rse.  It  is  not  enough  that  a  person  says  why  he  comes  on,  we 
ought  also  to  perceive  by  the  connection  that  he  must  therefore 
come.  It  is  not  enough  that  he  say  why  he  goes  off,  we  ought  to 
see  subsequently  that  he  went  on  that  account.  Else,  that  which 
the  poet  places  in  his  mouth  is  mere  excuse  and  no  cause.  When,  for 


292  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

example,  Eurykles  goes  off  in  the  third  scene  of  the  second  act,  in 
order,  as  he  says,  to  assemble  the  friends  of  the  queen,  we  ought  to 
hear  afterwards  about  these  friends  and  their  assemblage.  As, 
however,  we  hear  nothing  of  the  kind,  his  assertion  is  a  schoolboy 
"Peto  veniam  exeundi,"  the  first  falsehood  that  occurs  to  the  boy. 
He  does  not  go  off  in  order  to  do  what  he  says;  but  in  order  to  return 
a  few  lines  on  as  the  bearer  of  news  which  the  poet  did  not  know 
how  to  impart  by  means  of  any  other  person.  Voltaire  treats  the 
ends  of  acts  yet  more  clumsily.  At  the  close  of  the  third  act,  Poly- 
phontes  says  to  Merope  that  the  altar  awaits  her,  that  all  is  ready 
for  the  solemnizing  of  their  marriage  and  he  exits  with  a  "Venez, 
Madame."  But  Madame  does  not  come,  but  goes  off  into  another 
coulisse  with  an  exclamation,  whereupon  Polyphontes  opens  the 
fourth  act,  and  instead  of  expressing  his  annoyance  that  the  queen 
has  not  followed  him  into  the  temple  (for  he  had  been  in  error,  there 
was  still  time  for  the  wedding)  he  talks  with  his  Erox  about  matters 
he  should  not  ventilate  here,  that  are  more  fitting  conversation  for 
his  own  house,  his  own  rooms.  Then  the  fourth  act  closes  —  ex- 
actly like  the  third.  Polyphontes  again  summons  the  queen  into 
the  temple,  Merope  herself  exclaims,  "  Courons  nous  vers  le  temple 
ou  m'attend  mon  outrage";  and  says  to  the  chief  priests  who  come 
to  conduct  her  thither,  "Vous  venez  al'autel  entralner  la  victime." 
Consequently  we  must  expect  them  inside  the  temple  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  fifth  act,  or  are  they  already  back  again?  Neither;  good 
things  will  take  time.  Polyphontes  has  forgotten  something  and 
comes  back  again  and  sends  the  queen  back  again.  Excellent !  Be- 
tween the  third  and  fourth,  between  the  fourth  and  fifth  acts  no- 
thing occurs  that  should,  and  indeed,  nothing  occurs  at  all,  and  the 
third  and  fourth  acts  only  close  in  order  that  the  fourth  and  fifth 
may  begin.1 

At  the  end  of  Act  II  of  The  Princess  and  the  Butterfly  the 
exits  are  as  important  as  any  part  of  the  text.  Note  particu- 
larly the  last. 

Denstroude.  (On  the  steps,  pausing  and  looking  back.)  You  cycle 
at  Battersea  tomorrow  morning? 

Mrs.  St.  Roche.  It's  extremely  unlikely. 
Denstroude.  I  shall  be  there  at  ten.   Don't  be  later. 

1  Hamburg  Dramaturgy,  pp.  867-368.  Bohn  «d. 


CHARACTERIZATION  293 

(He  kisses  his  hand  to  her  and  departs.  She  stands  quite  still, 
thinking.  A  Servant  enters,  crosses  to  the  billiard-room, 
and  proceeds  to  cover  up  the  billiard-table.  She  walks 
slowly  to  the  ottoman  and  sits,  lookiwj  into  the  fire.  St. 
Roche  reappears  and  comes  down  the  steps.  She  does  not 
turn  her  head.  He  goes  to  the  table  and  mixes  some  spirits 
and  water.) 

[she  mixes  the  drink.)  What  d'ye  think  —  what  d'ye 
think  thai  silly,  infatuated  feller's  goin'  to  do? 
.  St.  Roche.  Demailly? 
St.  Roche.  (Glancing  toward  the  billiard-room.)  Sssh!  (With  a  nod.) 

(He  comes  to  her,  bringing  her  the  tumbler  in  which  he  has 
mixed  the  drink.) 
Mrs.  St.  Roche.  (Taking  the  tumbler,  her  eyes  never  meeting  his.) 
Well,  what  is  he  going  to  do? 
St.  Roche.  Marry  that  low  woman. 
Mrs.  St.  Roche.  (Callously.)  Great  heavens!  the  fool! 
St.  Roche.  Yes.  Shockin',  ain't  it? 

Mrs.  St.  Rocfa.  (Putting  the  glass  to  her  lips,  with  a  languid  air.) 
lias  blinded  him,  I  suppose,  with  some  story  or  other;  or  he 
would  hardly  have  committed  the  outrage,  tonight,  of  presenting 
her  to  me. 

St.  Roche.  (Returning  to  the  table  and  mixing  a  drink  for  himself.) 
That's  it  —  blinded  him.  And  yet  it's  almost  incomprehensible 
how  a  feller  can  be  as  blind  as  all  that.  Why,  the  very  man-in-the- 
street — 

(The  Servant  switches  off  the  lights  in  the  billiard-room,  and 
comes  out  from  the  room.) 
St.  Roche.  (To  the  man.)  I'll  switch  off  the  lights  here. 

(The  Servant  goes  out.) 
Mrs.  St.  Roche.  Well,  you  had  better  let  him  know  that  he 
mustn't  attempt  to  come  to  this  house  again. 
St.  Roche.  Poor  chap! 

Mrs.  St.  Roche.  We  can't  be  associated,  however  remotely,  with 
such  a  disgraceful  connection. 

St.  Roche.  Of  course,  of  course.  (Coming  down,  glass  in  hand.) 
I  could  tell  you  things  I've  heard  about  this  Mrs.  Ware  — 

Mrs.  St.  Roche.  (Rising.)  Please  don't!  I  want  no  details  con- 
cerning a  person  of  her  world. 


294  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

(She  ascends  the  steps  slowly,  carrying  her  cloak  and  her 
tumbler  —  without  looking  back.) 
Goodnight. 

St.  Roche.  (With  a  wistful  glance  at  her.)  Goodnight. 

(She  departs.  He  stands  for  a  little  while  contemplating 
space;  then  he  switches  off  the  liglvt.  The  room  remains 
partially  illumined  by  the  fire-glow.  He  turns  to  examine 
the  fire.  Apparently  assured  on  that  point,  he  walks,  still 
carrying  his  tumbler,  to  the  door  which  is  in  the  centre 
wall;  where,  uttering  a  little  sigh  as  he  opens  the  door, 
he  disappears.)1 

The  passages  quoted  (pp.  268-275)  from  The  Troublesome 
Reign  of  King  John  and  Shakespeare's  play  show  crude  and 
perfect  handling  of  exits  and  entrances.  In  the  old  play 
the  murderers  merely  enter  and  go  out  again  as  ordered.  In 
Shakespeare  they  enter  at  the  moment  which  makes  them 
the  climactic  touch  in  the  terror  of  Arthur  and  the  audience. 
When  Hubert  orders  them  to  go,  it  is  the  first  sign  that  he 
may  relent. 

The  inexperienced  dramatist  is  almost  always  wasteful  in 
the  number  of  characters  used.  An  adaptation  of  a  Spanish 
story  called  for  a  cast  of  about  a  dozen  important  figures 
and  some  sixty  supernumeraries  as  soldiers  and  peasants  — 
all  this  in  a  one-act  play.  It  meant  very  little  labor  to  cut 
the  soldiery  to  a  few  officers  and  some  privates,  and  the 
peasantry  to  some  six  or  eight  people.  Ultimately,  the  total 
cast  did  not  contain  a  quarter  as  many  people  as  the  original, 
yet  nothing  important  had  been  lost.  Rewriting  a  play 
often  is,  and  should  be,  a  "slaughter  of  the  innoconts." 
Don't  use  unneeded  people.  You  must  provide  them  with 
dialogue,  and  as  the  play  goes  on,  some  justification  for 
existence.  The  manager  must  pay  them  salaries.  First  of 
all,  get  rid  of  entirely  unnecessary  people.  They  usually 
hold  over  from  the  story  as  originally  heard  or  read.   For 

1  Samuel  French,  New  York;  W.  Heinemann,  London. 


CHARACTERIZATION  295 

instance,  a  recent  adaptation  used  from  the  original  story 
I  blinking  dwarf  sitting  silent,  forever  watchful,  at  a  table 
in  the  restaurant  where  the  story  was  placed.  His  smile 
limply  emphasized  the  cynicism  of  the  story  enacted  in  his 
it.  He  was  in  no  way  necessary  to  the  telling  of  the 
story,  —  and  so  he  disappeared  in  the  final  form  of  the  play. 
One  is  constantly  tempted  to  bring  in  some  figure  for  pur- 
poses of  easy  exposition  only  to  find  that  one  must  either 
bind  him  in  with  the  story  as  it  develops,  or  drop  him  out  of 
sight  the  moment  his  expository  work  is  done.  The  trouble 
with  such  figures  is  that  they  are  likely  to  give  false  clues, 
stirring  a  hearer  to  interest  in  them  or  their  apparent  rela- 
tion to  the  story,  when  nothing  is  to  come  of  one  or  the 
other.  Usually  a  little  patience  and  ingenuity  will  give  this 
needed  exposition  to  some  character  or  characters  essential 
to  the  plot.  In  a  recent  play  of  Breton  life  during  the  Chouan 
War,  an  attractive  peasant  boy  was  introduced  in  order  to 
plant  in  the  minds  of  the  audience  certain  ideas  as  to  imme- 
diate conditions  of  the  war,  and  the  relation  of  the  woman 
to  whom  he  is  talking  with  the  Prince,  his  leader.  Wishing 
to  show  the  devotion  of  the  Prince's  followers,  the  author 
had  the  boy  talk  much  of  his  own  loyalty  to  his  leader.  Just 
there  was  the  false  clue.  Every  auditor  expected  his  loyalty 
to  lead  to  something  later  in  the  play;  but  the  youth,  having 
told  his  tale,  disappeared  for  good.  It  took  very  little  time 
to  discover  that  all  the  young  man  told  could  perfectly  well 
be  made  clear  in  one  preceding  scene  between  the  woman 
and  her  son,  and  two  of  the  other  scenes  immediately  fol- 
lowing, between  the  woman  and  the  young  Prince.  It  is 
these  unnecessary  figures  who  are  largely  responsible  for  the 
scenes  already  spoken  of  in  chapter  IV  which  clog  the  move- 
ment of  a  play. 

Sometimes,  too,  similar  figures  at  different  places  in  a 
play  do  exactly  or  nearly  the  same  work,  —  servants  for 


296  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

instance.  When  it  does  not  interfere  with  verisimilitude, 
give  the  tasks  to  one  person  rather  than  two,  or  two  rather 
than  three.  That  is,  use  only  people  absolutely  needed. 
Sometimes  these  carelessly  introduced  figures  stray  through 
a  play  like  an  unquiet  spirit.  In  The  Road  to  Happiness  one 
character,  Porter,  was  of  so  little  importance  that  most  of 
the  time,  when  on  the  stage,  he  had  nothing  to  do.  When 
really  acting,  it  was  largely  in  pantomime,  or  with  speech 
that,  not  effectively,  reiterated  what  some  one  else  was  say- 
ing. He  existed  really  for  two  scenes.  In  the  first  act  he 
might  just  as  well  have  been  talked  about  as  shown,  and  in 
the  second  act  what  he  did  could  well  have  been  done  by 
one  of  the  other  important  characters.  When  any  character 
in  a  play  shows  a  tendency  not  to  get  into  the  action  readily; 
when  for  long  periods  he  is  easily  overlooked  by  the  author; 
it  is  time  to  consider  whether  he  should  not  be  given  the 
coup  de  grace. 

Today  we  are  fortunately  departing  from  an  idea  some- 
what prevalent  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
that  a  figure  once  introduced  into  a  play  should  be  kept 
there  until  the  final  curtain.  The,t  is  exalting  technique,  and 
the  so-called  "well-made"  play,  above  truth  to  life.  When 
a  character  is  doing  needed  work,  use  him  when  and  as  long 
as  he  would  appear  in  real  life,  and  no  longer.  Use  each 
character  for  a  purpose,  and  when  it  is  fulfilled,  drop  him. 
Naturalness  and  theatrical  economy  are  the  two  tests:  the 
greater  of  these  is  naturalness. 

All  that  has  been  said  comes  to  this.  Know  your  char- 
acters so  intimately  that  you  can  move,  think,  and  feel  with 
them,  supplied  by  them  with  far  more  material  than  you 
can  use  in  any  one  play.  See  that  they  are  properly  intro- 
duced to  the  audience;  that  they  are  clearly  and  convinc- 
ingly presented.  Do  not  forget  the  importance  of  entrances 
and  exits.  Cut  out  all  unnecessary  figures. 


CHARACTERIZATION  297 

There  follow  three  bits  of  characterization  from  very 
rent  types  of  play:  Sir  John  Vanbrugh's  The  Provoked 
comedy  of  manners;  G.  B.  Shaw's  farce-comedy, 
Sever  Can  Tell;  and  Eugene  Brieux's  thesis  play,  The 
He.  The  first  scene  aims  merely  to  present  vividly  the  riot- 
; ind  drunken  squire.    The  second,  while  characterizing 
William,  aims  to  illustrate  that  contentment  lies  in  doing 
that  to  which  one  is  accustomed,  under  accustomed  condi- 
tions.   The  third  not  only  characterizes;  it  shows  that  no 
law  of  man  can  wholly  give  a  woman  to  a  second  husband 
n  common  anxiety  with  the  first  husband  for  the  child 
of  their  marriage  draws  them  together.   Note  in  all  three 
the  use  of  action  as  compared  with  description  or  analysis; 
the  connotative  value  of  the  phrasings;  the  succint  sureness. 

THE  PROVOKED  WIFE 
ACT  IV.  SCENE,  CoverU  Garden 

Enter  Lord  Rake,  Sir  John,  &c,  with  Swords  drawn 

Lord  Rake.  Is  the  Dog  dead? 

Bully.  No,  damn  him,  I  heard  him  wheeze. 

Lord  Rake.  How  the  Witch  his  Wife  bowFd! 

Bully.  Ay,  she'll  alarm  the  Watch  presently. 

Lord  Rake.  Appear,  Knight,  then;  come  you  have  a  good  Cause 
to  fight  for,  there's  a  Man  murder'd. 

Sir  John.  Is  there?  Then  let  his  Ghost  be  satisfy'd,  for  I'll 
sacrifice  a  Constable  to  it  presently,  and  burn  his  body  upon  his 
wooden  Chair. 

Enter  a  Taylor,  with  a  Bundle  tinder  his  Arm 

Bully.  How  now;  what  have  we  here?  a  Thief. 

Taylor.  No,  an't  please  you,  I'm  no  Thief. 

Lord  Rake.  That  we'll  see  presently:  Here;  let  the  General  ex- 
amine him. 

Sir  John.  Ay,  ay,  let  me  examine  him,  and  I'll  lay  a  Hundred 
Pound  I  find  him  guilty  in  spite  of  his  Teeth  —  for  he  looks  — 
like  a  —  sneaking  Rascal. 

Come,  Sirrah,  without  Equivocation  or  mental  Reservation,  tell 


298  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

me  of  what  opinion  you  are,  and  what  Calling;  for  by  them  — I 
shall  guess  at  your  Morals. 

Taylor.  An't  please  you,  I  'm  a  Dissenting  Journyman  Taylor. 

Sir  John.  Then,  Sirrah,  you  love  Lying  by  your  Religion,  and 
Theft  by  your  Trade:  And  so,  that  your  Punishment  may  be  suit- 
able to  your  Crimes  —  I'll  have  you  first  gagg'd  —  and  then 
hang'd. 

Taylor.  Pray,  good  worthy  Gentlemen,  don't  abuse  me;  indeed 
I'm  an  honest  Man,  and  a  good  Workman,  tho  I  say  it,  that  shou'd 
not  say  it. 

Sir  John.  No  words,  Sirrah,  but  attend  your  Fate. 

Lord  Rake.  Let  me  see  what's  in  that  Bundle. 

Taylor.  An't  please  you,  it  is  the, Doctor  of  the  Parish's  Gown. 

Lord  Rake.  The  Doctor's  Gown!  —  Hark  you,  Knight,  you 
won't  stick  at  abusing  the  Clergy,  will  you? 

Sir  John.  No.  I'm  drunk,  and  I'll  abuse  anything  —  but  my 
Wife;  and  her  I  name  —  with  Reverence. 

Lord  Rake.  Then  you  shall  wear  this  Gown,  whilst  you  charge 
the  Watch:  That  tho  the  Blows  fall  upon  you,  the  Scandal  may 
light  upon  the  Church. 

Sir  John.  A  generous  Design  —  by  all  the  Gods  —  give  it  me. 

(Takes  the  Goum>  and  puts  it  on.) 

Taylor.  O  dear  Gentlemen,  I  shall  be  quite  undone,  if  you  take 
the  Gown. 

Sir  John.  Retire,  Sirrah;  and  since  you  carry  off  your  Skin  —  go 
home,  and  be  happy. 

Taylor.  (Pausing.)  I  think  I  had  e'en  as  good  follow  the  Gentle- 
man's friendly  Advice;  for  if  I  dispute  any  longer,  who  knows  but 
the  Whim  may  take  him  to  case  me?  These  Courtiers  are  fuller  of 
Tricks  than  they  are  of  Money;  they'll  sooner  cut  a  Man's  Throat, 
than  pay  his  Bill.  (Exit  Taylor.) 

Sir  John.  So,  how  d'ye  like  my  Shapes  now? 

Lord  Rake.  This  will  do  to  a  Miracle;  he  looks  like  a  Bishop  go- 
ing to  the  Holy  War.  But  to  your  Arms,  Gentlemen,  the  Enemy 
appears. 

Enter  Constable  and  Watch 

Watchman.  Stand!  Who  goes  there?  Come  before  the  Constable. 
Sir  John.  The  Constable's  a  Rascal  —  and  you  are  the  Son  of  a 
Whore. 


CHARACTERIZATION  299 

Watchman.  A  good  civil  answer  for  a  Parson,  truly! 

Constable.  Methinks,  Sir,  a  Man  of  your  Coat  might  set  a  better 
i      mple. 

Sir  John.  Sirrah,  I'll  make  you  know  —  there  are  Men  of  my 
Coat  can  set  as  bad  Examples  —  as  you  can,  you  Dog  you. 

(Sir  John  strikes  the  Constable.  They  knock  him  down,  dis- 
arm him,  and  seize  him.   Lord  Rake  &c.  run  away.) 

Constable.  So,  we  have  secur'd  the  Parson  however. 

Sir  John.  Blood,  and  Blood  —  and  Blood. 

Watchman.  Lord  have  mercy  upon  us!  How  the  wicked  Wretch 
raves  of  Blood.  I'll  warrant  he  has  been  murdering  some  body  to- 
night. 

Sir  John.  Sirrah,  there's  nothing  got  by  Murder  but  a  Halter: 
My  Talent  lies  towards  Drunkenness  and  Simony. 

Watchman.  Why  that  now  was  spoke  like  a  Man  of  Parts,  Neigh- 
bours; it's  pity  he  should  be  so  disguis'd. 

Sir  John.  You  lye  —  I'm  not  disguis'd;  for  I  am  drunk  bare- 
fae'd. 

Watchman.  Look  you  here  again  —  This  is  a  mad  Parson,  Mr. 
Constable;  I'll  lay  a  Pot  of  Ale  upon's  Head,  he's  a  good  Preacher. 

Constable.  Come,  Sir,  out  of  Respect  to  your  Calling,  I  shan't 
put  you  into  the  Round  house;  but  we  must  secure  you  in  our 
Drawing-Room  till  Morning,  that  you  may  do  no  Mischief.  So, 
come  along. 

Sir  John.  You  may  put  me  where  you  will,  Sirrah,  now  you  have 
overcome  me  —  But  if  I  can't  do  Mischief,  I'll  think  of  Mischief 
—  in  spite  of  your  Teeth,  you  Dog  you.  (Exeunt.) l 

YOU  NEVER  CAN  TELL 
ACT  IV 

Waiter.  (Entering  anxiously  through  the  window.)  Beg  pardon, 
ma'am;  but  can  you  tell  me  what  became  of  that  —  (He  recognizes 
Bohun,  and  loses  all  his  self-possession.  Bohun  waits  rigidly  for  him 
to  pull  himself  together.  After  a  pathetic  exhibition  of  confusion,  he 
recovers  himself  sufficiently  to  address  Bohun  weakly,  but  coherently.) 
Beg  pardon,  sir,  I'm  sure,  sir.   Was  —  was  it  you,  sir? 

Bohun.  (Ruthlessly.)  It  was  I. 

Waiter.  (Brokenly.)  Yes,  sir.  (Unable  to  restrain  his  tears.)  You 

»  Playi.   Vol.  1.  J.  Tonton,  London,  1790. 


300  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

in  a  false  nose,  Walter!  (He  sinks  faintly  into  a  chair  at  the  table.) 
I  beg  your  pardon,  ma'am,  I'm  sure.   A  little  giddiness  — 

Bohun.  (Commandingly.)  You  will  excuse  him,  Mrs.  Clandon, 
when  I  inform  you  that  he  is  my  father. 

Waiter.  (Heartbroken.)  Oh,  no,  no,  Walter.  A  waiter  for  your 
father  on  the  top  of  a  false  nose!   What  will  they  think  of  you? 

Mrs.  Clandon.  (Going  to  the  waiter's  chair  in  her  kindest  manner.) 
I  am  delighted  to  hear  it,  Mr.  Bohun.  Your  father  has  been  an  ex- 
cellent friend  to  us  since  we  came  here.         (Bohun  bows  gravely.) 

Waiter.  (Shaking  his  head.)  Oh,  no,  ma'am.  It's  very  kind  of  you 
—  very  ladylike  and  affable  indeed,  ma'am;  but  I  should  feel  at  a 
great  disadvantage  off  my  own  proper  footing.  Never  mind  my 
being  the  gentleman's  father,  ma'am:  it  is  only  the  accident  of 
birth,  after  all,  ma'am.  (He  gets  up  feebly.)  You'll  excuse  me,  I'm 
sure,  having  interrupted  your  business. 

(He  begins  to  make  his  way  along  the  table,  supporting  him- 
self from  chair  to  chair,  with  his  eye  on  the  door.) 

(Bohun.)  One  moment.  (The  waiter  stops,  with  a  sinking  heart.) 
My  father  was  a  witness  of  what  passed  to-day,  was  he  not,  Mrs. 
Clandon? 

Mrs.  Clandon.  Yes,  most  of  it,  I  think. 

Bohun.  In  that  case  we  shall  want  him. 

Waiter.  (Pleading.)  I  hope  it  may  not  be  necessary,  sir.  Busy 
evening  for  me,  sir,  with  that  ball:  very  busy  evening  indeed, 
sir. 

Bohun.  (Inexorably.)  We  shall  want  you. 

Mrs.  Clandon.  (Politely.)  Sit  down,  won't  you? 

Waiter.  (Earnestly.)  Oh,  if  you  please,  ma'am,  I  really  must 
draw  the  line  at  sitting  down.  I  could  n't  let  myself  be  seen  doing 
such  a  thing,  ma'am:  thank  you,  I  am  sure,  all  the  same. 

(He  looks  round  from  face  to  face  wretchedly,  with  an  ex- 
pression that  would  melt  a  heart  of  stone.) 

Gloria.  Don't  let  us  waste  time.  William  only  wants  to  go  on 
taking  care  of  us.  I  should  like  a  cup  of  coffee. 

Waiter.  (Brightening  perceptibly.)  Coffee,  miss?  (He  gives  a  little 
gasp  of  hope.)  Certainly,  miss.  Thank  you,  miss:  very  timely,  miss, 
very  thoughtful  and  considerate  indeed.  (To  Mrs.  Clandon,  tim- 
idly, but  expectantly.)  Anything  for  you,  ma'am? 

Mrs.  Clandon.  Er  —  oh,  yes:  it's  so  hot,  I  think  we  might  have 
a  jug  of  claret  cup. 

Waiter.  (Beaming.)  Claret  cup,  ma'am!  Certainly  ma'am. 


CHARACTERIZATION  301 

Gloria.  Oh,  well,  I'll  have  claret  cup  instead  of  coffee.  Put  some 
encumber  in  it. 

Waiter,  (Delightedly.)  Cucumber,  miss!  yes,  miss.  (To  Bohun.) 
Anything  special  for  you,  sir?  You  don't  like  cucumber,  sir. 
hun.  If  Mrs.  Clandon  will  allow  me  —  syphon,  Scotch. 
Waiter,  flight,  sir.  (To  Crampton.)  Irish  for  you,  sir,  I  think 
sir?  [Cramphm  assents  icith  a  grunt.   The  waiter  looks  enquiringly  at 
Valentine.) 
Valentine.  I  like  the  cucumber. 

Waiter.  Right,   sir.  (Summing   up.)  Claret   cup,   syphon,  one 
Scotch,  and  one  Irish? 

Mrs.  Clandon.  I  think  that's  right. 

Waiter.    (Perfectly    happy.)   Right    ma'am.  Directly,    ma'am. 
Thank  you. 

(He  ambles  off  through  the  window,  having  sounded  the 
whole  gamut  of  human  happiness,  from  the  bottom  to  the 
top  in  a  little  over  two  minutes.) l 


THE  CRADLE  (LE  BERCEAU) 
ACT  I.  SCENE  9 

[Laurence  and  Raymond,  her  first  husband,  meet  by 
chance  by  the  sick  bed  of  their  little  boy,  M.  de  Girieu,  the 
second  husband,  who  is  madly  jealous  of  Raymond,  and 
of  Laurence's  love  for  her  boy,  has  just  refused  Raymond's 
request  to  be  allowed  to  watch  by  the  child  till  he  is  out  of 
danger.  Resting  confidently  on  the  control  over  Laurence 
and  the  boy  which  the  laws  give  him,  M.  de  Girieu  is  sure  he 
can  keep  his  wife  and  her  former  husband  apart.] 

Long  silent  scene.  The  door  of  little  Julien's  room  opens  softly. 
Laurence  appears  with  a  paper  in  her  hand.  The  two  men  separate, 
watching  her  intently.  She  looks  out  for  a  long  time,  then  shuts  the 
door,  taking  every  precaution  not  to  make  a  noise.  After  a  gesture  of 
profound  grief,  she  comes  forward,  deeply  moved,  but  tearless.  She 
makes  no  more  gestures.  Her  face  is  grave.  Very  simply  she  goes 
straight  to  Raymond. 

1  Plays  rieatant  and  Unpleasant.  Brentano,  New  York. 


302  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Raymond.  (Very  simply  to  Laurence.)  Well? 

Laurence.  (In  the  same  manner.)  He  has  just  dropped  asleep. 

Ray.  The  fever? 

Lau.  Constant. 

Ray.  Has  the  temperature  been  taken? 

Lau.  Yes. 

Ray.  How  much? 

Lau.  Thirty-nine. 

Ray.  The  cough? 

Lau.  Incessant.  He  breathes  with  difficulty. 

Ray.  His  face  is  flushed? 

Lau.  Yes. 

Ray.  The  doctor  gave  you  a  prescription? 

Lau.  I  came  to  show  it  to  you.  I  don't  thoroughly  understand 
this. 

(They  are  close  to  each  other,  examining  the  prescription 
which  Raymond  holds.) 

Ray.  (Reading.)  "Keep  an  even  temperature  in  the  sick  room." 

Lau.  Yes. 

Ray.  "Wrap  the  limbs  in  cotton  wool,  and  cover  that  with  oiled 
silk."  I  am  going  to  do  that  myself  as  soon  as  he  wakes.  Tell  them 
to  warn  me. 

Lau.  What  ought  he  to  have  to  drink?  I  forgot  to  ask  that,  and 
he  is  thirsty. 

Ray.  Mallow. 

Lau.  I'm  sure  he  doesn't  like  it. 

Ray.  Yes,  yes.  You  remember  when  he  had  the  measles. 

Lau.  Yes,  yes.  How  anxious  we  were  then,  too! 

Ray.  He  drank  it  willingly.  You  remember  perfectly? 

Lau.  Yes,  of  course  I  remember.  Some  mallow  then.  Let  us 
read  the  prescription  again.  I  have  n't  forgotten  anything?  Mus- 
tard plasters.  The  cotton  wool,  you  will  attend  to  that.  And  I  will 
go  have  the  drink  made.  "In  addition  —  every  hour  —  a  ccffee- 
spoonful  of  the  following  medicine." 

(The  curtain  falls  slowly  as  she  continues  to  read.    M.  de 
Girieu  has  gone  out  slowly  during  the  last  words.)  l 

Finally,  contrast  the  treatment  by  John  Webster  and 
Robert  Browning  of  the  same  dramatic  situation.  Wnich  is 
the  clearer,  which  depends  more  on  illustrative  action? 

»  P.  V.  Stock,  Paris. 


CHARACTERIZATION  303 

Enter  Antonio 

Duchess.  I  sent  for  you;  sit  downe: 

Take  pen  and  inckc,  and  write:  are  you  ready? 

Antonio.  Yes. 

Duch.  What  did  I  say? 

Ant.  That  I  should  write  some-what. 

Duch.  Oh,  I  remember: 

Alter  this  triumph  and  this  large  expence, 
It's  fit  (like  thrifty  husbands)  we  enquire, 
What's  laid  up  for  tomorrow. 

Ant.  So  please  your  beauteous  excellence. 

Duch.  Beauteous? 

Indeed  I  thank  you:  I  look  yong  for  your  sake. 
You  have  tane  my  cares  upon  you. 

Ant.  I'le  fetch  your  grace 

The  particulars  of  your  revinew  and  expence. 

Duch.  Oh,  you  are  an  upright  treasurer:  but  you  mistooke, 
For  when  I  said  I  meant  to  make  enquiry 
What's  layd  up  for  tomorrow,  I  did  meane 
What's  layd  up  yonder  for  me. 

Ant.  Where? 

Duch.  In  heaven. 

I  am  making  my  will  (as  'tis  fit  princes  should 
In  perfect  memory),  and  I  pray  sir,  tell  me 
Were  not  one  better  make  it  smiling,  thus, 
Then  in  deepe  groanes,  and  terrible  ghastly  lookes, 
As  if  the  guifts  we  parted  with  procur'd 
That  violent  distraction? 

Ant.  Oh,  much  better. 

Duch.  If  I  had  a  husband  now,  this  care  were  quit: 
But  I  intend  to  make  you  over-seer. 
What  good  deede  shall  we  first  remember?  say. 

Ant.  Begin  with  that  first  good  deede  began  i'  th'  world, 
After  man's  creation,  the  sacrament  of  marriage. 
I'ld  have  you  first  provide  for  a  good  husband: 
Give  him  all. 

Duch.  All? 

Ant.  Yes,  your  excellent  selfe. 

Duch.  In  a  winding  sheete? 

Ant.  In  a  cople. 


304  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Duck.  St.  Winifrid,  that  were  a  strange  will! 

Ant.  'Twere  strange  if  there  were  no  will  in  you 
To  marry  againe. 

Duck.  What  doe  you  thinke  of  marriage? 

Ant.  I  take't,  as  those  that  deny  purgatory, 
It  locally  containes  or  heaven  or  hell; 
There's  no  third  place  in't. 

Duch.  How  doe  you  affect  it? 

Ant.  My  banishment,  feeding  my  mellancholly,   / 
Would  often  reason  thus  — 

Duck.  Pray  let's  heare  it. 

Ant.  Say  a  man  never  marry,  nor  have  children, 
What  takes  that  from  him?  onely  the  bare  name 
Of  being  a  father,  or  the  weake  delight 
To  see  the  little  wanton  ride  a  cock-horse 
Upon  a  painted  sticke,  or  heare  him  chatter 
Like  a  taught  starling. 

Duch.  Fye,  fie,  what's  all  this? 

One  of  your  eyes  is  blood-shot;  use  my  ring  to't. 
They  say  'tis  very  soveraigne;  'twas  my  wedding-ring, 
And  I  did  vow  never  to  part  with  it, 
But  to  my  second  husband. 

Ant.  You  have  parted  with  it  now. 

Duch.  Yes,  to  helpe  your  eye-sight. 

Ant.  You  have  made  me  starke  blind. 

Duch.  How? 

Ant.  There  is  a  sawcy  and  ambitious  divell 
Is  dauncing  in  this  circle. 

Duch.  Remoove  him. 

Ant.  How? 

Duch.  There  needs  small  conjuration,  when  your  finger 
May  doe  it:  thus,  is  it  fit? 

Ant.  WTiat  sayd  you?        (He  kneeles.) 

Duch.  Sir, 

This  goodly  roofe  of  yours  is  too  low  built; 
I  cannot  stand  upright  in't,  nor  discourse, 
Without  I  raise  it  higher :  raise  yourself e, 
Or  if  you  please,  my  hand  to  help  you :  so. 

Ant.  Ambition,  madam,  is  a  great  man's  madnes, 
That  is  not  kept  in  chaines  and  close-pentoomea, 
But  in  fair  lightsome  lodgings,  and  is  girt 


CHARACTERIZATION  305 

With  the  wild  noyce  of  pratling  visitants, 
Which  makes  it  lunatique,  beyond  all  cure. 
Conceive  not  I  am  so  ftupid  l>ut  I  ayme 
Whereto  your  favours  lend:  but  he's  a  foole 
That  (being  a  cold)  would  thrust  his  hands  i'  th'  fire 
To  warme  them. 

Duck.  So,  now  the  ground's  broake, 

You  may  discover  what  a  wealthy  mine 
I  make  you  lord  of. 

Ant.  Oh  my  unworthiness! 

Duch.  You  were  ill  to  sell  your  selfe: 
This  darkning  of  your  worth  is  not  like  that 
Which  trades-men  use  i'  th'  city;  their  false  lightes 
Are  to  rid  bad  wares  off:  and  I  must  tell  you, 
If  you  will  know  where  breathes  a  compleat  man 
(I  speake  it  without  flattery),  turne  your  eyes, 
And  progresse  through  your  selfe. 

Ant.  Were  there  nor  heaven,  nor  hell, 
I  should  be  honest:  I  have  long  serv'd  vertue, 
And  nev'r  tane  wages  of  her. 

Duch.  Now  she  paies  it. 

The  misery  of  us  that  are  borne  great, 
We  are  forc'd  to  woe,  because  none  dare  woe  us: 
And  as  a  tyrant  doubles  with  his  words, 
And  fearefully  equivocates,  so  we 
Are  forc'd  to  expresse  our  violent  passions 
In  ridles  and  in  dreames,  and  leave  the  path 
Of  simple  vertue,  which  was  never  made 
To  seeme  the  thing  it  is  not.  Goe,  go  brag 
You  have  left  me  heartlesse;  mine  is  in  your  bosom: 
I  hope  'twill  multiply  love  there.  You  doe  tremble: 
Make  not  your  heart  so  dead  a  peece  of  flesh, 
To  feare,  more  then  to  love  me.  Sir,  be  confident, 
What  is't  distracts  you?  This  is  flesh  and  blood,  sir; 
'Tis  not  the  figure  cut  in  allablaster 
Kneeles  at  my  husbands  tombe.  Awake,  awake,  man, 
I  do  here  put  off  all  vaine  ceremony, 
And  onely  doe  appeare  to  you  a  yong  widow 
That  claimes  you  for  her  husband,  and  like  a  widow, 
I  use  but  halfe  a  blush  in't. 


306  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Ant.  Truth  speake  for  me, 

I  will  remaine  the  constant  sanctuary 
Of  your  good  name.1 

This  is  Browning's  version: 

Duchess.  Say  what  you  did  through  her,  and  she  through 
you  — 
The  praises  of  her  beauty  afterward! 
Will  you? 

Valence.  I  dare  not. 

Duch.  Dare  not? 

Vol.  She  I  love 

Suspects  not  such  a  love  in  me. 

Duch.  You  jest. 

Vol.  The  lady  is  above  me  and  away. 
Not  only  the  brave  form,  and  the  bright  mind, 
And  the  great  heart  combine  to  press  me  low  — 
But  all  the  world  calls  rank  divides  us. 

Duch.  Rank! 

Now  grant  me  patience!  Here's  a  man  declares 
Oracularly  in  another's  case  — 
Sees  the  true  value  and  the  false,  for  them  — 
Nay,  bids  them  see  it,  and  they  straight  do  see. 
You  called  my  court's  love  worthless  —  so  it  turned: 
I  threw  away  as  dross  my  heap  of  wealth, 
And  here  you  stickle  for  a  piece  or  two! 
First  — '  has  she  seen  you? 

Vol.  Yes. 

Duch.  She  loves  you,  then. 

Vol.  One  flash  of  hope  burst;  then  succeeded  night: 
And  all's  at  darkest  now.  Impossible! 

Duch.  We'll  try:  you  are  —  so  to  speak  —  my  subject  yet? 

Vol.  As  ever  —  to  the  death. 

Duch.  Obey  me,  then! 

Vol.  I  must. 

Duch.  Approach  her,  and  ...  no!  first  of  all 

Get  more  assurance.  "My  instructress,"  say, 
"Was  great,  descended  from  a  line  of  kings, 
"And  even  fair"  —  (wait  why  I  say  this  folly)  — 

1  The  Duchess  of  Malfi,  Act  i,  Sc.  2.  Webster.  Belles-Lettres  Series.  M.  W.  Sampson,  ed. 
D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  New  York. 


CHARACTERIZATION  307 

"She  said,  of  all  men,  none  for  eloquence, 

"Courage,  and  (what  cast  even  these  to  shade) 

"The  heart  they  sprung  from,  —  none  deserved  like  him 

"Who  saved  her  at  her  need:  if  she  said  this, 

"Why  should  not  one  I  love,  say?" 

Vol.  Heaven  —  this  hope  — 

Oh,  lady,  you  are  filling  me  with  fire! 

Duck.  Say  this!  —  nor  think  I  bid  you  cast  aside 
Ono  touch  of  all  the  awe  and  reverence; 
Nay,  make  her  proud  for  once  to  heart's  content 
That  all  this  wealth  of  heart  and  soul's  her  own! 
Think  you  are  all  of  this,  —  and,  thinking  it, 
.  .  .  (Obey!) 

Vol.  I  cannot  choose. 

Duch.  Then,  kneel  to  her! 

(Valence  sinks  on  his  knee.) 
I  dream! 

Vol.  Have  mercy!  yours,  unto  the  death, — 
I  have  obeyed.   Despise,  and  let  me  die! 

Duch.  Alas,  sir,  is  it  to  be  ever  thus? 
Even  with  you  as  with  the  world?  I  know 
This  morning's  service  was  no  vulgar  deed 
Whose  motive,  once  it  dares  avow  itself, 
Explains  all  done  and  infinitely  more, 
So,  takes  the  shelter  of  a  nobler  cause. 
Your  service  names  its  true  source,  —  loyalty  I 
The  rest's  unsaid  again.  The  Duchess  bids  you, 
Rise,  sir!  The  Prince's  words  were  in  debate. 

Vol.  (Rising.)  Rise?  Truth,  as  ever,  lady,  comes  from  you! 
I  should  rise  —  I  who  spoke  for  Cleves,  can  speak 
For  Man  —  yet  tremble  now,  who  stood  firm  then. 
I  laughed  —  for  'twas  past  tears  —  that  Cleves  should  starve 
With  all  hearts  beating  loud  the  infamy, 
And  no  tongue  daring  trust  as  much  to  air: 
Yet  here,  where  all  hearts  speak,  shall  I  be  mute? 
Oh,  lady,  for  your  sake  look  on  me! 
On  all  I  am,  and  have,  and  do  —  heart,  brain, 
Body  and  soul,  —  this  Valence  and  his  gifts! 
I  was  proud  once:  I  saw  you,  and  then  sank, 
So  that  each,  magnified  a  thousand  times, 
Were  nothing  to  you  —  but  such  nothingness, 


308  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Would  a  crown  gild  it,  or  a  sceptre  prop, 

A  treasure  speed,  a  laurel-wreath  enhance? 

What  is  my  own  desert?   But  should  your  love 

Have  .  .  .  there's  ho  language  helps  here  .  .  .  singled  me,  — 

Then  —  oh,  that  wild  word  "then!"  —  be  just  to  love, 

In  generosity  its  attribute! 

Love,  since  you  pleased  to  love!  All's  cleared  —  a  stage 

For  trial  of  the  question  kept  so  long : 

Judge  you  —  Is  love  or  vanity  the  best? 

You,  solve  it  for  the  world's  sake  —  you,  speak  first 

What  all  will  shout  one  day  —  you,  vindicate 

Our  earth  and  be  its  angel!  All  is  said. 

Lady,  I  offer  nothing  —  I  am  yours: 

But,  for  the  cause'  sake,  look  on  me  and  him, 

And  speak! 

Duck.  I  have  received  the  Prince's  message: 
Say,  I  prepare  my  answer! 

Vol.  Take  me,  Cleves!  (He  withdraws.)1 

The  formula  for  the  would-be  dramatist  so  far  as  his 
/  people  are  concerned  is  this :  A  play  which  aims  to  be  real  in 
1  depicting  life  must  illustrate  character  by  characterization 
\^hich  is  in  character. 

1  Colombe'a    Birthday,    Act    iv,   Scene   1.    Robert    Browning.    Belles-Lettres    Serie#- 
A.  Bates,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  N«w  York. 


CHAPTER  Vin 

DIALOGUE 

Modern  dramatic  dialogue  had  beginnings  far  from  realis- 
tic It  originated,  as  the  Latin  tropes  show,  in  speeches 
given  in  unison  and  to  music  —  a  kind  of  recitative.  What 
was  the  aim  of  this  earliest  dramatic  dialogue?  It  sought  to 
convey,  first,  last,  and  always,  the  facts  of  the  episode  or 
incident  represented:  "Whom  seek  ye  here,  O  Christians? 
is  of  Nazareth,  the  Crucified,  O  Heavenly  Ones."  And 
that  is  what  good  dramatic  dialogue  has  always  done,  is 
doing,  and  must  always  do  as  its  chief  work  —  state  clearly 
the  facts  which  an  auditor  must  understand  if  the  play  is  to 
move  ahead  steadily  and  clearly.  Already  enough  has  been 
said  (chapter  VI,  pp.  154-183)  as  to  the  need  of  clear  pre- 
liminary and  later  exposition  to  show  how  axiomatic  is  the 
statement  that  the  chief  purpose  of  good  dialogue  is  to 
convey  necessary  information  clearly. 

Even,  however,  when  dialogue  is  clear  in  its  statement  of 
needed  information,  it  may  still  be  confusing  for  reader  or 
hearer.  What  is  the  trouble  with  the  text  in  the  left-hand 
column  —  from  an  early  draft  of  a  play  dealing  with  John 
Brown  and  his  fortunes? 

SCENE:  The  Prison  at  Harper's  Ferry 

Brown.    Mary!  I'm  glad  to  Brown.  Mary!   I'm   glad    to 

see  you,  Mary.  see  you,  Mary. 

(For  a  few  seconds,  silence.)  (For  a  few  seconds,  silence.) 

Mrs.    Brown.  (Crying    out.)  Mrs.    Brown.  (Crying    out.) 

Oh,  my  dear  husband,  it  is  a  Oh,  my  dear  husband,  it  is  a 

hard  fate.  hard  fate.  It's  been  so  long  since 

Brown.  (Strong  in  his  com-  I  heard  your  voice. 

posure.)  Well,  well,  Mary,  let  Brown.  (Strong  in    his  com- 


3io 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


us   be   cheerful.  We   must   all 
bear  it  the  best  we  can. 

(Stroking  her  hair.) 

Mrs.  Brown.  Oh!  You  to  go 
from  me  forever. 

(Sinks  her  head  on  his  breast 
again.) 

Brown.  It  must  be,  —  and  all 
is  for  the  best.   There,  there. 
(Pats  her  head  in  an  effort 
to  comfort  her.) 

Mrs.  Brown.  But  our  poor 
children,  John. 

Brown.  Those  that  have  died 
are  at  peace  in  the  next  world. 
(She  breaks  out  weeping  again.) 
Come,  come,  dry  your  tears;  sit 
down  and  tell  me  about  those  at 
home.  (He  tries  to  lead  her  to 
chair  on  right  of  table,  but  she 
checks  her  grief  and  seats  herself. 
He  goes  slowly  back  to  the  other 
chair.)  It  weakens  me  to  stand. 
Now  tell  me  about  home. 

Mrs.  Brown.  It's  a  sad  place. 
We  couldn't  believe  the  first 
reports  about  you  and  the 
boys  being  taken  prisoners.  We 
couldn't  believe  you  had  failed. 
Then  a  New  York  paper  came. 
We  sat  by  the  fire  in  the  liv- 
ing room.  There  was  Watson's 
widow  — 

Brown.  Poor  Isabel,  with  her 
little  Freddie. 

Mrs.  Brown.  And  William 
Thompson's  widow,  our  Ruth, 
and  Annie,  and  Oliver's 
widow  — 

Brown.  Poor  Martha.  When 
the  time  came  it  was  hard  for 


posure.)  Well,  well,  Mary,  let 
us  be  cheerful.  We  must  all 
bear  it  the  best  we  can. 

(Stroking  her  hair.) 

Mrs.  Brown.  Oh!  You  to  go 
from  me  forever. 

(Sinks  her  head  on  his  breast 
again.) 

Brown.  It    must    be,  —  and 
all  is  for  the  best.  There,  there. 
(Pats  her  head  in  an  effort 
to  comfort  her.) 

Mrs.  Brown.  (After  a  mo- 
ment's silence.)  Do  they  treat 
you  well  here,  John? 

Brown.  Like  Joseph,  I  have 
gained  favor  in  the  sight  of  the 
prison-keeper.  He  is  a  most  hu- 
mane gentleman  —  never  mis- 
treats or  tries  to  humiliate  me. 

Mrs.  Brown.  May  God  bless 
such  a  man.  Do  you  sleep  any, 
John? 

Brown.  Like  a  child,  —  all 
night  in  peace. 

Mrs.  Brown.  I  am  glad  of 
that.  I  worried  about  it.  Are 
the  days  long  and  lonesome? 

Brown.  All  hours  of  the  day 
glorious  thoughts  come  to  me. 
I  am  kept  busy  reading  and 
answering  letters  from  my 
friends.  I  have  with  me  my 
Bible,  here.  (Placing  his  hand 
on  the  leather-bound  volume  at 
the  end  of  the  table.)  It  is  of  in- 
finite comfort.  I  never  enjoyed 
life  more  than  since  coming  to 
prison.  I  wish  all  my  poor  fam- 
ily were  as  composed  and  as 
happy. 


DIALOGUE 


3ii 


Ml  to  leave  the  farm  house  and 
Oliver  behind.  She  kind  of  felt 
that  she  wouldn't  see  him  any 
more. 

Mrs.  Brown.  We  said  almost 
nothing  while  Salmon  read.  We 
felt  in  our  blindness  God  had 
been  unfaithful  to  you  and  the 
boys. 

llrmcn.  My  dear  wife,  you 
must  keep  up  your  spirits. 
Don't  blame  God.  He  has  taken 
away  my  sword  of  steel,  but  He 
has  given  me  the  sword  of  the 
Spirit. 

Mrs.  Brown.  {Looking  up 
into  his  face  with  almost  a  sad 
smile  upon  hers.)  That  sounds 
just  like  you,  John.  Oh,  it's 
been  so  long  since  I  heard  your 
voice. 

Brown.  Tell  me  more  about 
the  family. 

Mrs.  Brown.  Owen  doesn't 
dare  come  home  yet. 

Brown.  Do  you  know  where 
be  is? 

Mrs.  Brown.  Hiding  among 
friends  in  Ohio.  Poor  boy,  he  is 
called  all  kinds  of  vile  names, 
just  for  being  with  you. 

Brown.  For  the  cause  we  have 
all  suffered  much  in  the  past; 
we  shall  have  to  in  the  future. 
We  should  rejoice  at  his  escape. 

Mrs.  Brown.  I  do,  John,  but 
O,  poor  Oliver  and  Watson!  We 
shall  never  see  them  again. 

Brown.  Not  in  this  world,  but 
we  shall  meet  together  in  that 
other  world  where  they  do  not 


Mrs.  Brown.  But  our  poor 
children,  John.  Poor  Oliver  and 
Watson.  We  shall  never  see 
them  again. 

Brown.  Those  that  have  died 
are  at  peace.  (She  breaks  out 
weeping  again.)  But  we  shall 
meet  together  in  that  other  world 
where  they  do  not  shoot  and 
hang  men  for  loving  justice  and 
desiring  freedom  for  all  men. 
Come,  come,  dry  your  tears. 
Sit  down  and  tell  me  about  those 
at  home.  (He  tries  to  lead  her 
to  chair  on  right  of  table,  but  she 
checks  her  grief  and  seats  herself. 
He  goes  slowly  back  to  the  other 
chair.)  It  weakens  me  to  stand. 
Now,  tell  me  about  home,  for 
that  will  give  me  comfort,  Mary. 
No  man  can  get  into  difficulties 
too  big  to  be  surmounted  if  he 
has  a  firm  foothold  at  home. 

Mrs.  Brown.  It's  a  sad  place. 
We  couldn't  believe  the  first 
reports  about  you  and  the  boys 
being  taken  prisoners.  We 
wouldn't  believe  you  had  failed. 

Brown.  I  have  been  a  great 
deal  disappointed  in  myself  for 
not  keeping  to  my  plan. 

Mrs.  Brown.  You  made  a  mis- 
take only  in  judging  how  much 
you  could  do. 

Brown.  I  acted  against  my 
better  judgment. 

Mrs.  Brown.  But  after  taking 
the  arsenal,  why  didn't  you  flee 
to  the  mountains,  as  we  thought 
you  would? 

Brown.  The  delay   was   my 


312 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


shoot  and  hang  men  for  loving 
justice  and  desiring  freedom  for 
all  men. 

Mrs.  Brown.  Yes,  and  they 
did  die  for  a  great  and  good 
cause!  (Said  with  spirit.) 

Brown.  Some  day  all  the 
people  of  the  earth  will  say 
that.  (A  moment's  silence.) 

Mrs.  Brown.  Do  they  treat 
you  well  here,  John? 

Brown.  Like  Joseph,  I  have 
gained  favor  in  the  sight  of  the 
prison-keeper.  He  is  a  most  hu- 
mane gentleman  —  never  mis- 
treats or  tries  to  humiliate  me. 

Mrs.  Brown.  May  God  bless 
such  a  man.  Do  you  sleep  any, 
John? 

Brown.  Like  a  child,  —  all 
night  in  peace. 

Mrs.  Brown.  I  'm  glad  of  that. 
I  worried  about  it.  Are  the  days 
long  and  lonesome? 

Brown.  All  hours  of  the  day 
glorious  thoughts  come  to  me. 
I  am  kept  busy  reading  and 
answering  letters  from  my 
friends.  I  have  with  me  my 
Bible,  here.  (Placing  his  hand 
on  the  leather-bound  volume  at  the 
end  of  the  table.)  It  is  of  infinite 
comfort.  I  never  enjoyed  life 
more  than  since  coming  to 
prison.  I  wish  all  my  poor  fam- 
ily were  as  composed  and  as 
happy. 

Mrs.  Brown.  We  have  be- 
come more  and  more  resigned. 

Brown.  Do  any  feel  disgrace 
or  shame? 


mistake.  But  in  God's  greater 
and  broader  plan  maybe  it  was 
infinitely  better.  It  was  fore- 
ordained to  work  out  that  way, 
determined  before  the  world  was 
made. 

Mrs.  Brown.    His  ways  are 
mysterious  and  wonderful. 
(A  slight  pause  as  both  think.) 

Brown.  How  did  you  first  get 
the  news? 

Mrs.  Brown.  A  New  York 
paper  came.  We  sat  by  the  fire 
in  the  living  room.  There  was 
Watson's  widow  — 

Brown.  Poor  Isabel,  with  her 
little  Freddie. 

Mrs.  Brown.  And  William 
Thompson's  widow,  our  Ruth, 
and  Annie,  and  Oliver's 
widow  — 

Brown.  Poor  Martha.  When 
the  time  came,  it  was  hard  for 
her  to  leave  the  farm  house  and 
Oliver  behind.  She  kind  of  felt 
she  wouldn't  see  him  any  more. 

Mrs.  Brown.  We  said  almost 
nothing  while  Salmon  read.  We 
felt  in  our  blindness  God  had 
been  unfaithful  to  you  and  the 
boys. 

Brown.  My  dear  wife,  you 
must  keep  up  your  spirits .  Don't 
blame  God.  He  has  taken  away 
my  sword  of  steel,  but  He  has 
given  me  the  sword  of  the  Spirit. 

Mrs.  Brown.  (Looking  up 
into  his  face  with  almost  a  sad 
smile  upon  hers.)  That  sounds 
just  like  you,  John.  We  have 
become  more  and  more  resigned. 


DIALOGUE 


3«3 


Mrs.  Brown.  Not  one,  John. 

|  in  our  eyes,  a  noble 

martyr.  The    chains    on    your 

intl    our   hearts   all   the 

r  to  you. 

Brown.  That  gives  me  com- 
fort. Mary.  No  man  can  get 
into  difficulties  too  big  to  be  sur- 
mounted, if  he  has  a  firm  foot- 
hold at  home. 

Mrs.  Brown.  You  made  a 
mistake  only  in  judging  how 
much  you  could  do. 

Brown.  I  have  been  a  great 
deal  disappointed  in  myself  for 
not  keeping  to  my  plan.  I  acted 
against  my  better  judgment. 

Mrs.  Brown.  But  after  tak- 
ing the  arsenal,  why  didn't  you 
flee  to  the  mountains,  as  we 
thought  you  would? 

Brown.  The  delay  was  my 
mistake.  But  in  God's  greater 
and  broader  plan,  maybe  it  was 
infinitely  better.  It  was  fore- 
ordained to  work  out  that  way, 
determined  before  the  world 
was  made. 

Mrs.  Brown.  His  ways  are 
mysterious  and  wonderful. 

(Avis  comes  in.) 

There  are  several  faults  in  the  original  dialogue,  butper- 
haps  the  chief  is  not  regarding  the  principle  that  clearness 
dramatically  consists,  not  merely  in  stating  needed  facts, 
but  in  so  stating  them  that  interest  is  not  allowed  to  lapse. 
The  original  dialogue  was  scrappy,  lacking  sequence,  not 
so  much  of  thought  as  of  emotion.  If  it  be  said  that  at  such 
a  moment  talk  is  often  fitful,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
our  time-limits  forbid  giving  every  word  said  in  such  a  scene. 


Brown.  Do  any  feel  disgrace 
or  shame? 

Mrs.  Brown.  Not  one,  John. 
You  are,  in  our  eyes,  a  noble 
martyr.  The  chains  on  your 
legs  bind  our  hearts  all  the  closer 
to  you. 

Brown.  Tell  me  more  about 
the  family. 

Mrs.  Brown.  Owen  doesn't 
dare  come  home  yet. 

Brown.  Do  you  know  where 
he  is? 

Mrs.  Brown.  Hiding  among 
friends  in  Ohio.  Poor  boy,  he  is 
called  all  kinds  of  vile  names, 
just  for  being  with  you. 

Brown.  For  the  cause  we  have 
all  suffered  much  in  the  past; 
we  shall  have  to  in  the  future. 
We  should  rejoice  at  his  escape. 

Mrs.  Brown.  I  do,  John.  And 
Oliver  and  Watson  did  die  for 
a  great  and  good  cause! 

(Said  with  spirit.) 

Brown.   Some   day,   all   the 

people  of  the  earth  will  say  that. 

(Avis  comes  in.) 


3H 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


We  must  present  merely  its  essentials.  Only  in  that  way 
may  a  play,  a  condensed  presentation  of  life,  hope  to  give 
a  total  effect  for  a  scene  equal  to  that  of  the  original.  The 
re-ordered  dialogue  of  the  right-hand  column  seeks  merely 
to  bring  together  ideas  really  closely  related,  and  to  move, 
in  a  way  in  keeping  with  the  characters,  from  lesser  to 
stronger  emotion.  With  the  disappearance  of  the  scrappy 
effect,  is  not  the  result  clearer?  Even  now,  the  dialogue  might 
well  be  condensed  and  made  emotionally  more  significant. 

If  we  let  the  dialogue  of  a  play  merely  state  necessary 
facts,  what  is  the  result?  At  the  worst,  something  like  the 
left-hand  column.  Two  young  women,  one  the  married 
hostess  and  the  other  the  friend  of  her  girlhood,  are  opening 
their  morning  mail  on  the  piazza.  Serena,  the  hostess,  has 
known  nothing  of  the  engagement  of  Elise  to  Teddy. 


ORIGINAL 

Elise.  (Looking  up  from  her 
letters.)  Is  he  coming? 

Serena.  I  don't  know  yet,  but 
I  wish  he  were  still  in  South 
Africa.  If  he  does  come,  I  don't 
know  what  will  happen.  There's 
a  letter  from  Aunt  Deborah. 

Elise.  Yes?  What  does  she 
want? 

Serena.  Did  you  know  she 
had  a  terrible  quarrel  with 
Teddy  just  before  he  went  to 
South  Africa? 

Elise.  I  had  a  vague  idea  of  it. 
It  must  all  be  made  up  now  and 
they  '11  be  delighted  to  meet  here. 

Serena.  No,  she  won't.  She 
says  she's  sure  she'll  have  a 
shock  if  she  sees  him  and  very 
gladly  accepts  our  kind  invita- 
tion because  so  she  can  avoid 
meeting  him. 


REVISION  ' 

Elise.  Is  he  coming? 

Serena.  I  don't  know  yet,  but 
I  wish  he  were  still  in  South 
Africa.  Look  at  this:  (Showing 
letter.)  A  letter  from  Aunt  De- 
borah. 

Elise.  Yes? 

Serena.  Aunt  Deborah  had  a 
terrible  quarrel  with  Teddy  just 
before  he  went! 

Elise.  Oh,  that  must  be  all 
made  up  now. 

Serena.  Listen!  (Reading 
from  letter.)  "If  I  see  that  man 
I'll  have  a  shock,"  and  (with  a 
despairing  gesture)  she  very 
gladly  accepts  our  invitation! 


DIALOGUE  315 

From  the  left-hand  column  we  surely  do  learn  that  a 
before-mentioned  Teddy  has  been  in  South  Africa;  that  he 
a n< I  a  certain  Aunt  Deborah  have  quarreled;  and  that 
though  she  particularly  does  not  wish  to  meet  Teddy,  she 
is  coming,  as  he  is,  to  visit  at  this  house  —  three  important 
points.  Like  everyday  speech,  the  quoted  dialogue  lacks 
compactness.  Let  us  first,  therefore,  cut  out  all  that  is  not 
absolutely  necessary.  We  do  not  need,  in  the  first  speech 
of  Elise,  anything  more  than  the  query,  "Yes?"  The  inflec- 
tion will  give  the  rest.  In  the  second  speech  of  Serena  we 
can  cut  "to  South  Africa,"  for  we  have  already  mentioned 
where  Teddy  has  been.  In  the  second  speech  of  Elise,  it  is 
the  words  "It  must  be  all  made  up  now"  that  are  impor- 
tant. What  precedes  and  what  follows  may  be  omitted.  Sim- 
ilarly, in  the  first  and  second  speeches  of  Serena,  it  is  the 
first  and  the  third  sentences  which  are  important.  The 
second,  if  given,  really  anticipates  an  effect  which  will  be 
stronger  later.  If  we  change  the  second  speech  from  a 
query  to  an  assertion  or  an  exclamation,  we  shall  gain  and 
slightly  condense.  It  will  then  read,  "Aunt  Deborah  had 
a  terrible  quarrel  with  Teddy  just  before  he  went! "  Because 
we  have  cut  the  last  speech  of  Elise,  the  first  sentence  of  the 
next  speech  of  Serena  becomes  unnecessary.  It  will  be  neces- 
sary, however,  to  re-phrase  what  remains  of  this  final 
speech,  so  hard  is  it  to  deliver.  The  revised  dialogue  may 
still  be  poor  enough,  but  it  says  all  the  original  did  in  less 
space  —  that  is  condensation.  The  effect  is  better  because 
we  have  cut  out  some  parts,  and  have  slightly  changed 
others.  That  is  selection.  The  slight  changes  have  been 
made  in  order  to  make  the  sequence  of  ideas  clearer,  to 
suggest  emotion  more  clearly,  or  to  make  the  dialogue 
natural  —  and  all  that  means  the  beginning  of  characteri- 
zation. The  final  word  on  this  dialogue  is,  however,  that 
even  now  either  speaker  could  utter  the  words  of  the  other, 


316  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

and  that  is  all  wrong.   Clearly,  then,  even  in  stating  facts, 
dialogue  may  be  bad,  indifferent,  and  good. 

The  following  opening  of  a  Japanese  No  drama  shows 
that  even  more  trained  writers  may  write  dialogue  with  no 
virtue  except  its  clearness : 

TWO  HEARTS 

A  drama  by  J.  Mushakoji 

SCENE:  A  forest  glade  on  the  nobleman's  estate.  A  cross  for 
crucifixion  in  the  foreground.  Two  men  A  and  B  standing  on  either 
side  of  the  cross  holding  spears. 

A.  That  fellow  has  behaved  foolishly! 

B.  Yes,  and  the  girl  also. 

A.  It  was  certain  that  they  would  be  killed  when  found  out. 

B.  And  nothing  could  prevent  the  discovery. 

A.  Our  master  is  extremely  indignant. 

B.  There  has  not  been  one  person  crucified  since  the  present 
lord  succeeded. 

A.  Although  the  stewards  have  assured  him  that  it  is  the  estab- 
lished law  of  the  land,  the  present  master  has  never  given  per- 
mission for  the  punishment  of  criminals  by  crucifixion  and  fire. 
But  now  he  has  announced  that  he  will  kill  them  in  this  manner, 
and  we  are  commissioned  to  carry  out  the  disagreeable  duty. 

B.  Even  though  we  refused  to  obey  the  command  at  first  and 
requested  him  to  excuse  us  he  would  not  listen  to  our  petition. 

A.  The  master  must  have  been  very  fond  of  this  young  girl. 

B.  Yes.  Rumour  has  it  that  he  became  attached  to  her  while 
the  late  mistress  was  still  living. 

A.  He  did  not  care  very  much  for  his  wife.  Anyway,  she  was  too 
inferior  to  be  his  companion. 

B.  It  was  said  that  he  did  not  grieve  over  her  death. 

A.  And  I  have  heard  that  the  girl  fainted  when  her  mistress 
died. 

B.  She  must  have  been  a  favourite  among  the  other  attendants 
who  accompanied  the  lady  when  she  became  the  wife  of  the  lord. 

A.  She  was  clever  and  pretty  and  had  a  strong  character. 

B.  Why  did  the  girl  fall  in  love  with  that  fellow,  I  wonder? 
A.  He  is  the  kind  of  a  man  a  woman  admires. 


DIALOGUE  317 

B.  And  because  the  girl  loved  him  he  now  receives  such  severe 
punishment. 

A.  We  can  never  tell.  What  seems  good  luck  may  mean  unex- 
.1  misfortune. 

/>'.  She  would  have  been  happier  if  she  had  obeyed  the  master's 
will  instead  of  rejecting  him. 

A.  Probably  she  did  not  like  him. 

B.  But  he  seemed  to  care  a  great  deal  for  her. 

A.  It  may  not  be  right  to  say  so,  but  his  decision  seems  to  have 
been  taken  because  of  his  jealousy. 

B.  Yes,  that  is  true.  I  wonder  why  he  has  commanded  us  to  pre- 
pare only  one  cross. 

A.  Perhaps  it  is  his  plan  to  save  one  of  them. 

B.  I  don't  think  that  could  be  done  very  well. 

A.  But  some  one  said  the  master  told  the  girl  that  he  would  save 
her  life  if  she  would  only  desert  the  young  man  for  him. 

B.  That  may  be  so.  Perhaps  he  intends  to  crucify  the  young 
man  first  in  the  presence  of  the  girl  so  as  to  break  her  obstinate 
spirit  and  thus  gain  her  love. 

A.  That  may  be  so. 

B.  It  is  said  that  the  young  man  has  already  repented  of  his  love 
for  the  girl.  But  she  was  not  at  all  frightened  when  the  punish- 
ment was  announced  and  she  was  informed  that  she  was  to  be 
crucified.  The  man,  on  the  contrary,  at  once  turned  white  and  al- 
most fainted  when  he  heard  the  judgment  passed  upon  him. 

A.  But  a  woman  is  much  braver  in  love  affairs  than  a  man. 

B.  You  speak  as  though  you  had  had  experience! 

A.  Ha!  Ha!  Ha! 

B.  Perhaps  the  master  wishes  to  kill  the  young  man  in  as  cruel 
a  manner  as  possible. 

A.  Hush!  The  lord  is  here!  We  are  now  obliged  to  remain  silent 
and  witness  a  living  drama. 

B.  And  we  have  a  dreadful  task  to  perform.1 

Though  this  omits  nothing  in  the  way  of  necessary  infor- 
mation, how  colorless  it  is!  When  we  note  how  perfectly 
either  A  or  B  could  speak  the  lines  of  the  other,  we  see 
where  the  difficulty  lies.  The  lines  lack  all  characterization. 
The  history  of  the  drama  shows  that  while  the  facts  of  a 

1  The  Far  East,  June  6,  1914,  p.  205. 


3* 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


play  may  be  interesting  in  themselves,  they  are  much  more 
interesting  to  an  audience  which  hears  them  as  they  present 
themselves  to  well-defined  characters  of  the  story.  It  is 
axiomatic  that  sympathy  quickens  interest.  Take  a  much 
better  known  illustration  of  the  same  point.  The  left-hand 
column  gives  the  opening  lines  of  the  first  quarto,  Hamlet, 
The  right-hand  column  shows  the  opening  of  the  second 
quarto. 

Enter  Barnardo  and  Francisco, 
two  Centinels 

Barnardo.  Whose  there? 
Francisco.  [Nay  answere  me.] 
Stand  and  unfolde  your  selfe. 
Bar.  Long  live  the  King. 
Fran.  Barnardo. 
Bar.  Hee. 

Fran.  You  come  most  care- 
fully upon  your  houre. 

Bar.  Tis  now  strooke  twelfe, 
get  thee  to  bed  Francisco. 

Fran.  For  this  relief  much 
thanks,  [tis  bitter  cold,]  And  I 
am  sick  at  heart. 

Bar.  Have  you  had  quiet 
guard? 

Fran.  [Not  a  mouse  stirring.] 
Bar.  Well,  good  night: 
#.  And   if  you   meete  Mar-      If  you  doe  meete  Horatio  and 
cellus  and  Horatio,  Marcellus, 

The  partners  of  my  watch,  bid      The  rivals  of  my  watch,  bid 
them  make  haste.  them  make  hast. 

1.  I  will:  See  who  goes  there. 


1. 


Enter  two  Centinels 
Stand :  who  is  that? 
Tis  I. 


O  you  come  most  care- 
fully upon  your  watch. 


Enter  Horatio  and  Marcellus 


Horatio.     Friends 
ground. 


to     this 


Enter  Horatio  and  Marcellus 
Fran.  I  think  I  heare  them, 

stand  ho,  who  is  there? 

Horatio.     Friends     to     this 

ground. 


DIALOGUE  319 

MarttUu$.  And  leegemen  to         Marcellua.     And  Leedgemen 
the  Dane,  to  the  Dane, 

Fran.  Give  you  good  night. 

0  farewell  honest  souldier,  who  Mar.  O,  farewell  honest  soul- 

hath  relieved  you?  diers,  who  hath  relieved  you? 

1.  Barnardo  hath  my  place,  Fran.  Baniardo     hath     my 

give  you  good  night.  place;  give  you  good  night. 

(Exit  Francisco.)1 


The  first  of  these  extracts,  without  question  gives  the 
necessary  facts  of  the  changing  of  the  watch.  It  busies  itself 
only  with  this  absolutely  necessary  action.  The  second 
quarto  identifies  the  speakers,  and,  by  a  different  phrasing 
with  additional  lines,  both  characterizes  them  and  gives 
the  scene  atmosphere.  Study  the  re-phrasings  and  brack- 
eted additions  of  the  second  scene  —  "Nay  answere  me," 
"Tis  bitter  cold,"  "Not  a  mouse  stirring"  —  and  note  that 
this  dialogue  gains  over  the  first  in  that  it  interests  by  what 
it  adds  as  much  as  by  the  essential  action. 

A  second  quotation  from  Hamlet  in  the  two  quartos  illus- 
trates the  same  point  even  better.  The  text  in  the  left-hand 
column,  merely  stating  the  facts  necessary  to  the  movement 
of  the  scene,  leaves  to  the  actor  all  characterizing  of  Mon- 
tano,  and  gives  the  player  of  Corambis  only  the  barest  hints. 
The  second  quarto  text,  in  the  right-hand  column,  makes 
Polonius  so  garrulous  that  he  cannot  keep  track  of  his  own 
ideas;  shows  his  pride  in  his  would-be  shrewdness;  indeed, 
rounds  him  out  into  a  real  character.  It  even  makes  Rey- 
naldo  a  man  who  does  not  yield  at  once,  but  a  person  of 
honorable  instincts  who  is  overborne.  Can  there  be  any 
question  which  scene  holds  the  attention  better? 

1  The  Devoruhire  Hamlett,  pp.  1-2. 


320  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Enter  Corambis  and  Montano 


Corambis.  Montano;  here, 
these  letters  to  mysonne, 

And  this  same  money  with  my 
blessing  to  him, 

And  bid  him  ply  his  learning 
good  Montano. 


Montano.  I  will  my  lord. 
Cor.  You  shall  do  very  well 
Montano,  to  say  thus, 


I  knew  the  gentleman,  or  know 

his  father 
To  inquire  the  manner  of  his 

life, 
And  thus;  being  amongst  his 

acquaintance, 
You  may  say,  you  saw  him  at 

such  a  time,  marke  you 

mee, 


Enter  old  Polonius,  with  his 

man  or  two 
Polonius.  Give      him      this 
money    and    these    notes 
Reynaldo. 
Reynaldo.  I  will  my  Lord. 
Pol.  You  shall  doe  marviles 
wisely  good  Reynaldo 
Before  you  visite  him  to  make 

inquire 
Of  his  behaviour. 
Rey.  My  Lord,  I  did  intend 

it. 
Pol.  Mary   well    said,    very 
well  said:  look  you  sir, 
Enquire  me  first  what  Danskers 

are  in  Parris, 
And  how,  and  who,  what  meanes 

and  where  they  keepe, 
What  companie,  at  what   ex- 
pence,  and  finding 
By    this    encompasment,    and 

drift  of  question 
That  they  doe  know  my  sonne, 

come  you  more  neerer 
Then  your  particular  demands 

will  tuch  it, 
Take  you  as  t'were  some  dis- 
tant knowledge  of  him, 
As    thus,  I    know  his    father, 

and  his  friends, 
And  in  part  him,  doe  you  marke 
this,  Reynaldo? 
Rey.  I,  very  well  my  Lord. 
Pol.  And  in  part  him,   but 
you  may  say,  not  well, 
But  y'ft  be  he  I  meane,  hee's 

very  wilde, 
Adicted  so  and  so,  and  there  put 
on  him 


DIALOGUE 


321 


At  game,  or  drincking,  swear- 
ing, or  drabbing, 
You  may  go  so  farre. 
Man.  My  Lord,  that  will  im- 
peach his  reputation. 
Cor.  I  faith  not  a  whit,  no 
not  a  whit, 


What     forgeries    you     please, 

marry  none  so  ranck 
As  may  dkhooom  him,  take 

heede  of  tliat, 
But  sir,  such  wanton,  wild,  and 

usuall  slips 
As  are  companions  noted  and 

most  knowne 
To  youth  and  libertie. 
Rey.  As  gaming  my  Lord. 
Pol.  I,  or  drinking,  fencing, 

swearing, 
Quarrelling,  drabbing,  you  may 

go  so  far. 
Rey.  My  Lord,  that  would 

dishonour  him. 
Pol.  Fayth  as  you  may  season 

it  in  the  charge. 
You  must  not  put  another  scar* 

dell  on  him, 
That  he  is  open  to  incontinencie, 
That's  not  my   meaning,   but 

breath  his  faults  so  quently 
That  they  may  seeme  the  taints 

of  libertie, 
The  flash  and  out-breake  of  a 

fierie  mind, 
A    savagenes    in    unreclamed 

blood 
Of  generall  assault. 

Rey.  But  my  good  Lord. 
Pol.  Wherefore    should    you 

do  this? 
Rey.  I   my   Lord,    I   would 

know  that. 
Pol.  Marry,   sir,    heer's    my 

drift, 
And  I  believe  it  is  a  fetch  of  wit, 
You  laying  these  slight  sallies 

on  my  sonne 
As  t'were  a  thing  a  little  soy  Id 

with  working, 


322 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


Now  happely  hee  closeth  with 
you   in  the  consequence, 

As  you  may  bridle  it  not  dis- 
parage him  a  iote. 


What  was  I  about  to  say, 


Mon.  He  closeth  with  you  in 
the  consequence. 


Marke  you,  your  partie  in  con- 
verse, him  you  would 
sound 

Having  ever  seene  in  the  pre- 
nominat  crimes 

The  youth  you  breath  of  guiltie, 
be  assur'd 

He  closes  with  you  in  this  con- 
sequence, 

Good  sir.  (or  so,)  or  friend,  or 
gentleman, 

According  to  the  phrase,  or  the 
addition 

Of  man  and  country. 

Rey.  Very  good  my  Lord. 
Pol.  And   then   sir,   doos   a 
this,  a  doos,  what  was  I 
about  to  say? 

By  the  masse  I  was  about  to  say 
something, 

Where  did  I  leave? 

Rey.  At  closes  in  the  conse- 
quence.1 


Even  the  dialogue,  which  with  broad  characterization 
states  necessary  facts  clearly,  is  by  no  means  so  effective  as 
dialogue  so  absorbing  by  its  characterization  that  we  assim- 
ilate the  facts  unconsciously.  Contrast  the  opening  of  The 
Good  Natur'd  Man  with  that  of  Hindle  Wakes.  The  first  is 
so  busy  in  characterizing  an  absent  but  important  figure 
that  it  presents  the  two  speakers  only  in  the  broadest  way. 
That  is,  exposition  exists  here  as  its  only  excuse  for  being. 
In  Hindle  Wakes,  the  rapid  development  of  an  interesting 
situation  through  two  characters  who  as  individuals  become 
more  distinct  and  interesting  with  every  line,  probably 
conceals  from  most  auditors  or  readers  the  fact  that  seven 
important  bits  of  information  are  given  before  Fanny  enters. 

1  The  Devonshire  Hamlets,  pp.  20-27. 


DIALOGUE  323 

ACT  I 

SCENE  —  An  apartment  in  Young  IIoneywood>8  house 

Enter  Sir  William  Honeywood*  Jarvis 

r  William.  Good  Jarvis,  make  no  apologies  for  this  honest 
bluntness.  Fidelity  like  yours  is  the  best  excuse  for  every  freedom. 

Jarvis.  I  can't  help  being  blunt,  and  being  very  angry,  too,  when 
ir  you  talk  of  disinheriting  so  good,  so  worthy  a  young  gentle- 
man as  your  nephew,  my  master.   All  the  world  loves  him. 

Sir  Will.  Say,  rather,  that  he  loves  all  the  world ;  that  is  his  fault. 

Jarv.  I  'm  sure  there  is  no  part  of  it  more  dear  to  him  than  you 
are,  tho'  he  has  not  seen  you  since  he  was  a  child. 

Sir  Will.  What  signifies  his  affection  to  me,  or  how  can  I  be 
proud  of  a  place  in  a  heart  where  every  sharper  and  coxcomb  find 
an  easy  entrance? 

Jarv.  I  grant  you  that  he's  rather  too  good  natur'd;  that  he's 
too  much  every  man's  man;  that  he  laughs  this  minute  with  one, 
and  cries  the  next  with  another;  but  whose  instructions  may  he 
thank  for  all  this? 

Sir  Will.  Not  mine,  sure?  My  letters  to  him  during  my  employ- 
ment in  Italy  taught  him  only  that  philosophy  which  might  pre- 
vent, not  defend  his  errors. 

Jarv.  Faith,  begging  your  honour's  pardon,  I  'm  sorry  they  taught 
him  any  philosophy  at  all;  it  has  only  served  to  spoil  him.  This 
same  philosophy  is  a  good  horse  in  the  stable,  but  an  arrant  jade 
on  a  journey.  For  my  own  part,  whenever  I  hear  him  mention  the 
name  on't,  I'm  always  sure  he's  going  to  play  the  fool. 

Sir  Will.  Don't  let  us  ascribe  his  faults  to  his  philosophy,  I  en- 
treat you.  No,  Jarvis,  his  good  nature  rises  rather  from  his  fears  of 
offending  the  importunate,  than  his  desire  of  making  the  deserving 
happy. 

Jarv.  What  it  arises  from,  I  don't  know.  But  to  be  sure,  every- 
body has  it  that  asks  it. 

-  Will.  Ay,  or  that  does  not  ask  it.  I  have  been  now  for  some 
time  a  concealed  spectator  of  his  follies,  and  find  them  as  boundless 
as  his  dissipation. 

Jarv.  And  yet,  faith,  he  has  some  fine  name  or  other  for  them 
all.  He  calls  his  extravagance  generosity;  and  his  trusting  every- 
body, universal  benevolence.  It  was  but  last  week  he  went  security 
for  a  fellow  whose  face  he  scarce  knew,  and  that  he  call'd  an  act 
of  exalted  mu-mu-munificence;  ay,  that  was  the  name  he  gave  it. 


324  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


Sir  Will.  And  upon  that  I  proceed,  as  my  last  effort,  tho'  with 
very  little  hopes  to  reclaim  him.  That  very  fellow  has  just  ab- 
sconded, and  I  have  taken  up  the  security.  Now,  my  intention  is 
to  involve  him  in  fictitious  distress,  before  he  has  plunged  himself 
into  real  calamity.  To  arrest  him  for  that  very  debt,  to  clap  an 
officer  upon  him,  and  then  let  him  see  which  of  his  friends  will  come 
to  his  relief.1 

ACT  I.  SCENE  1 

The  scene  is  triangular,  representing  a  corner  of  the  living-room 
of  No.  137,  Burnley  Road,  Kindle,  a  house  rented  for  about  7s.  6d. 
a  week.  In  the  left-hand  wall,  low  down,  there  is  a  door  leading  to  the 
scullery.  In  the  same  wall,  but  further  away  from  the  spectator,  is 
a  window  looking  on  to  the  backyard.  A  dresser  stands  in  front  of 
the  window.  About  half-way  up  the  right-hand  wall  is  the  door  lead- 
ing to  the  hall  or  passage.  Nearer,  against  the  same  wall,  a  high 
cupboard  for  china  and  crockery.  The  fire-place  is  not  visible,  being 
in  one  of  the  walls  not  represented.  However,  down  in  the  L.  corner  of 
the  stage  is  an  arm-chair,  which  stands  by  the  hearth.  In  the  middle 
of  the  room  is  a  square  table,  with  chairs  on  each  side.  The  room  is 
cheerful  and  comfortable.  It  is  nine  o'clock  on  a  warm  August  evening. 
Through  the  window  can  be  seen  the  darkening  sky,  as  the  blind  is  not 
drawn.  Against  the  sky  an  outline  of  roof  tops  and  mill  chimneys. 
The  only  light  is  the  dim  twilight  from  the  open  window.  Thunder  is 
in  the  air.  When  the  curtain  rises,  Christopher  Hawthorn,  a  decent, 
white-bearded  man  of  nearly  fifty,  is  sitting  in  the  arm-chair,  smoking 
a  pipe.  Mrs.  Hawthorn,  a  keen,  sharp-faced  woman  of  fifty-five,  is 
standing,  gazing  out  of  the  window.  There  is  a  flash  of  ligUning  and 
a  rumble  of  thunder  far  away. 

Mrs.  Hawthorn.  It's  passing  over.  There'll  be  no  rain. 

Christopher.  Ay!  We  could  do  with  some  rain. 

(There  is  a  flash  of  lightning.) 

Chris.  Pull  down  the  blind  and  light  the  gas. 

Mrs.  H.  What  for? 

Chris.  It's  more  cozy-like  with  the  gas. 

Mrs.  H.  You're  not  afraid  of  the  lightning? 

Chris.  I  want  to  look  at  that  railway  guide. 

Mrs.  H.  WThat's  the  good.  We've  looked  at  it  twice  already. 
There's  no  train  from  Blackpool  till  half-past  ten,  and  it's  only  just 
on  nine  now. 

1  Act  i,  Scene  1.  Belles-Lettres  Series.  Austin  Dobson,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co. 


DIALOGUE  325 

ris.  Happen  we've  made  a  mistak 
fMrs.  II.  Happen  we've  not.  Besides,  what's  the  good  of  a  rail- 

Ymi  know  trains  run  as  they  like  on  Bank  Holiday. 
Chris.  Ay!  Perhaps  you're  right.  You  don't  think  she'll  come 
round  by  Manchester! 

Mrs.  II.  What  would  she  be  doing  coming  round  by  Manchester? 
is.  You  can  get  that  road  from  Blackpool. 
//.  Yes.   If  she's  coming  from  Blackpool. 
Chris.  Have  you  thought  she  may  not  come  at  all? 
Mrs.  II.  (Grimly.)  What  do  you  take  me  for? 
Chris.  You  never  hinted. 
Mrs.  II.  No  use  putting  them  sort  of  ideas  into  your  head. 

(Another  flash  and  a  peal  of  thunder.) 
Chris.  Well,  well,  those  are  lucky  who  haven't  to  travel  at  all 
on  Bank  Holiday. 

Mrs.  II.  I  nless  they've  got  a  motor  car,  like  Nat  Jeffcote's  lad. 
Chris.  Nay,  he's  not  got  one. 

Mrs.  II.  What?  Why  I  saw  him  with  my  own  eyes  setting  out 
in  it  last  Saturday  week  after  the  mill  shut. 

Chris.  Ay!  He's  gone  off  these  Wakes  with  his  pal  George  Rams- 
bottom.   A  couple  of  thick  beggars,  those  two! 

Mrs.  II.  Then  what  do  you  mean  telling  me  he's  not  got  a 
motor  car? 

Chris.  I  said  he  hadn't  got  one  of  his  own.  It's  his  father's.  You 
don't  catch  Nat  Jeff  cote  parting  with  owt  before  his  time.  That's 
how  he  holds  his  lad  in  check,  as  you  might  say. 
Mrs.  II.  Alan  Jeffcote's  seldom  short  of  cash.  He  spends  plenty. 
Chris.  Ay!  Nat  gives  him  what  he  asks  for,  and  doesn't  want 
to  know  how  he  spends  it  either.    But  he's  got  to  ask  for  it  first. 
Nat  can  stop  supplies  any  time  if  he's  a  mind. 
Mrs.  II.  That's  likely,  isn't  it? 

Chris.  Queerer  things  have  happened.  You  don't  know  Nat 
like  I  do.  He's  a  bad  one  to  get  across  with. 

(Another  flash  and  gentle  peal.  Mrs.  H.  gets  up.) 
Mrs.  II.  I'll  light  the  gas. 

(She  pulls  down  the  blind  and  lights  the  gas.) 
Chris.  When  I  met  Nat  this  morning  he  told  me  that  Alan  had 
aphed    from   Llandudno    on  Saturday  asking  for    twenty 
pounds. 

//.  From  Llandudno? 
Chris.  Ay!  Reckon  he's  been  stopping  there.  Run  short  of  brass. 


326  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Mrs.  H.  And  did  he  send  it? 

Chris.  Of  course  he  sent  it.  Nat  doesn't  stint  the  lad.  [He 
laughs  quietly.)  Eh,  but  he  can  get  through  it,  though! 

Mrs.  H.  Look  here.  What  are  you  going  to  say  to  Fanny  when 
she  comes? 

Chris.  Ask  her  where  she's  been? 

Mrs.  H.  Ask  her  where  she's  been.  Of  course  we'll  do  that.  But 
suppose  she  won't  tell  us? 

Chris.  She's  always  been  a  good  girl. 

Mrs.  H.  She's  always  gone  her  own  road.  Suppose  she  tells  us 
to  mind  our  own  business? 

Chris.  I  reckon  it  is  my  business  to  know  what  she's  been  up  to. 

Mrs.  H.  Don't  you  forget  it.  And  don't  let  her  forget  it  either. 
If  you  do,  I  promise  you  I  won't. 

Chris.  All  right.  Where's  that  post-card? 

Mrs.  H.  Little  good  taking  heed  of  that. 

(Christopher  rises  and  gets  a  picture  post-card  from  the 
dresser.) 

Chris.  (Reading.)  She'll  be  home  before  late  on  Monday. 
Lovely  weather.  (Looking  at  the  picture.)  North  Pier,  Blackpool. 
Very  like,  too. 

Mrs.  H.  (Suddenly.)  Let's  have  a  look.  WThen  was  it  posted? 

Chris.  It's  dated  Sunday. 

Mrs.  H.  That's  nowt  to  go  by.  Any  one  can  put  the  wrong  date. 
What's  the  postmark?  (She  scrutinizes  it.)  "August  5th,  summat 
p.m."  I  can't  make  out  the  time. 

Chris.  August  5th.  That  was  yesterday  all  right.  There'd  only 
be  one  post  on  Sunday. 

Mrs.  H.  Then  she  was  in  Blackpool  till  yesterday,  that's  certain. 

Chris.  Ay! 

Mrs.  H.  Well,  it's  a  mystery. 

Chris.  (Shaking  his  head.)  Or  summat  worse. 

Mrs.  H.  Eh?  You  don't  think  that,  eh? 

Chris.  I  don't  know  what  to  think. 

Mrs.  H.  Nor  me  neither. 

(They  sit  silent  for  a  time.  There  is  a  rumble  of  thunder, 
far  away.  After  it  has  died  away,  a  knock  is  heard  at  the 
front  door.  They  turn  and  look  at  each  other.  Mrs.  Haw- 
thorn rises  and  goes  out  in  silence.  In  a  few  moments, 
Fanny  Hawthorn  comes  in,  followed  by  Mrs.  Hawthorn.)1 

1  HindU  Waket,  Stanley  Houghton.  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston;  Sidgwick  &  Jackson,  Ltd., 
London. 


DIALOGUE 


327 


"What  usually  keeps  a  writer  from  passing  to  well  char- 
acterized dialogue  from  dialogue  merely  clear  as  to  essen- 
tial facts  is  that  he  is  so  bound  to  his  facts  that  he  sees  rather 
than  feels  the  scene.  The  chief  trouble  with  the  dialogue  of 
the  John  Brown  play  was  an  attempt  to  keep  so  close  to 
historical  accounts  of  the  particular  incident  that  sympa- 
thetic imagination  was  benumbed.  One  constantly  meets 
this  fault  in  the  earlier  Miracle  Plays  before  writers  had 
come  to  understand  that  audiences  care  more  for  the  human 
being  in  the  situation  than  for  the  situation  itself,  and  that 
only  by  representing  a  situation  not  for  itself  but  as  felt  by 
the  people  involved  can  it  be  made  fully  interesting.  At 
the  left  is  a  speech  of  Mary  in  The  Crucifixion  of  the  York 
Cycle;  at  the  right  is  her  speech  in  the  Hegge  or  so-called 
Coventry  Plays. 


Mary.  Alas!    for    my    sweet 

son,  I  say, 
That  dolefully  to  deed  thus  is 

dight, 
Alas!  for  full  lovely  thou  lay 
In    my   womb,    this   worthely 

wight 
Alas!  that  I  should  see  this  sight 
Of  my  son  so  seemly  to  see, 
Alas!  that  this  blossom  so  bright 
Untruly  is  tugged  to  this  tree, 

Alas! 
My  lord,  my  life, 
With  full  great  grief, 
Hanges  as  a  thief, 
Alas!  he  did  never  trespass.1 


Mary.  O  my  son,  my  son!  my 

darling  dear! 
What  have  I  defended  [off ended] 

thee? 
Thou  hast  spoke  to  all  of  those 

that  be  here, 
And  not  a  word  thou  speakest 

to  me. 
To  the  Jews  thou  art  full  kind, 
Thou  hast  forgiven  all  here  mis- 
deed; 
And  the  thief  thou  hast  in  mind, 
For  once  asking  mercy  heaven 

is  his  meed. 
Ah!  my  sovereign  lord,  why  wilt 

thou  not  speak 
To  me  that  am  thy  mother  in 

pain  for  thy  wrong? 
Ah,  heart,  heart  why  wilt  thou 

not  break? 
That  I  were  out  of  this  sorrow 

so  strong! 2 

1  York  Plays,  p.  363.   L.  T.  Smith,  ed.  Clarendon  Press,  Oxford. 
*  Ludiu  Coventria,  p.  Sit.  J.  O.  Ilalliwell,  ed.  Shakespeare  Society. 


328  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

The  writer  of  the  Hegge  speech  had  discovered  long  before 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  that  the  secret  of  good  dialogue  is 
"truth  carried  alive  into  the  heart  by  passion."  The  second 
requisite,  then,  of  good  dialogue  is  that  it  must  be  kindled 
by  feeling,  made  alive  by  the  emotion  of  the  speaker.  For 
the  would-be  dramatist  the  secret  is  so  to  know  his  charac- 
ters that  facts  are  not  mere  facts,  but  conditions  moving  him 
because  they  move  the  characters  he  perfectly  understands. 
As  he  interprets  between  character  and  audience,  he  must 
be  like  Planchette  or  the  clairvoyant,  the  creature  of  an- 
other's will,  whose  ideas  and  emotions  rather  than  his  own 
he  tries  with  all  the  power  that  is  in  him  to  convey.  In 
brief,  then,  though  it  is  absolutely  necessary  that  dialogue 
give  the  facts  as  to  what  happens,  who  the  people  are,  their 
relations  to  one  another,  etc.,  it  is  better  dialogue  if,  while 
doing  all  this,  it  seems  to  be  busied  only  with  characteriza- 
tion. 

Unassigned  dialogue  usually  makes  a  reader  or  hearer 
promptly  recognize  his  preference  for  characterized  rather 
than  uncharacterized  speech.  When  a  group,  as  in  many 
stage  mobs,  speaks  in  chorus,  or  at  best  in  sections,  the 
result  is  unreality  for  many  hearers  and  absurdity  for  the 
more  critical.  Every  hearer  knows  that  people  do  not  really, 
when  part  of  a  mob,  say  absolutely  the  same  thing,  and 
rarely  speak  in  perfect  unison.  Common  sense  cries  out  for 
individualization  among  the  possible  speakers.  When  we 
read  the  following  extract  from  Andreiev's  Life  of  Man,  we 
may  agree  with  what  is  apparently  the  author's  idea,  that 
it  makes  no  difference  which  one  of  the  speakers  delivers  a 
particular  line  or  sentence;  but  the  moment  the  scene  is 
staged  everything  changes. 

A  profound  darkness  within  which  nothing  moves.  Then  there  can 
be  dimly  perceived  the  outlines  of  a  large,  high  room  and  the  grey  sil- 
houettes of  Old  Women  in  strange  garments  who  resemble  a  troop  of 


DIALOGUE  329 

■ft  hiding  mice.  In  low  voices  and  with  laughter  to  and  fro  the  Old 

''omen  converse. 


When  they  sent  him  to  the  drug  store  for  some  medicine  he  rode 
up  and  down  past  the  store  for  two  hours  and  could  not  remember 
1 1  he  wanted.  So  he  came  back. 

(Subdued  laughter.  The  crying  again  becomes  louder  and 
then  dies  away.  Silence.) 
What  has  happened  to  her?  Perhaps  she  is  already  dead. 

.  in  that  case  we  should  hear  weeping.  The  doctor  would  run 
out  and  begin  to  talk  nonsense,  and  they  would  bring  out  her  hus- 
band unconscious,  and  we   should  have  our  hands  full.   No,  she 
>t  dead. 
Then  why  are  we  sitting  here? 
Ask  Him.  How  should  we  know? 
He  won't  tell. 

He  won't  tell.  He  tells  nothing. 

He  drives  us  here  and  there.  He  rouses  us  from  our  beds  and 
makes  us  watch,  and  then  it  turns  out  that  there  was  no  need  of 
our  coming. 

We  came  of  our  own  accord.    Didn't  we  come  of  our  own  accord? 
You  must  be  fair  to  Him.  There,  she  is  crying  again.  Aren't  you 
satisfied  ? 
Are  you  t 

I  am  saying  nothing.  I  am  saying  nothing  and  waiting. 
How  kind-hearted  you  are! 

(Laughter.  The  cries  become  louder.)1 

Of  course  every  rule  has  its  exception,  and  it  may  be  urged 
that  the  final  lines  of  David  Pinski's  The  Treasure  need  no 
assigning  to  special  speakers.  This,  if  true,  results  from  the 
fact  that  Mr.  Pinski,  as  the  last  touch  in  his  study  of  the 
universal  perversion  of  man  through  lust  for  money,  wishes 
to  represent  even  all  the  dead  as  sharing  in  this  greed.  Even 
here,  however,  Mr.  Pinski  is  careful,  by  his  headings  "Many" 
and  "The  Pious  Rabbi, "'to  distinguish  among  speeches  to 
be  given  by  one  person,  the  chorus,  and  a  figure  he  wishes 
specially  to  individualize,  the  Rabbi. 

»  Play$,  pp.  71-72.  Copyright,  1915,  by  Cbas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


330  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

The  Dead 

(In  shrcnids  and  praying  shawls  appear  singly  and  in  groups  amid 
the  graves.  They  whisper  and  breathe  their  words.)  Swiftly  into  the 
synagogue!  .  .  .  Hasten!  .  .  .  The  hour  of  midnight  is  long  past.  .  .  . 
Hasten.  .  .  . 

(They  hasten  to  the  gate.  One  sees  only  their  silhouettes  in 
the  dim  light  of  the  veiled  moon.) 

I  thought  we  would  not  come  out  today  at  all. 

The  dead  fear  the  breath  of  the  living. 

We  fear  them  more  than  they  do  us.  There  is  no  peace  betwixt 
life  and  death.  .  .  . 

No  peace  ...  no  peace.  .  .  . 

Indeed  life  vexed  me  grievously  today. 

Vexed  is  not  the  word.  I  lived  in  their  life  so  really  that  I  shud- 
dered and  feared. 

Shuddered  with  fear  or  with  longing?  Did  you  feel  a  yearning 
for  your  money? 

{Ghostly  laughter  shakes  the  rows  of  the  dead.) 

The  distinguished  and  the  wealthy  must  surely  have  had  a  bad 
day. 

It  fairly  smelled  of  money  and  they  had  to  lie  with  the  worms. 

It  almost  threw  them  out  of  their  graves. 

Many 

Money  .  .  .  money  .  .  .  money.  .  .  .  (Ghostly  laughter.) 

But  you  poor  devils  hadn't  a  much  better  time  either.  It 
smelled  of  money  and  you  couldn't  even  beg.  (Laughter.) 

It  is  high  time  for  all  of  you  to  be  forgetting  life.  .  .  .  Come  quickly 
into  the  synagogue.  .  .  .  (Many  of  the  dead  vanish.) 

It  gave  me  really  an  exalted  feeling  to  see  how  little  fear  of  us 
they  felt. 

Don't  flatter  yourself.  We  would  have  been  no  better.  We  were 
no  better  either. 

Many 

(At  the  same  time.)  Money  .  .  .  Money  .  .  .  Money.  .  .  . 

Others 

And  that  is  life  .  .  .  that  is  life  .  .  .  that  is  life.  .  .  . 
It  exalted  me  in  my  grave  too.  So  many  women  walked  about 
here  today.  Young  ones  and  pretty  ones,  I  wager.  .  .  .  (Laughter.) 


DIALOGUE  331 

Who  speaks  thus?  Who  opens  his  mouth  to  speak  such  ugly 

Is? 
It's  the  petty  field  surgeon  who  lies  buried  by  the  wall. 

The  Pious  Rabbi 

(In  passing.  His  praying  shawl  hangs  but  loosely  over  his  left 

shoulder.)  They  have  dug  up  my  whole  grave.  .  .  .  They  have  dug 

away  my  right  arm.  Woe,  how  shall  I  now  put  on  my  praying 

!?  How  shall  I  appear  before  God?  (To  a  group.)  Will  not 

some  one  help  me  to  put  on  my  praying  shawl? 

(They  surround  and  kelp  him.  They  show  signs  of  deep 
feeling  at  the  sight  of  the  missing  arm.  Murmurs  of 
astonishment  and  compassion.) 


Many 

Woe.. 

.  woe  .  .  .  woe. 

Others 

Money  . 

.  .  money  .  .  . 

money.  .  . 

The  Rabbi 
Now  will  I  go  and  appear  before  God.  .  .  .  Now  I  will  ask  him.  .  . . 

(He  vanishes  through  the  gate.) 

Many 
He  will  get  no  answer  ...  he  will  get  no  answer. 

One  of  the  Dead 

(With  feeling.)  They  who  are  in  life  still  stand  at  the  same 
point.  Generation  dies  after  generation  and  all  remains  as  it  has 
been.  As  it  was  aforetime,  so  it  was  in  my  time  and  so  it  is  today. 

Many 
Money  .  .  .  money  .  .  .  money.  .  .  . 

And  yet  it  must  lead  to  something.  Surely  there  must  be  a  goal. 
Only  God  knows  that.  .  .  . 
And  man  must  learn  what  it  is. 
That  will  be  his  greatest  victory. 
Man's  greatest  victory. 

Several 
Man's.  .  .  . 


332  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


Others 
The  living  one's.  .  .  .  And  we? 

(A  ghostly  breathing  of  laughter  and  sighing.) 

The  First 
Man's  greatest  victory  .  .  . 

Curtain * 

Staging  this,  several  facts  will  confront  us.  We  certainly 
shall  not  let  different  actors  of  the  group  speak  different 
lines  on  successive  nights.  That  is,  each  supernumerary 
will  be  given  one  speech  or  more.  If  certain  speeches  seem 
to  belong  together,  they  will  be  given  to  one  actor,  and 
characterization  will  emerge  as  he  speaks  his  lines.  Unques- 
tionably, too,  if  speeches  which  seem  in  themselves  unchar- 
acterizing  are  given  to  marked  physical  types,  such  as  stout, 
very  thin,  very  tall,  or  very  short  people,  persons  of  mark- 
edly quick  or  slow  physical  movement,  some  of  the  speeches 
may  seem  unfitting.  Rarely,  then,  is  there  any  value  in  the 
unassigned  speech.  It  may  pass  in  the  reading,  as  has  been 
admitted,  but  the  public  prefers  the  assigned  speech,  and 
still  more  the  speech  so  characterized  that  it  must  be  as- 
signed. Compare  this  passage  from  Julius  Ccesar  with  its 
assignments  to  the  First,  the  Second,  the  Third,  and  the 
Fourth  Plebeian  with  the  passage  from  Andreiev's  play. 
Can  there  be  any  question  that  Shakespeare's  assigned 
speeches  are  somehow  clearer,  more  dramatic? 

SCENE  m.  A  Street 

Enter  Cinna  the  poet,  and  after  him  the  Plebeians 

Cinna.  I  dreamt  tonight  that  I  did  feast  with  Caesar, 
And  things  unluckily  charge  my  fantasy. 
I  have  no  will  to  wander  forth  of  doors, 
Yet  something  leads  me  forth. 

»  B.  W.  Huebsch,  New  York. 


DIALOGUE  333 

/.  Plebeian.  What  ia  your  name? 

2.  Plebeian*  Whither  are  you  going? 

3.  i  Where  do  you  dwell? 

Plebeian.  Are  you  a  married  man  or  a  bachelor? 

2.  Plebeian,  Answer  every  man  directly. 

1.  Plebeian,  Ay,  and  briefly. 

lebeian.  Ay,  and  wisely. 

3.  Plebeian.  Ay,  and  truly,  you  were  best. 

Cinna.  What  is  my  name?  Whither  am  I  going?  Where  do  I 
dwell?  Am  I  a  married  man  or  a  bachelor?  Then,  to  answer  every 
man  directly  and  briefly,  wisely  and  truly:  wisely  I  say,  I  am  a 
•  lor. 

2.  Plebeian.  That's  as  much  as  to  say,  they  are  fools  that  marry. 
You'll  bear  me  a  bang  for  that,  I  fear.  Proceed;  directly. 

(  inna.  Directly,  I  am  going  to  Caesar's  funeral. 

1.  Plebeian.  As  a  friend  or  an  enemy? 
■ma.  As  a  friend. 

2.  Plebeian.  That  matter  is  answered  directly. 
\.  Plebeian.  For  your  dwelling,  —  briefly. 
Cinna.  Briefly,  I  dwell  by  the  Capitol. 

3.  Plebeian.  Your  name,  sir,  truly. 
Cinna.  Truly,  my  name  is  Cinna. 

1.  Plebeian.  Tear  him  to  pieces;  he's  a  conspirator. 
Cinna.  I  am  Cinna  the  poet,  I  am  Cinna  the  poet. 

4.  Plebeian.  Tear  him  for  his  bad  verses,  tear  him  for  his  bad 

Cinna.  I  am  not  Cinna  the  conspirator. 

4.  Plebeian.  It  is  no  matter,  his  name's  Cinna.  Pluck  but  his 
name  out  of  his  heart  and  turn  him  going. 

3.  Plebeian.  Tear  him,  tear  him!  Come,  brands,  ho!  fire- 
brands! To  Brutus',  toCassius';  burn  all!  Some  to  Decius'  house, 
and  some  to  Casca's;  some  to  Lingarius'.  Away,  go!        {Exeunt.)1 

It  may  almost  be  stated  as  a  general  principle  that  assign- 
ing a  speech  is  the  first  step  in  focusing  the  attention  of  an 
audience  on  that  speech.  The  value  of  such  focusing  has 
been  discussed  earlier  under  "Characterization."  In  excep- 
tional cases,  as  the  citation  from  The  Treasure  shows,  there 
may  be  some  justification  for  unassigned  speeches,  but  in 

1  Julius  Cottar,  Act  hi,  Scene  3. 


334  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred,  when  any  lines  of  the 
play  seem  not  to  need  assigning  to  any  particular  person, 
they  lack  the  characterization  which  belongs  to  them. 

The  thesis  play  or  the  problem  play,  which  have  been  so 
current  in  the  last  few  years,  have  brought  into  special  prom- 
inence a  common  fault  in  so-called  dramatic  dialogue.  The 
speeches  narrate,  describe,  expound  or  argue,  and  well,  but 
not  in  the  character  of  the  supposed  speaker.  Rather  the 
author  himself  is  speaking.  Such  dialogue,  whether  it  be  as 
clever  as  some  in  Mr.  Shaw's  plays,  as  beautiful  as  certain 
passages  by  George  Chapman,  or  as  commonplace  as  in 
many  modern  instances,  should  be  rewritten  till  the  author 
can  state  the  desired  idea  or  facts  as  the  imagined  speaker 
would  have  stated  them.  This  was  the  fault  with  the  extract 
from  the  John  Brown  play,  and  whether  it  has  its  source  in 
an  intense  desire  of  the  author  to  present  his  own  ideas,  or 
to  phrase  his  sense  of  beauty,  in  lack  of  characterizing  power 
or  in  mere  carelessness,  it  is  reprehensible.  In  the  following 
instance,  the  writer  is  so  absorbed  in  his  own  ideas  that  he 
forgets  characterization. 

Senator  Morse.  .  .  .  What  great  motive  — ? 

Mary.  One  more  imperious  than  empires  or  coalitions  —  (Mary 
turns  to  Mrs.  Morse)  —  one  that  mothers  know  —  (Mary  turns  to 
Senator  Morse)  —  and  fathers,  too.  It  is  the  commonest  thing  in 
the  world,  and  the  one  most  completely  overlooked.  Woman's 
love  and  faith  and  charity  are  the  motives  of  that  great,  imperious 
impulse  by  which  nature  is  trying  to  rule  this  world  and  perpetuate 
the  human  soul.  Individual  self-control  and  the  governance  of  the 
world  are  themselves  in  embryo.  .  .  .  Creation  is  from  God  and  it 
is  divine.  It  is  the  thing  and  the  only  thing  that  kills  wantonness 
and  makes  love  pure.  The  higher  modesty  is  the  peculiar  inlerit- 
ance  of  our  race.  It  is  our  duty  to  understand  it,  respect  it,  make 
it  sacred,  and  have  it  raised  out  of  the  darkness  of  ignorance  and 
mystery  in  its  true  dignity  as  patriotic  impulse  and  made  the  true 
basis  of  society,  its  government,  and  its  provision  for  the  general 
welfare. 


DIALOGUE  335 

!  this  sound  like  an  individual  woman  or  like  the 
author  using  one  of  his  characters  for  the  sounding  phrases 
of  his  own  thinking? 

In  the  next  illustration,  from  George  Barnwell,  the  color- 
ness  comes  from  the  lack  of  quickening  sympathy  with 
character  which  marks  most  of  Lillo's  work. 

Thorowgood.  Thou  know'st  I  have  no  heir,  no  child  but  thee; 
the  fruits  of  many  years  successful  industry  must  all  be  thine. 
.  it  would  give  me  pleasure  great  as  my  love,  to  see  on  whom 
y(»u  would  bestow  it.  I  am  daily  solicited  by  men  of  the  greatest 
rank  and  merit  for  leave  to  address  you;  but  I  have  hitherto 
declin'd  it,  in  hopes  that  by  observation  I  shou'd  learn  which  way 
your  inclination  tends;  for  as  I  know  love  to  be  essential  to  happi- 
ness in  the  marriage  state,  I  had  rather  my  approbation  should 
confirm  your  choice  than  direct  it. 

Maria.  What  can  I  say?  How  shall  I  answer,  as  I  ought,  this 
tenderness,  so  uncommon  even  in  the  best  of  parents?  But  you 
are  without  example;  yet  had  you  been  less  indulgent,  I  had  been 
most  wretched.  That  I  look  on  the  croud  of  courtiers  that  visit 
here  with  equal  esteem,  but  equal  indifference,  you  have  observed, 
and  I  must  needs  confess;  yet  had  you  asserted  your  authority,  and 
insisted  on  a  parent's  right  to  be  obey'd,  I  had  submitted  and  to 
my  duty  sacrificed  my  peace. 

Tlior.  From  your  perfect  obedience  in  every  other  instance, 
I  fear'd  as  much;  and  therefore  wou'd  leave  you  without  a  byass 
in  an  affair  wherein  your  happiness  is  so  immediately  con- 
cern'd. 

Ma.  Whether  from  a  want  of  that  just  ambition  that  wou'd 
become  your  daughter,  or  from  some  other  cause,  I  know  not; 
but  I  find  high  birth  and  titles  don't  recommend  the  man  who 
owns  them  to  my  affections. 

Thor.  I  wou'd  not  that  they  shou'd,  unless  his  merit  recommends 
him  more.  A  noble  birth  and  fortune,  tho'  they  make  not  a  bad 
man  good,  yet  they  are  a  real  advantage  to  a  worthy  one,  and  place 
his  virtues  in  the  fairest  light. 

Ma.  I  cannot  answer  for  my  inclinations,  but  they  shall  ever 
be  submitted  to  your  wisdom  and  authority;  and,  as  you  will  not 
compel  me  to  marry  where  I  cannot  love,  so  love  shall  never  make 


336  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

me  act  contrary  to  my  duty.  Sir,  I  have  your  permission  to  retire? 
Thor.  I'll  see  you  to  your  chamber.  {Exeunt.)1 

Too  often  even  somewhat  skilled  dramatists  are  led  astray 
by  the  belief  that  to  write  in  a  style  approved  at  the  moment, 
or  which  they  themselves  hold  beautiful,  is  better  than  to 
let  the  characters  speak  their  own  language.  Examining  the 
early  plays  of  John  Lyly  —  Alexander  and  Campaspe,  Sapho 
and  Phao,  Endymion2  (1579-1590)  —  we  find  in  the  more 
serious  portions  both  action  and  characterization  subordi- 
nated to  standards  of  expression  supposed  at  the  time  to  be 
best.  Contrasting  the  lovers'  dialogue  of  Love's  Labor's  Lost 
with  the  scenes  of  Orsino  and  Viola  in  Twelfth  Night,  we  see 
perfect  illustration  of  the  greater  effectiveness  of  dialogue 
growing  out  of  the  characters  as  compared  with  dialogue 
which  puts  style  first.  The  Heroic  Drama  of  the  second  half 
of  the  seventeenth  century  rested  upon  theory  rather  than 
reality.  Here  is  the  way  in  which  Almahide  and  Almanzor 
state  strong  feeling. 

Almahide.  Then,  since  you  needs  will  all  my  weakness  know, 
I  love  you;  and  so  well,  that  you  must  go. 
I  am  so  much  oblig'd,  and  have  withall 
A  heart  so  boundless  and  so  prodigal 
I  dare  not  trust  myself,  or  you,  to  stay, 
But,  like  frank  gamesters,  must  foreswear  the  play. 

Almanzor.  Fate,  thou  art  kind  to  strike  so  hard  a  blow; 
I  am  quite  stunn'd,  and  past  all  feeling  now. 
Yet  —  can  you  tell  me  you  have  pow'r  and  will 
To  save  my  life,  and  at  that  instant,  kill! 3 

All  that  these  two  worthy  people  are  trying  to  say  is 

Almahide.  I  love  you;  and  so  well  that  I  dare  not  trust  myself 
or  you  to  stay. 

Almanzor.  Can  you  tell  me  you  have  power  and  will  to  save 
my  life  and  at  that  instant  kill! 

1  The  London  Merchant,  or  The  History  of  George  Barnwell,  Act  i,  Scene  1.    George  Lillo. 
Sir  A.  W.  Ward,  ed.   Belles-Lettres  Series.   D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  New  York. 
*  Works,   R.  W.  Bond,  ed.   Clarendon  Press,  Oxford. 
»  Selected  Dramas  of  John  Dryden.  Conquest  of  Granada.    G.  B.  Noyes,  ed. 


DIALOGUE  337 

DrydeD  makes  Almahide  describe  her  own  emotional  con- 
dition and,  as  is  proper  at'any  critical  moment  in  Heroic 
ma,  drop  into  simile.   Almanzor,  too,  confidently  diag- 
ts  his  own  condition  and  apostrophizes  fate.  All  this  was 
quite  correct  in  its  own  day,  not  for  real  life,  but  for  the 
»le  of  the  myth  land  conjured  up  by  the  dramatic  theo- 
of  the  I itterati.    Did  people  under  such  circumstances 
■peak  in  this  way?  Surely  not. 
TI lis  scene  from  George  Barnwell,   1731,  illustrates  the 
e  substitution  of  an  author's  idea  of  what  is  effective 
use  "literary"  for  a  phrasing  that  springs  from  the 
real  emotion  of  perfectly  individualized  figures. 

SCENE  7.  Uncle.  George  Barnwell  at  a  distance 

Uncle.  O  Death,  thou  strange  mysterious  power,  —  seen  every 
day,  yet  never  understood  but  by  the  incommunicative  dead  — 
what  art  thou?  The  extensive  mind  of  man,  that  with  a  thought 
circles  the  earth's  vast  globe,  sinks  to  the  centre,  or  ascends 
above  the  stars;  that  worlds  exotick  finds,  or  thinks  it  finds  —  thy 
thick  clouds  attempts  to  pass  in  vain,  lost  and  bewilder'd  in  the 
horrid  gloom;  defeated,  she  returns  more  doubtful  than  before;  of 
nothing  certain  but  of  labour  lost. 

(During  this  speech,  Barnwell  sometimes  presents  the  pis- 
tol and  draws  it  back  again;  at  last  he  drops  it,  at  which 
his  uncle  starts  and  draws  his  sword.) 
Barnwell.  Oh,  'tis  impossible! 
Uncle.  A  man  so  near  me,  arm'd  and  masqu'd! 
Barn.  Nay,  then  there's  no  retreat. 

(Plucks  a  poniard  from  his  bosom,  and  stabs  him.) 
Uncle.  Oh!  I  am  slain!  All-gracious  heaven  regard  the  prayer 
of  thy  dying  servant!  Bless,  with  thy  choicest  blessings,  my  dear- 
est nephew;  forgive  my  murderer,  and  take  my  fleeting  soul  to  end- 
less mercy! 

(Barnwell  throws  off  his  mask,  runs  to  him,  and,  kneeling 

by  him,  raises  and  chafes  him.) 

Barn.  Expiring  saint!  Oil,  murder'd,  martyr'd  uncle!    Lift  up 

y.nir  dying  eyes,  and  view  your  nephew  in  your  murderer!   O,  do 

not  look  so  tenderly  upon  me!  Let  indignation  lighten  from  your 


338  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

eyes,  and  blast  me  e're  you  die!  —  By  Heaven,  he  weeps  in  pity 
of  my  woes.  Tears, —  tears  for  blood !  The  murder'd,  in  the  agonies 
of  death,  weeps  for  his  murderer.  —  Oh,  speak  your  pious  purpose, 
pronounce  my  pardon  then  —  and  take  me  with  you!  —  He  wou'd, 
but  cannot.  O  why  with  such  fond  affection  do  you  press  my  mur- 
dering hand!  —  What!  will  you  kiss  me!  (Kisses  him.  Uncle  groans 
and  dies.)  He's  gone  forever  —  and  oh!  I  follow.  {Swoons  away  by 
his  uncle's  body.)  Do  I  still  live  to  press  the  suffering  bosom  of  the 
earth?  Do  I  still  breathe  and  taint  with  my  infectious  breath  the 
wholesome  air!  Let  Heaven  from  its  high  throne,  in  justice  or  in 
mercy,  now  look  down  on  that  dear  murder'd  saint,  and  me  the 
murderer.  And,  if  his  vengeance  spares,  let  pity  strike  and  end  my 
wretched  being!  —  Murder  the  worst  of  crimes,  and  parricide  the 
worst  of  murders,  and  this  the  worst  of  parricides !  Cain,  who  stands 
on  record  from  the  birth  of  time,  and  must  to  its  last  final  period, 
as  accurs'd,  slew  a  brother,  favour'd  above  him.  Detested  Nero 
by  another's  hand  dispatched  a  mother  that  he  fear'd  and  hated. 
But  I,  with  my  own  hand,  have  murder'd  a  brother,  mother,  father, 
and  a  friend,  most  loving  and  belov'd.  This  execrable  act  of  mine's 
without  a  parallel.  O  may  it  ever  stand  alone  —  the  last  of  mur- 
ders, as  it  is  the  worst! 

The  rich  man  thus,  in  torment  and  despair, 
Prefer'd  his  vain,  but  charitable  prayer. 
The  fool,  his  own  soul  lost,  wou'd  fain  be  wise 
For  others  good;  but  Heaven  his  suit  denies. 
By  laws  and  means  well  known  we  stand  or  fall, 
And  one  eternal  rule  remains  for  all. 
The  End  of  the  Third  Ad.1 

Have  you  noticed  that  people  under  stress  of  strong  emo- 
tion stop  to  depict  their  emotional  condition,  to  analyze  it, 
or  neatly  to  apostrophize  fate  or  Providence?  The  more 
real  the  emotion  the  more  compact  and  connotative,  usu- 
ally, is  its  expression.  People  under  high  emotional  strain 
who  can  tell  you  just  what  they  ought  to  feel,  or  who  de- 
scribe elaborately  what  they  are  feeling  are  usually  "indeed 
exceeding  calm."  Dryden's  Lyndaraxa  builded  better  than 
she  knew  when  she  said : 

1  Belles-Lettres  Series.  Sir  A.  W.  Ward,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  New  York. 


DIALOGUE  339 

By  my  own  experience  I  can  tall 
Those  who  love  truly  do  not  argue  well. 

Bulwer  Ly  t  ton  was  thinking  of  the  weakness  of  self-descrip- 
ti\r  woo  when  he  wrote  Macready,  while  composing  Riche- 
lieu, "In  Act  4  —  in  my  last  alteration,  when  Richelieu, 
pitying  Julie,  says,  'I  could  weep  to  see  her  thus  —  But*  — 
the  effect  would  I  think  be  better  if  he  felt  the  tears  with 
indignation  at  his  own  weakness  —  thus: 

'Are  these  tears? 
O,  shame,  shame,  Dotage'  — n 

Emotion,  if  given  free  way,  finds  the  right  words  by  which 
to  express  itself.  When  a  character  stands  outside  itself, 
describing  what  it  feels,  the  speaker  is  really  the  author  in 
disguise,  describing  wrhat  he  is  incompetent,  from  lack  of 
.sympathetic  power,  to  phrase  with  simple,  moving  accuracy. 
M.  de  Curel  has  described  perfectly  the  right  relation  of 
author  to  character  and  dialogue. 

During  the  first  days  of  work  I  have  a  very  distinct  feeling  of 
creation.  Later  I  move  on  instinctively  and  that  is  much  better. 
When  the  sentiments  of  my  characters  are  in  question  I  am  abso- 
lutely in  their  skins,  for  my  own  part  indifferent  as  to  their  griefs 
or  joys.  I  can  be  moved  only  later  in  re-reading,  and  then  this  emo- 
tion seems  to  arise  from  the  fact  that  I  have  to  do  with  characters 
absolutely  strange  to  me.  I  experience  sometimes,  and  then  per- 
sonally, a  feeling  of  irony,  of  flippancy,  in  regard  to  my  characters 
who  tangle  themselves  up  and  get  themselves  into  difficulties. 
That  transpires  sometimes  in  the  language  of  some  other  character 
who,  at  the  moment,  ceases  to  speak  correctly  because  he  speaks 
as  I  should.  As  a  result,  corrections  later.  At  the  end  of  a  year, 
my  play,  when  I  re-read  it,  seems  something  completely  apart 
from  me,  written  by  another.1 

Allowing  a  character  to  express  itself  exactly  raises  inev- 
itably the  question  of  dialect.  On  the  one  hand  it  must  be 

i  L'AnnSe  Ptychologique,  18M,  p.  120. 


34o  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

admitted  that  nothing  more  quickly  characterizes  a  figure, 
as  far  as  type  is  concerned,  than  to  let  him  speak  like  a 
Yankee,  a  Scotchman,  a  Negro,  etc.  If  the  character  utters 
phrases  which  an  audience  recognizes  instantly  as  charac- 
teristic of  his  supposed  type,  there  is  special  satisfaction  to 
the  audience  in  such  recognition.  On  the  other  hand,  very 
few  audiences  know  any  dialect  thoroughly  enough  to  per- 
mit a  writer  to  use  it  with  absolute  accuracy.  The  moment 
dialect  begins  to  show  the  need  of  a  glossary,  it  is  defeating 
its  own  ends.  As  a  result  a  compromise  has  arisen,  dating 
from  the  very  early  days  of  the  drama  —  stage  dialects.  A 
character  made  up  to  represent  Scotchman,  Welshman, 
Frenchman,  Negro,  or  Indian,  speaks  in  a  way  that  has 
become  time-honored  on  the  stage  as  representing  this  or 
that  figure  among  these  types.  Till  recently  most  dialect 
on  the  stage  has  been  at  best  a  mere  popular  approximation 
to  real  usage.  Until  within  a  few  years  the  peasant  dialogue 
of  Gammer  GurtorCs  Needle,  the  famous  sixteenth-century 
Interlude,  was  supposed  to  represent  dialect  of  its  time  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Cambridge,  England.  Recently  philolo- 
gists have  shown  that  the  speech  of  these  peasants  is  unlike 
any  dialect  of  the  period  of  the  play,  and  was  obviously  a 
stage  convention  of  the  time.  Study  the  Welshmen  and 
other  dialect  parts  in  Shakespeare,  and  you  will  reach  ap- 
proximately the  same  conclusion.  With  our  developing 
sense  of  historical  truth  and  of  realism,  we  have,  in  recent 
years,  been  trying  to  make  our  characters  speak  exactly  as 
they  would  in  real  life.  The  plays  of  the  Abbey  Theatre  are 
in  large  part  a  revolt  from  the  Irish  dialogue  which  the  plays 
of  Dion  Boucicault  had  practically  established  as  true  to 
life.  Today  we  try  not  only  phonetically  to  represent  the 
ways  in  which  words  are  spoken  by  the  people  of  a  par- 
ticular locality,  but  by  the  use  of  words  and  phrases  heard 
among  such  people  to  make  the  characterization  vivid  and 


DIALOGUE  341 

convincing.  Here,  in  Mr.  Sheldon's  play,  The  Nigger,  is  care 
iroduce  phonetically  the  speech  of  negroes: 

Jinny.  (Wearily.)  I  speck  yo'  right.  Hev  yo*  got  suthin'  fo' 

Be  t*night?  Seems  lak  I  might  take  it  down  wif  me  t*  de  cabin. 

Si mms.    (Grumbling.)    Fo'   dat   young    good-fo'-nuffin    hawg- 

gmbbah  t'  swallow  w'en  he  done  come  home?  Laws  me,  w'y 

^e  Phil  'lows  his   fried  chicken  en*  co'n-braid   t'   feed    dat 

hies   rap-scallion,  I  jes'    cain't  see!   Clar  out  o'  heah,  yo' 

py  yallah  gal! 

Jinny.  (Crushingly.)  Yallah  gal — !  Sho'!  I  was  livin'  heah  fo' 

was  bawn!  Don'  fo'get  dat,  yo'  imperent,  low-down  li'tle  niggah 

Simms.  (Pacifically.)  Hoi'  on,  Jinny!  I  ain't  said  nuffin'.  Dat 
I  ain't !  Yo'  g'  long  now  en'  I'll  sen'  down  a  gal  t'  yo'  cabin  wif  a 
.-■t. 
Jinny.  (Turning  away.)  Yo'  sho'  will  —  er  Marse  Phil'd  — 
Simms.  (As  he  goes  up  the  steps.)  En'  keep  yo'  gran'chillun  out 
saloom,  Jinny,  ef  yo'  don'  want  t'  see  'em  cross  de  Jo'dan  ahead 
o'!  Dat  Joe!  Lawd-a-massy!  De  white  in  him  ain't  done  no- 
body no  good's  fan's  dis  —  'Scuse  me,  sah! 

(He  stops  suddenly  and  turns  aside,  bowing,  on  seeing  Noyes 
and  Georgie,  who  have  opened  the  door  and  come  out.) 

Here  is  equal  care  to  represent  the  speech  of  Southerners. 

Noyes.  My  fathah?  Yes,  he  gave  way  t'  his  Comme'cial  ambi- 
tion by  sellin'  powda  an'  bullets  t'  the  Union  —  way  back  in  '62. 
That  got  him  into  a  bunch  o'  trouble,  but  it  wasn't  what  started 
tlu —  slight  fam'ly  coolness! 

Georgie.  Wasn't  it?  Why,  I  always  hea'd  — 

Noyes.  No,  it  came  befo'  that.  My  gran'fathah  an'  Phil's  — 
they  were  brothahs-in-law,  you  know  —  they  began  it  in  the  fo'ties. 

Georgie.  Why? 

s.  (Grimly.)  I  reckon  the  Morrows  are  tryin'  now  t'  keep 
it  dak.  But  Lawd!  —  I  don't  mind  tellin'.  It's  the  old  thing 
—  both  losin'  theah  heads  ovah  the  same  woman. 

rgie.  (Innocently.)  How  romantic!  Phil's  gran'mothah? 
es.  (After  a  pause.)  No  —  niggah  woman. 

Georgie  (In  a  low  voice,  turning  away.)  Oh  —  I  didn't  —  real- 
ize— 


342  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Noyes.  (Clearing  his  throat.)  Phil's  gran'fathah  —  he  won  out. 
An'  that's  the  kick  that  sta'ted  the  Noyes  fam'ly  a-rollin'  t'  pe'- 
dition. 

Georgie.  (With  difficulty.)  But  mos'  people  are  willin'  to  fo'get 
—  at  least  they  ought  to  be. 

Noyes.  (Dryly.)  Some  ain't  killed  'emselves  tryin'.  Howevah, 
on  lookin'  ahead  I  saw  Phil  an'  I  might  be  in  a  position  t'  help  each 
othah,  so  we  agreed  t'  sink  it.  I  —  I  wish  yo'  mothah  would  fol- 
low Phil,  Miss  Byrd.  I  ce'tainly  do  wish  that! 

Georgie.  She's  old-fashioned  —  oh,  hopelessly  so!  —  in  things  the 
world  now  considers  —  trivial. 

Noyes.  (Looking  at  his  hands.)  Such  as  —  trade? 

Georgie.  (Gently.)  That's  one  of  them.1 

Lady  Gregory,  after  writing  a  rough  draft  of  one  of  her 
plays,  goes  among  the  people  of  her  community  and  sets 
them  talking  of  the  subject  she  is  treating.  Noting  their 
racy,  apt,  and  highly  individualized  phrases,  she  gives  them 
to  her  characters  in  the  play  as  she  re-writes.  Such  intimate, 
loving  study  of  dialect  as  Lady  Gregory,  Mr.  Yeats,  and 
Synge  have  shown  has  given  us  an  accurate  representation 
of  the  Irish  peasant,  and  may  ultimately  drive  from  the 
English  stage  the  conventional  absurdities  of  the  past. 
Dialect,  then,  if  carefully  studied,  is  highly  desirable  if  two 
or  three  facts  are  borne  in  mind.  First  of  all,  it  should  be 
accurate;  but  secondly  it  must  be  clear  or  must  be  made 
clear  for  any  audience.  Unquestionably,  Mr.  Stanley 
Houghton's  memorable  play  Hindle  Wakes  had  a  bad  title 
away  from  its  birthplace,  —  Manchester,  England.  In  the 
United  States,  this  title  is  perfectly  meaningless.  How 
many  in  any  audience  in  this  country  could  be  expected  to 
know  that  the  title  means  certain  "autumn  week-end  holi- 
days in  the  town  of  Hindle."  There  could  be  no  harm 
in  using  a  different  title  away  from  the  birthplace  of  the 
play.    Recently,  in  a  manuscript  play,  appeared  a  figure 

1  The  Nigger,  Act  i.  Edward  Sheldon.  The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York. 


DIALOGUE  343 

speaking  a  strange  mixture  of  Negro  and  Irish  dialects.  He 
seemed  to  all  readers  a  clumsy  attempt  by  the  author  at  a 
dialect  part.  Really,  the  figure  was  a  portrait  of  a  small 
political  boss  who,  from  boyhood  on,  had  acquired  in  the 
ns  and  purlieus  of  his  district  words  and  phrases  of 
i  the  Negroes  and  the  Irish.  A  little  preliminary  expo- 
n  at  the  right  place  cleared  up  this  difficulty  and  turned 
what  seemed  inept  characterization  into  a  particularly  indi- 
vidual figure  of  richly  characterizing  phrase.  Obviously, 
then,  dialect  should,  first,  be  written  accurately.  Then  it 
should  be  gone  over  to  see  what  in  it  may  not  be  clear  to 
most  auditors.  These  words  or  phrases  should  be  made 
clear  because  they  are  translated  by  other  people  on  the 
stage  or  by  the  speaker,  who  himself  sees  or  is  told  that  some 
stage  listener  does  not  understand  him.  Only  a  little 
enuity  is  needed  to  do  away  with  such  vaguenesses.  To 
substitute  for  such  words  and  phrases  others  which,  though 
incorrect,  would  be  instantly  understood  by  the  audience  is 
to  botch  the  dialect  and  produce  what  is,  after  all,  not  differ- 
ent from  the  conventional  stage  dialect  of  the  past.  This 
raises  a  third  point  in  regard  to  dialect,  and  one  very  fre- 
quently disregarded.  Over  and  over  again  in  plays  using 
dialect  certain  speeches  are  passed  over  by  the  author  in  his 
final  revision  which  neither  phonetically  nor  in  the  words 
and  phrases  chosen  comport  with  the  context.  Instantly 
the  mood  and  the  color  of  the  scene  are  lost  unless  the  actor 
supplies  what  the  author  failed  to  give.  That  is,  dialect,  if 
used,  should  be  used  steadily  and  consistently.  The  desid- 
erata are,  then,  accuracy,  persistent  use,  and  clearness  for 
the  general  public.  Thus  used,  dialect  is  one  of  the  chief  aids 
to  characterization. 

If,  in  writing  dialogue,  a  dramatist  must  not  speak  as 
himself  but  in  character,  must  not  be  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously literary  if  not  in  character,  how  may  one  surely 


344  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

choose  the  right  words?  Perhaps  one  or  two  illustrations 
will  help  here.  The  citation  in  the  left-hand  column  from 
the  first  quarto  Hamlet  states  the  facts  clearly  enough,  but 
wholly  uncolored  by  the  emotion  of  the  speaker.  In  the 
right-hand  column  the  passionate  sympathy  of  Shakespeare 
has  given  him  perfect  understanding  of  Hamlet's  feeling. 

Hamlet.  O  fie  Horatio,  and  if  Hamlet.    O     good     Horatio, 

thou  shouldst  die,  what  a  wounded  name 

What  a  scandale  wouldst  thou  Things  standing  thus  unknowne, 

leave  behinde?  shall  I  leave  behind  me? 

What  tongue   should   tell  the  If  thou  did'st  ever  hold  me  in 

story  of  our  deaths,  thy  hart, 

If  not  from  thee?  O  my  heart  Absent    thee    from    felicity    a 

sinckes  Horatio,  while, 

Mine  eyes  have  lost  their  sight,  And  in  this  harsh  world  drawe 

my  tongue  his  use:  thy  breath  in  paine 

Farewell   Horatio,   heaven   re-  To  tell  my  story:  What  warlike 

ceive  my  soule.  noise  is  this? 

{Hamlet  dies.)  {A  inarch  a  Jarre  off.)  l 

Speaking,  not  as  the  historian,  not  as  the  observer,  but  as 
Hamlet  himself,  Shakespeare  by  his  quickened  feeling  finds 
a  phrasing  of  which  we  may  say  what  Swinburne  said  of 
some  of  the  lines  of  John  Webster :  that  the  character  says, 
not  what  he  might  have  said,  not  what  we  are  satisfied  to 
have  him  say,  but  what  seems  absolutely  the  only  thing  he 
could  have  said. 

Wlien  a  dramatist  works  as  he  should,  the  emotion  of  his 
characters  gives  him  the  right  words  for  carrying  their  feel- 
ings to  the  audience,  and  every  word  counts.  Writing  to 
Macready  of  Money,  Bulwer-Lytton  said  of  his  play,  "At 
the  end  of  Act  in  your  closing  speech,  wall  you  remember 
to  say,  you  'would*  refuse  me  ten  pounds  to  spend  on 
benevolence.  Not  you  refuse  me.  The  would  is  important." 2 

In  the  left-hand  column  the  complete  sympathy  of  Hey- 

1  The  Devonshire  Hamlets,  p.  99. 

*  Letters  of  Bulwer-Lytton  to  Macready,  p.  130.  B.  Matthews,  ed. 


DIALOGUE 


345 


wood  with  his  characters  makes  them  speak  simply,  out  of 
the  fullness  of  their  emotion.    In  the  ri^ht-hand  column, 
Heywood's  collaborator,  Rowley,  lacking  complete  under- 
ling of  his  characters,  is  thinking  more  of  phrase  for  its 
sake. 


1     SCENE  4.  The  street 

Rainsjord    and     Young 
Forrest,  meeting 
Young  Forrest.  Pray  let  me 

speak  with  you. 
Rainsjord.  With  me,  sir? 
}     :ng  For.  With  you. 
Rains.  Say  on. 
Young    For.     Do    you    not 

know  me? 
Rains.  Keep   off,   upon    the 
peril  of  thy  life. 
Come  not  within  my  sword's 

length,  lest  this  arm 
Fro\ v  fatal  to  thee  and  bereave 

thy  life, 
As  it  hath  done  thy  brother's. 
Young  For.  Why  now  thou 
know'st  me  truly,  by  that 
token, 
That  thou  hast  slain  my  brother. 

Put  up,  put  up! 
So  great  a  quarrel  as  a  brother's 

life 
Must   not   be   made  a  street- 
brawl;  'tis  not  fit 
That  every  prentice  should,  with 

his  shop  club, 
Betwixt  us  play  the  sticklers. 
Sheathe  thy  sword. 
Rains.  Swear  thou  wilt  act 
HO  sudden  violence, 
Or  this  sharp  sword  shall  still 
1><-  interposed 


ACT  II.  SCENE  1.  Ilounslow/ 

Enter    Rainsjord  and   Young 

Forrest 
Rainsford.    Your    resolution 

holds,  then? 
Young    Forrest.     Men    that 

are  easily  mov'd  are  soon 

remov'd 
From  resolution;  but  when,  with 

advice 
And  with  foresight  we  purpose, 

our  intents 
Are    not    without    considerate 

reasons  alter'd. 
Rains.  Thou  art  resolv'd,  and 

I  prepar'd  for  thee. 
Yet  thus  much  know,  thy  state 

is  desperate, 
And  thou  art  now  in  danger's 

throat  already 
Ev'n  half  devour'd.  If  I  sub- 
due thee,  know 
Thou  art  a  dead  man;  for  this 

fatal  steel, 
That  search'd  thy  brother's  en- 
trails is  prepar'd 
To  do  as  much  to  thee.  If  thou 

survivest, 
And  I  be  slain,  th'art  dead  too, 

my  alliance 
And  greatness  in  the  world  will 

not  endure 
My  slaughter  unavenged.  Come, 

I  am  for  thee. 


346 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


'Twixt  me  and  thy  own  hatred. 
Young    For.     Sheathe    thy 

sword. 
By  my  religion  and    that  in- 
terest 
I  have  in  gentry  I  will  not  be 

guilty 
Of  any  base  revenge. 
Rains.  Say  on. 
Young  For.  Let's  walk. 
Trust  me.  Let  not  thy  guilty 

soul 
Be  jealous  of  my  fury.    This 

my  hand 
Is  curbed  and  govern'd  by  an 

honest  heart, 
Not  by  just  anger.  I'll  not  touch 

thee  foully 
For  all  the  world.  Let's  walk. 
Rains.  Proceed. 
Young  For.  Sir,  you  did  kill 

my  brother.  Had  it  been 
In    fair    and    even   encounter, 

tho'  a  child, 
His  death  I  had  not  question'd. 
Rains.  Is  this  all? 
Young  For.  He's  gone.    The 

law   is  past.    Your  life  is 

clear'd; 
For  none  of  all  our  kindred  laid 

against 
You    evidence    to    hang   you. 

You're  a  gentleman; 
And  pity  'twere  a  man  of  your 

descent 
Should  die  a  felon's  death.    See, 

sir,  thus  far 
We  have  demeaned  fairly,  like 

ourselves. 
But,  think  you,  though  we  wink 

at  base  revenge, 


Young    For.    I    would    my 
brother  liv'd,  that  this  our 
diff'rence 
Might  end  in  an  embrace  of 

folded  love; 
But  'twas  Heaven's  will  that 

for  some  guilt  of  his 
He  should  be  scourged  by  thee; 

and  for  the  guilt 
In  scourging  him,  thou  by  my 

vengeance  punish'd. 
Come;  I  am  both  ways  arm'd, 

against  thy  steel 
If  I  be  pierc'd  by  it,  or  'gainst 

thy  greatness 
If  mine  pierce  thee. 
Rains.  Have  at  thee. 

(They  fight  and  pause.) 
Young  For.  I  will  not  bid  thee 
hold;    but  if  thy    breath 
Be  as  much  short  as  mine,  look 
to  thy  weakness. 
Rains.  The      breath       thou 
draw'st  but  weakly, 
Thou     now     shalt     draw    no 
more. 

(They  fight.  Forrest   loseth 
his  weapon.) 
Young    For.    That    Heaven 
knows. 
He  guard   my  body  that  my 
spirit  owes! 

{Guards  himself,  and  puts 
by  with  his  hat  —  slips  — 
the  other,  running,  falls 
over  him,  and  Forrest  kills 
him.) 
Good.  My   cousin's   fall'n  — 

pursue  the  murderer. 
Foster.  But  not  too  near,  I 
pray;  you  see  he's  armed, 


DIALOGUE 


347 


'  h  can  be  so  soon 
forgot? 

Our    gentry   baffled,   and   our 

nam.-  disgraced? 
must  not  be;  I  am  a  gen- 
tleman 
Well  ku.»wn;  and  my  demeanor 

hitherto 
Hath      promis'd       somewhat. 

Should  I  swallow  this, 
The  scandal  would  outlive  me. 

Briefly  then, 
I  '11  fight  with  you. 
Ha  iris.  I  am  loath. 
Young  For.  Answer  directly, 
Whether  you  dare  to  meet  me 

on  even  terms; 
Or  mark  how  I'll  proceed. 
Rains.  Say,  I  deny  it. 
Young    For.    Then     I    say 
thou'rt    a    villain,  and    I 
challenge  thee, 
Where'er  I  meet  thee  next,  in 

field  or  town, 
The  father's    manors,   or  thy 

tenants'  grange, 
Saving  the  church,  there  is  no 

privilege 
In  all  this  land  for  thy  despised 
life. 
(Fortune  by  Land  and  Sea, 
Act  I,  Scene  4.)1 


Two  sets  of  extracts  from  the  first  and  final  versions  of 
Ibsen's  A  DolVs  House  show  the  way  in  which  perfected 
understanding  of  a  character  reveals  the  apt  phrase. 

i  Fortune  by  Land  and  Sea.  T.  Hey  wood  and  W.  Rowley.   W.  B.  Clarke  Co,  Boston. 


And    in   this  deep  amazement 
may  commit 

Some  desperate  outrage. 

Young  For.  Had  I  but  known 
the  terror  of  this  deed, 

I  would  have  left  it  done  im- 
perfectly, 

Rather  than  in  this  guilt  of  con- 
science 

Labour'd  so  far.  But  I  forget 
my  safety. 

The    gentleman    is    dead.  My 
desp'rate  life 

Will  be  o'erswayed  by  his  allies 
and  friends, 

And  I  have  now  no  safety  but 
my  flight. 

And    see  where    my  pursuers 
come.  Away! 

Certain  destruction  hovers  o'er 
my  stay.  (Exit.) 

(Fortune  by  Txind  and  Sea, 
Act  II,  Scene  1.) l 


348 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


(Nora    stands    motionless. 

Helmer  goes  to  the  door 

and  opens  it.) 

Ellen.  (Half-dressed    in    the 

Hall.)  Here  is  a  letter  for  you, 

ma'am. 

Helmer.  Give  it  to  me. 
(Seizes  letter  and  shuts  the  door.) 
Yes,  from  him.  You  shall  not 
have  it.  I  shall  read  it. 
Nora.  Read  it! 
Helmer.  (By  the  lamp.)  I 
have  hardly  the  courage  to.  We 
may  both  be  lost,  both  you  and 
I!  Ah!  I  must  know.  (Hastily 
tears  the  letter  open;  reads  a  few 
lines,  looks  at  an  enclosure;  a 
cry  of  joy.)  Nora! 

(Nora  looks  inquiringly  at 

him.) 

Helmer.  Nora!   Oh!   I  must 

read  it  again.   Yes,  yes,  it  is  so. 

I  am  saved!  Nora,  I  am  saved! 

Nora.  And  I? 

Helmer.  You  too,  of  course; 
we  are  both  saved,  both  of  us. 
Look  here,  he  sends  you  back 
your  promissory  note.  He 
writes  that  he  regrets  and  apolo- 
gises; that  a  happy  turn  in  his 
life  —  Oh,  what  matter  what 
he  writes.  We  are  saved,  Nora! 
No  one  can  harm  you.  Oh,  Nora, 
Nora.2 

The  text  of  the  right-hand  column  brings  out  more  clearly 
than  the  original  the  complete  but  unconscious  selfishness 
of  Helmer.  Ibsen,  understanding  that  character  more  fully 

i  From  Ibsen's  Workshop,  p.  162.   Chas.  Scribner's  Sobs,  New  York. 
2  Prose  Dramas,  vol.  i,  p.  S77.  Idem. 


(Nora  stands  motionless.  He 

goes  to  the  door  and  opens 

it.) 

The    Maid.    (In    the    Hall.) 

Here  is  a  letter  for  you,  ma'am. 

Helmer.  Give  it  here.  (He 
seizes  the  letter  and  shuts  the  door.) 
Yes,  from  him.  Look  here. 

Nora.  Read  it. 

Helmer.  I  have  hardly  the 
courage.  I  fear  the  worst.  We 
may  both  be  lost,  both  you  and 
I.  Ah!  I  must  know.  (Hastily 
tears  the  letter  open;  reads  a 
few  lines  with  a  cry  of  joy.) 
Nora! 

(Nora  looks  inquiringly  at 
him.) 

Helmer.  Nora!  —  Oh,  I  must 
read  it  again.  Yes,  yes,  it  is  so. 
You  are  saved,  Nora,  you  are 
saved. 

Nora.  How,  saved? 

Helmer.  Look  here.  He  sends 
you  back  your  promissory  note. 
He  writes  that  he  regrets  and 
apologises,  that  a  happy  turn 
in  his  life  —  Oh,  what  matter 
what  he  writes.  We  are  saved, 
Nora!  There  is  nothing  to  wit- 
ness against  you.  Oh,  Nora, 
Nora.1 


DIALOGUE 


349 


than  in  his  first  draft,  makes  not  only  the  change  from  "You 
are  saved,  Xora"  to  the  self-revelatory  "I  am  saved!"  but 
also  the  change  to  that  infinitely  more  dramatic  "And  I?" 
which  replaces  Nora's  "How,  saved?" 

En  a  second  set  of  extracts  from  the  same  scene,  a  firmer 
p  of  the  characters  has  permitted  Ibsen  to  replace  the 
eral  and  conventional  in  the  last  two  speeches  of  the  left- 
hand  column  with  the  more  specific  and  characterizing  lines 
of  Helmer  and  the  lines  of  Nora  that  are  an  inspiration. 


■i.  ...  It  never  for  a  mo- 
ment occurred  to  me  that  you 
would  think  of  submitting  to 
nan's  conditions,  that  you 
would  agree  to  direct  your  ac- 
tions by  the  will  of  another.  I 
was  convinced  that  you  would 
say  to  him,  "  Make  it  known  to 
the  whole  world";  and  that 
then  — 

II timer.  Well?  I  should  give 
you  up  to  punishment  and  dis- 
grace. 

/.  No;  then  I  firmly  be- 
lieved that  you  would  come  for- 
ward, take  everything  upon 
yourself,  and  say,  "I  am  the 
guihy  one"  — 

Helmer.  Nora! 

Nora.  You  mean  I  would 
newr  have  accepted  such  a  sac- 
rifice? No,  of  course  not.  But 
what  would  my  word  have  been 
in  opposition  to  yours?  I  so 
firmly  believed  that  you  would 
sacrifice  yourself  for  me  — 
I  don't  listen  to  her,"  you  would 
say  —  "  she  is  not  responsible; 
she  is  out  of  her  senses"  —  you 


Nora.  .  .  .  When  Krogstad's 
letter  lay  in  the  box,  it  never  oc- 
curred to  me  that  you  would 
think  of  submitting  to  that 
man's  conditions.  I  was  con- 
vinced that  you  would  say  to 
him, "  Make  it  known  to  all  the 
world";  and  that  then  — 


Helmer.  Well?  When  I  had 
given  my  own  wife's  name  up  to 
disgrace  and  shame  — ? 

Nora.  Then  I  firmly  believed 
that  you  would  come  forward, 
take  everything  upon  yourself, 
and  say,  "I  am  the  guilty  one." 

Helmer.  Nora! 

Nora.  You  mean  I  would 
never  have  accepted  such  a  sac- 
rifice? No,  certainly  not.  But 
what  would  my  assertions  have 
been  worth  in  opposition  to 
yours?  That  was  the  miracle 
that  I  hoped  for  and  dreaded. 
And  it  was  to  hinder  that  that 
I  wanted  to  die. 


350  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE, 

would  say  that  it  was  love  of 

you  —  you  would  move  heaven 

and  earth.  I  thought  you  would 

get  Dr.  Rank  to  witness  that  I 

was  mad,  unhinged,  distracted. 

I  so  firmly  believed  that  you 

would    ruin    yourself    to  save 

me.  That  is  what  I  dreaded,  and 

therefore  I  wanted  to  die. 
Helmer.  Oh,  Nora,  Nora!  Helmer.  I  would  gladly  work 

for  you  day  and  night,  Nora  — 
bear  sorrow  and  want  for  your 
sake  —  but  no  man  sacrifices 
his  honour,  even  for  one  he  loves. 
Nora.  And  how  did  it  turn  Nora.    Millions    of    women 

out?  No  thanks,  no  outburst  of      have  done  so.2 

affection,    not    a    shred    of  a 

thought  of  saving  me.1 

Perfect  phrasing  rests,  then,  on  character  thoroughly 
understood  and  complete  emotional  accord  with  the  char- 
acter. Short  of  that  in  dialogue,  one  stops  at  the  common- 
place and  colorless,  the  personal,  or  the  literary. 

Even,  however,  when  dialogue  expounds  properly  and  is 
thoroughly  in  character,  it  will  fail  if  not  fitted  for  the  stage. 
John  Oliver  Hobbes  stated  a  truth,  if  somewhat  exagger- 
atedly, in  these  lines  of  her  preface  to  The  Ambassador: 

Once  I  found  a  speech  in  prose  —  prose  so  subtly  balanced, 
harmonious,  and  interesting  that  it  seemed,  on  paper,  a  song: 
But  no  actor  or  actress,  though  they  spoke  with  the  voice  of 
angels,  could  make  it,  on  the  stage,  even  tolerable.  .  .  .  Yet  the 
speech  is  nevertheless  fine  stuff:  it  is  nevertheless  interesting  in 
substance:  it  has  imagination:  it  has  charm.  What,  then,  was  lack- 
ing? Emotion  in  the  tone  and,  on  the  part  of  the  writer,  considera- 
tion for  the  speaking  voice.  Stage  dialogue  may  have  or  may  not 
have  many  qualities,  but  it  must  be  emotional.  It  rests  primarily 
on  feeling.   Wit,  philosophy,  moral   truths,  poetic  language  — 

1  From  Ibsen' 8  Workshop,  p.  171.    Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 
1  Prose  Dramas,  vol.  i,  p.  386.    Idem. 


DIALOGUE  351 

all  these  count  as  nothing  unless  there  is  feeling  of  an  obvious, 

ordinary  kind.1 

When  reading  a  play  aloud,  do  we  give  all  the  stage  direc- 

r,  cutting  out  those  which  state  how  certain  speeches 

uld  l>e  read,  try  to  give  these  as  directed?   Even  when 

reading  some  story  aloud,  do  we  not  often  find  troublesome 

full  directions  as  to  just  how  the  speakers  delivered  their 

lines?    If  given  by  us,  they  provide  an  awkward  standard 

which  to  judge  our  reading.     If  we  wish  to  suppress 

them,  they  are  not,  in  rapid  reading,  always  seen  in  time. 

As  was  pointed  out  very  early  in  this  book,  gesture,  facial 

»n,  movement  about  the  stage,  and  above  all,  the 

voice,  aid  the  dramatist  as  they  cannot  aid  the  novelist. 

se  aids  and  the  time  limits  of  a  play  have,  as  we  shall  see, 

very  great  effect  on  dialogue.   Note  in  the  opening  of  The 

of  Rebellions  Susan,  by  Henry  Arthur  Jones,  the  effects 

demanded  from  the  aids  just  named. 

ACT  I.  SCENE.  Drawing-room  at  Mr.  Harabin's;  an  ele- 
gantly furnished  room  in  May  fair.  At  back,  in  centre,  fireplace, 
with  fire  burning.  To  right  of  fireplace  a  door  leading  to  Lady 
Susans  sitting-room.   A  door  down  stage  left. 

Enter  footman  left  showing  in  Lady  Darby 

Lady  Darby.  {A  lady  of  about  fifty.)  Where  is  Lady  Susan  now? 
Footman.  Upstairs  in  her  sitting-room,  my  lady. 

(Indicating  the  door  right.) 
Lady  D.  Where  is  Mr.  Harabin? 
Footman.  Downstairs  in  the  library,  my  lady. 

Enter  Second  Footman  showing  in  Inez,  a  widow  of  about  thirty, 
fascinating,  inscrutable 

Lady  D.  (To  First  Footman.)  Tell  Lady  Susan  I  wish  to  see  her 
at  once. 

I iten.  And  will  you  say  that  I  am  here  too? 

(Exit  First  Footman  at  door  right.  Exit  Second  Footman 
at  door  left.) 

1  Thi  Ambassador.  T.  Fisher  Unwin,  London. 


352  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Lady  D.  (Going  affectionately  to  Inez,  shaking  hands  very  sym* 
pathetically.)  My  dear  Mrs.  Quesnel,  you  know? 

Inez.  Sue  wrote  me  a  short  note  saying  that  she  had  discovered 
that  Mr.  Harabin  had  —  and  that  she  had  made  up  her  mind  to 
leave  him. 

Lady  D.  Yes,  that's  what  she  wrote  me.  Now,  my  dear,  you  're 
her  oldest  friend.  You  '11  help  me  to  persuade  her  to  —  to  look  over 
it  and  hush  it  up. 

Inez.  Oh,  certainly.  It's  the  advice  everybody  gives  in  such 
cases,  so  I  suppose  it  must  be  right.  What  are  the  particulars? 

Lady  D.  I  don't  know.  But  with  a  man  like  Harabin  —  a  gen- 
tleman in  every  sense  of  the  word  —  it  can't  be  a  very  bad  case. 

Enter  Lady  Susan.1 

If  the  voice  does  not  deftly  stress  "now  "  in  Lady  Darby's 
first  speech,  and  the  "upstairs"  and  the  "downstairs"  of 
the  footman,  this  opening  will  fail  of  its  desired  effect. 
Everything  in  this  well-wTitten  beginning  of  an  interesting 
play  depends  on  bringing  to  the  delivery  of  the  lines  right 
use  of  the  dramatist's  greatest  aids :  gesture,  facial  expression, 
pantomime,  and  above  all  the  exquisite  intonations  of  which 
the  human  voice  is  capable.  Write  this  scene  as  a  novelist 
would  handle  it,  and  see  to  what  different  proportions  it 
will  swell.  Note  in  the  final  result  how  much  less  conno- 
tative,  how  much  more  commonplace  the  dialogue  probably 
is.  Contrasting  two  passages  —  one  from  a  novel,  the  other 
in  a  play  drawn  from  it  —  will  perhaps  best  illustrate  that 
the  dialogue  of  the  novel  and  of  the  play  treating  the  same 
story  usually  differ  greatly. 

And  when  it  became  clear  that  somebody,  good  or  baa,  was 
without,  Patty,  having  regard  to  the  lateness  of  the  hour  and  the 
probability  of  supernatural  visitations,  was  much  disposed  to  make 
as  though  the  knocking  were  unheard,  and  to  creep  quietly  off  to 
bed.  But  Mistress  Beatrice  prevailed  upon  her  to  depart  from 
this  prudent  course;  and  the  two  peered  from  an  upper  window  to 
see  who  stood  before  the  door. 

1  Samuel  French,  New  York. 


DIALOGUE  3J3 

At  first   they  could  see  no  one;  l>nt.  presently  a  little  figure 
>ped  back  from  the  shadow,  looking  up  to  the  window  al>ove, 
and  Beatrice  Cope,  although  she  discerned  not  the  face,  felt  more 
than  ever  certain  that  this  summons  was  for  her. 

I>nt.  a  child  there  without,  Patty,"  she  said.  "Maybe  'tis 
some  poor  little  creature  that  has  lost  its  way,  and  come  here  for 
help  and  shelter.  Heaven  forbid  that  we  should  leave  it  to  wander 
about,  all  the  dreary  night  through!" 

Patty's  fears  were  not  much  calmed  by  the  sight  of  this  lonely 
child.  "  'Twas  the  Phantom  Child,"  she  murmured,  "who  comes 
wailing  piteously  to  honest  folks'  doors  o'  nights;  and  if  they  take 
it  in  and  cherish  it,  it  works  them  grievous  woe." 

Mist n ss  Beatrice,  however,  tried  to  hear  as  little  as  she  might 
of  what  Patty  was  saying;  and  she  went  downstairs  and  undid  the 
heavy  bar  very  cautiously.  Then  she  opened  the  door  a  little  space; 
and  Patty  Joyce  stood  by  her  staunchly,  although  disapproving  of 
what  she  did. 

And  when  the  door  was  opened,  this  persevering  applicant 
proved  to  be  only  the  boy  Bill  Lampeter,  who  was  known  at  \Yhite- 
oaks  as  at  Crowe  Hall,  and  a  score  of  country  Granges  beside.  He 
did  but  crave  a  drink  of  milk  and  a  bit  to  eat,  he  said.  He  had  been 
a-foot  all  day,  and  had  had  nought  to  eat;  and  seeing  a  light  burn- 
ing in  the  houseplace,  he  made  bold  to  knock  and  ask  for  what  he 
needed. 

The  boy's  breath  was  short  and  hurried,  and  his  grimy  face  was 
pale  and  damp  with  toil  of  hard  running.  He  did  not  seek  to  enter, 
but  kept  glancing  over  his  shoulder  into  the  darkness  behind  him. 

Beatrice  sent  Patty  for  food  and  drink,  standing  still  herself  in  the 
doorway;  and  the  maid  was  no  sooner  gone  than  the  boy  drew 
nearer  and  spoke. 

"Oh.  mistress,"  he  said,  hoarsely,  "I  have  been  beat  to-night  — 
but  I  told  'em  nought.  The  corporal  he  raddled  my  bones  terrible 
—  but  I  set  my  teeth,  and  I  told  'tin  nought.  I  bit  him  when  he 
took  they  shining  white  things  o'  yourn,  wi'  the  writing;  them  as 
I  u Id  not  give  to  Mr.  Cope,  the  day  I  warned  the  porter  at  Good- 
rot  that  the  red-coats  was  upon  'em.  I  had  the  white  things  safe, 
mistress,  hid  in  my  smock"  —  (he  put  his  hand  to  his  breast, 
where  the  rough  garment  he  wore  was  heavily  quilted  and  closely 
drawn) .  —  "  And  I  would  ha'  giv'  them  to  Mr.  Cope,  the  first  chance 
I  got  —  I  would,  honest  and  true.  But  the  scouting  party  caught 
me;  and  they  says,  'Thee  be  allays  running  from  one  Grange  to 


354  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

another,  thee  little  ne'er-do-weel;  thee  can  tell  us  what  we  wants 
to  know  about  Goodrest  in  the  hills '  —  And  I  was  telling  of  'em 
just  what  tales  corned  into  my  head,  for  fear  of  unpleasantness, 
mistress,  when  the  corporal,  a  great  rough  chap,  seizes  hold  of 
me,  and  says,  says  he,  *  Tis  all  a  pack  o'  lies,  this  here.  Search  him,' 
he  says,  'and  see  if  he  carries  messages  or  tokens.'  And  then  I 
fought  and  bit,  for  I  know'd  they'd  find  your  bright  things  in  my 
smock;  and  I  bit  his  hand  nigh  upon  through,  that  I  did,"  said 
Bill,  with  grim  satisfaction,  and  an  oath  at  which  poor  Beatrice 
shuddered. 

"Oh,  hush!"  she  said.  "There  is  no  help  in  swearing,  boy." 
"He  swore,"  Bill  replied.  "But  when  he  got  the  tablets,  he  were 
fine  and  pleased.  And  he  said,  'This  is  a  stag  of  ten,  my  boys;  and 
should  he  snuff  the  breeze  too  soon  we  have  means  to  keep  him 
where  he  is  till  morning.  Hold  that  little  viper  fast,'  says  he,' and 
for  your  lives  don't  let  him  give  us  the  slip.'  —  So  one  of  the  troopers 
took  me  behind  him  on  his  horse,  with  a  rope  round  my  body,  drawn 
cruel  tight  at  first.  And  I  panted  and  groaned,  and  made  as 
though  he  were  killing  of  me;  and  after  a  bit  he  slacked  the  rope  a 
little,  so  as  I  could  put  my  head  down  and  gnaw  it  through  in  the 
dark.  And  at  the  dip  of  a  valley,  where  the  shadow  was  deep 
under  the  trees,  I  slipped  off  quiet-like  into  the  long  grass.  He 
knew  the  rope  was  loose  in  a  minute,  and  he  snapped  his  pistol; 
but  the  covert  was  good,  and  I  crope  into  the  heart  of  a  holler  tree 
covered  o'er  wi'  ivy.  I  bided  there,  till  they  was  tired  o'  hunting 
round.  —  But  oh,  mistress,  the  poor  gentleman  at  Goodrest  is 
undone!  —  They  talked  together  while  the  trooper  was  making 
me  fast  upon  his  horse;  and  I  heard  a  word  now  and  again,  for  I 
listened  with  all  my  might.  There  were  but  four  of  'em;  and  they 
said  they  weren't  strong  enough  to  surprise  Goodrest,  but  must 
ride  back  to  quarters  for  help.  And  as  we  went  past  Grantford 
Farm,  the  corporal  called  a  halt;  and  one  held  his  horse  while  he 
went  in  and  spoke  with  the  farmer.  And,  mistress,  Hugh  Stone 
of  Grantford  is  known  for  a  bitter  Whig.  .  .  .  And  presently  Hugh 
of  Grantford  comes  out,  and  his  little  brother  with  him;  and  the 
boy  had  that  as  you  wrote  upon  —  that  as  they  took  from  me  — 
in  his  hand.  And  the  corporal  says,  looking  over  his  shoulder  quick 
and  short,  'Does  he  understand?'  says  he.  'Oh,  aye,'  says  Hugh 
of  Grantford,  'he  understands  fine.'  And  I  could  see  wee  Jock  did 
not  like  the  job  he  were  put  upon;  and  I  made  a  face  at  him  from 
ahint  the  trooper's  back,  and  he  liked  it  less  nor  ever  then." 


DIALOGUE  355 

•"What  job,  Bill?" 

Bill  Lampeter  looked  in  amazement  at  this  beautiful,  terrified 

.  who  did  not  understand. 
"Don't  Ve  see?"  he  said.  "Jock  o'  Grantford  were  to  take  your 
writing  t<>  (uxxlrest,  and  play  upon  the  gentleman  there,  to  keep 
him  biding  till  the  red-coats  come.  What  were  it  as  you  wrote  down 
that  day,  mistress?" 

A>  in  a  flash  of  painful  memory  Beatrice  saw  the  dainty  tablets 
more  with  words  traced  upon  them  in  a  hand  rendered  some- 
'  unsteady  by  the  slow  pace  of  the  sorrel  horse  —  a  hand  un- 
ikable,  however,  to  the  eyes  of  Charlie  Cope. 

I  pray  you,  do  not  stir  far  from  home.  There  is  risk  abroad. 

B.  C. 

She  understood  then;  and  she  turned  quickly  to  Patty  Joyce, 
who  had  come  back  bringing  bread  and  milk  ere  Bill's  tale  was 
half  done.  Bill,  even  in  the  eagerness  of  his  disclosure,  had  clutched 
the  bread  and  cheese;  and  now  he  drained  the  mug  of  milk,  while 
the  good-natured  maid  stood  open-mouthed,  her  eyes  fixed  upon 
Mi -tress  Beatrice. 

"Patty,"  the  young  lady  whispered,  "I  think  you  are  faithful 
and  true.  ...  I  must  trust  you  with  a  perilous  secret.  This  gentle- 
man whom  they  seek  at  Goodrest  is  my  only  brother;  he  has  papers 
of  importance  in  his  keeping,  and  a  warrant  is  out  for  his  arrest. 
They  will  lure  him  to  his  destruction  by  means  of  me,  his  sister;  he 
kn<  >\vs  my  handwriting  and  will  trust  to  my  warning.  He  will  lie 
close  at  Goodrest,  as  a  hare  upon  her  form;  and  they  will  take  him 
—  oh!  they  will  take  him  prisoner!  —  ere  morning  dawns.  I  must 
to  Goodrest  now,  in  the  dark  night.  —  Bey!  is  there  time?  is 
there  time?" 

Bill  Lampeter  nodded,  munching  his  bread. 

"They'll  not  be  back  afore  the  dawning,  them  troopers,"  he 
said.  "They've  limed  the  twig,  ye  see;  the  bird  is  made  fast.  If 
Mr.  Cope  do  hear  the  country's  up,  he'll  bide  where  he  be  there  at 
Goodrest,  reckoning  'tis  safest  to  keep  still.  Between  now  and  the 
first  streak  as  shows  over  the  Black  Scaur,  mistress,  you  can  do 
as  you  will." 

"Eh,  Mistress  Beatrice,  you  can't  never  go,"  said  Patty,  trem- 
bling. "  You  couldn't  dare  to  do  it.  And  this  here  boy,"  she  whis- 
pered, standing  close  to  Mistress  Beatrice,  "is  a  very  proverb  for 


3J6  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

wicked  story-telling.  'Tis  a  naughty  little  varlet;  who  knows  that 
he  has  not  been  set  on  to  bring  this  tale? " 

"'Tis  true  enough,  though  I  be  a  story-teller,"  said  Bill,  whose 
ears  were  sharp.  "Yon  gentleman  at  Goodrest  has  need  of  thee 
the  night,  mistress.  And  now  let  me  lie  down  on  the  straw  in  the 
big  barn,  for  my  bones  do  ache,  and  I  be  dizzy  wi'  running." 

He  caught  at  the  doorpost  as  he  spoke;  and  Patty  Joyce's  sus- 
picion vanished  in  pity  for  the  worn-out  creature.  She  kindled  a 
flame  to  light  the  Ian  thorn  which  hung  in  the  houseplace;  and  her- 
self crossed  the  wide  courtyard  to  make  Bill  a  comfortable  resting- 
place  in  the  soft  hay  and  clean  straw  which  filled  the  great  barn.1 

This  is  the  same  scene  in  the  play: 

(Louder  rapping.   Trembling  with  rage  and  disappointment, 
Sandiland  disappears  down  the  path.  Beatrice  stands  a 
moment ,  looking  as  if  waking  from  a  nightmare.) 
Patty.  (Outside,  rapping  more.)  Miss  Beatrice,  Miss  Beatrice! 
Quick! 

Beatrice.  (Crossing  dazedly  to  door.  By  it,  dully.)  Who? 
Patty.  Open  quick.  Me  and  Bill. 
Beat.  (Recovering.)  Bill! 

(Quickly  she  unbolts  the  door.  Patty  enters,  half  supporting 
Bill.  She  looks  about  as  if  surprised  at  not  seeing  any  one 
beside  Beatrice.  BiWs  clothes  are  torn  and  he  is  covered 
with  dirt.  There  is  blood  on  his  hands  where  cords  have 
torn  the  flesh.  He  looks  white  and  wretched  and  breathes 
hard  as  if  from  recent  running.  He  should  play  the  whole 
scene  with  nervous  excitement  that  suggests  a  collapse  at 
the  end  of  it.) 
Bill.  (Apologetically,  as  he  stumbles  toward  Beatrice.)    I've  had  a 
bit  of  a  scrap.  (Aside  to  Beatrice.)  Get  rid  o'  'er. 
Beat.  You  can  trust  her.  What  has  happened? 
BUI.  Scoutin'  party  got  me.  Corporal  raddled  my  bones  terrible 
when  I  fought  and  bit,  fearin'  they'd  find  your  message  hid  in  my 
smock.  They  near  tore  it  off,  damn  'em. 
Beat.  You  have  the  tablets? 
Bill.  No. 

Beat.  They  have  them?  (With  relief.)  Then  they  haven't  reached 
James! 

1  Mistress  Beatrice  Cope.  M.  E.  Le  Clerc.  D.  Appleton  &  Co.,  New  York. 


DIALOGUE  357 

Bill.  The  gentleman?  Oh,  ay.  When  we  come  to  Grant  fori  1 
n  —  I  were  trussed  up  be'ind  a  trooper  —  Corporal  called 
little  Jock  o'  Grantford —  his  fayther's  a  bitter  Whig  —  and 
iin  take  your  message  to  Goodrest,  to  keep  the  gentleman 
i'  till  the  red  coats  be  come. 
To  Patty.)  Where's  Grizel? 
Patty.  In  the  paddock'm.   But  — 

.  Saddle  her  at  once.  I  must  to  Goodrest. 

(Patty  hesitates.) 
Dill.  (Menacingly  as  he  reaches  for  a  candlestick.)    She  said  — 
nee. 

(Unwillingly  bid  quickly,  Patty  goes  out  centre.) 
Bill.  (Pointing  to  Vie  door  where  the  full  moon  shines  in  clearly.) 
but  that  ain't  'id  yet. 
'    (As  if  struck  by  a  sudden  idea.)  How  did  you  get  free? 
Bill.  Gnawed  the  ropes;  slipped  off  in  the  long  grass.  Trooper's 
pistol  missed  me.  Stayed  in  a  holler  oak  I  knows  till  they  was 
tirol  'untin'. 

//.  Knowing  you  are  loose,  they  will  start  at  once. 
/>///.  If  they  ain't  fools.  But  most  folks  be.  Risk  somethin'  on 
that.  (Beatrice  is  busy  with  her  dress  and  cloak.  He  starts  to  help 
her  but  has  to  support  himself  by  table.)  Don't  go  through  Whitecross 
Village.  There  the  soldiers  be.  Take  the  footpath  by  Guiting;  the 
bridge  be  shaky  but  'twill  hold. 

(Enter  Patty,  centre.) 

Patty.  Grizel's  ready'm. 

Beat.  (Xodding  her  understanding  to  Bill  —  to  Patty.)  Close  up 
here.  Look  after  Bill.  Be  ready  to  let  me  in  when  the  first  cock 
crows.  My  stirrup!  (Goes  out  swiftly,  followed  protestingly  by 
Patty.  Bill  drags  himself  to  right  of  door  watching,  and  says  after 
a  minute.)  She's  up! 

Patty.  (Rushing  in  as  there  is  the  sound  of  swift  hoof  beats.) 
She's  gone!  (She  falls  sobbing  hysterically  by  the  left  side  of  door.) 

Bill.  {As  he  holds  himself  up  at  right.)  The  damned  brave  lady! 

Curtain. 

First  of  all,  the  novelist  permits  himself  an  amount  of 
detail  which  the  dramatist  must  forego  because  of  his  more 
limited  space.  Interesting  details  which  do  not  forward  the 


358 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


purpose  of  the  scene  or  act  the  wise  dramatist  denies  him- 
self—  note  in  Ibsen's  revision  of  certain  lines  in  A  DolVs 
House  (p.  350)  the  cutting,  between  the  first  and  final  ver- 
sions, of  what  concerns  Dr.  Rank.  It  was  in  part  unnecessary 
detail  which  made  the  dialogue  of  the  play  on  John  Brown 
(pp.  309-313)  so  ineffective.  In  what  follows  immediately, 
a  skilful  hand  seems  in  column  one  to  have  cut  details  of 
column  two  which,  though  interesting  in  themselves,  delay 
the  essential  movement  of  the  scene  and  help  to  swell  the 
whole  play  to  undue  proportions. 

Horatio.  Mary   that   can   I,         Horatio.  That  can  I. 

at  least  the  whisper  goes      At  least  the  whisper  goes  so; 
so,  our  last  King, 


Our  late  King,  who  as  you  know 

was  by  Forten- 
Brasse  of  Norway, 

Thereto  prickt  on  by  a  most 
emulous  cause,  dared  to 

The  combate,  in  which  our  va- 
liant Hamlet, 

For  so  this  side  of  our  knowne 
world  esteemed  him, 

Did  slay  this  Fortenbrasse, 

Who  by  a  seale  compact  well 
ratified,  by  law 

And  heraldrie,  did  forfeit  with 
his  life  all  those 

His  lands  which  he  stoode 
seazed  of  by  the  con- 
queror, 

Against  the  which  a  moity  com- 
petent, 

Was  gaged  by  our  King: 


Who[se   image  even   but  now 

appear'd  to  us,] 
Was  as  you  knowe  by  Fortin- 

brasse  of  Norway, 
Thereto  prickt  on  by  a  most 

emulate  pride 
Dar'd  to  the  combat;  in  whick 

our  valiant  Hamlet, 
(For  so  this  side  of  our  knowne 

world  esteemd  him) 
Did  slay  this  Fortinbrasse,  who 

by  a  seald  compact 
Well  ratified  by  lawe  and  her- 

aldy 
Did  forfait   (with  his  life)  all 

these  his  lands 
Which  he  stood  seaz'd  of,  to 

the  conquerour. 
Against  th«  which  a  moitie  com- 
petent 
Was  gaged  by  our  King,  [which 

had  returne 
To  the  inheritance  of  Fortin- 
brasse, 
Had  he  bin  vanquisher;  as  by 

the  same  comart, 


DIALOGUE 


359 


ir,  young  Fortenbrassc, 

Of  inapproved  mettle  hot  and 
full. 

Hath  in  the  skirts  of  Norway 
here  and  there, 

Sliarkt  up  a  sight  of  lawlesse 
lutes 

For  Uhh\  and  diet  to  some  enter- 
prise, 

That  hath  a  stomacke  in't:  and 
this  (I  take  it)  is  the 

Chief  head  and  ground  of  our 
watch. 


And  carriage  of  the  article  des- 

seigne, 
His  fell  to   Hamlet;]   now  Sir 

young  Fortinbrasse 
Of  unimprooved  mettle,  hot  and 

full, 
Hath  in  the  skirts  of  Norway 

heere  and  there 
Sliarkt  up  a  list  of  lawelesse 

resolutes 
For  foode  and  diet  to  some  en- 
terprise 
That    hath    a    stomacke    in't 

[which  is  no  other 
As  it  doth  well  appeare  unto 

our  state 
But  to  recover  of  us  by  strong 

hand 
And     tearmes     compulsatory, 

those  foresaid  lands 
So  by  his  father  lost;]  and  this 

I  take  it 
Is  [the  maine  motive  of  our  pre- 
parations 
The  source  of  this  our  watch, 

and]  the  chief e  head 
Of  this  post  hast  and  Romadge 

in  the  land. 
[Bar.  I  thinke  it  be  no  other, 

but  enso; 
Well  may  it  sort  that  this  por- 
tentous figure 
Comes     armed     through     our 

watch  so  like  the  King 
That  was  and  is  the  question  of 

these  war  res. 
Hora.  A  moth  it  is  to  trouble 

the  mindes  eye: 
In  the  most  high  and  palmy 

state  of  Rome, 
A  little  ere  the  mightiest  Julius 

fell 


36° 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


The  graves  stood  tenantlesse, 

and  the  sheeted  dead 
Did  squeake  and  gibber  in  the 

Roman  streets 
As  starres,  with  traines  of  fier, 

and  dewes  of  blood 
Disasters  in  the  sunne;  and  the 

moist  starre, 
Upon  whose  influence  Neptunes 

Empier  stands, 
"Was  sicke  almost  to  doomes- 

day  with  eclipse. 
And  even  the  like  precurse  of 

feare  events 
As  harbindgers  preceading  still 

the  fates  • 
And  prologue  to  the  Omen  com- 

ming  on 
Have  heaven  and  earth  together 

demonstrated 
Unto  our  Climatures  and  coun- 
trymen.] 

Enter  Ghost. 

But  softe,  behold,  loe  where  it 

comes  againe 
He  crosse  it    though    n  spreads 

it  blast  mee:  stay    his  armet 

illusion, 
[If  thou  hast  any  sound  or  use 

of  voyce 
Speake  to  me,]  if  there  be  any 

good  thing  to  be  dore 
That  may  to  thee  doe  ease,  and 

grace  to  mee, 
Speake  to  me.1 

Unnecessary  detail  should,  then,  be  cut  from  dialogue 
both  because  it  is  usually  the  chief  offender  in  making  the 
play  unduly  long,  and  because  it  weakens  the  dialogue  of 

1  The  Devonshire  Hamlets,  pp.  4,  6. 


Enter  the  Ghost. 
But  loe,  behold,  see  where  it 

comes  againe, 
He  crosse  it,   though   it   blast 

me:  stay  illusion, 
If  there  be  any  good  thing  to  be 

done, 
That  may  doe  ease  to  thee,  and 

grace  to  mee, 
Speake  to  mee. 


DIALOGUE  361 

which  it  is  a  part.  In  argument  it  is  a  time-honored  principle 
(ha!  it  i^  far  better  not  to  pile  up  all  the  evidence  you  can 
11  point,  but  by  selecting  your  best  argument,  or 
>r  three  of  the  better  type,  to  strike  hard  with  the  se- 
1  material.   The  same  principle  underlies  writing  good 
dramatic  dialogue.    Say  what  you  have  to  say  as  well  as 
you  can,  and  except  for  emphasis  or  when  repetition  pro- 
line desired  effect,  don't  repeat.    In  the  speech 
quoted  below  it  became  clear  in  rehearsal  that  the  bracketed 
was  not  necessary  because  what  preceded  showed  suffi- 
ciently the  affection  Miss  Helen  had  roused  in  the  faithful 
nt,  Alec.   However  characterizing  or  amusing  the 
remainder  might  be,  it  clogged  the  movement  of  the  scene. 
Consequently  it  went  out. 

Dick.  Hello  —  what's  this  Alec? 

A  grand  pianner,  sir. 
Dick.  Of  course,  but  where  did  it  come  from? 

Miss  Helen,  she  gave  it  to  'em  at  Christmas. 
Dick.  She  —  gave  it  to  —  them  — ? 
Alec.  Yes. 

Dick:  (Laughing.)  But  they  don't  play  it,  do  they? 

Aler.  No,  she  plays  it  — .  An'  you  oughter  hear  her  play,  sir.  At 

fter  supper  when  the  wind'd  howl  around  the  house  she'd 

make  it  -ound  like  Heaven  in  here.  If  I  ever  get  up  there  I  don't 

want  white  angels  and  gold  harps  in  mine,  —  I  jes'  want  Miss 

n  an'  a  grand  pianner.  (Dick  is  very  sober.  [He  doesn't  speak.) 

An'  she  ran  sing,  too.   You  oughter  hear  her,  —  little  soft  things, 

—  none  o'  this  screechy  stuff.  An'  all  the  old  dames  sit  around  — 

an'  then  when  my  work  was  done  out  in  the  barn  I'd  come  in  an' 

vr  there  in  the  corner  out  o'  the  way  like,  an'  listen  like  a  old 

myself  —  with  my  Adam's  apple  getting  tight  every  once  in  a 

while   thinkin'  o'  things.  I  tell  you  she's  —  she's  a  regular  — 

humdinger.] 

Dick:  (Quietly.)  What  time  do  you  expect  her  back? 


Time  forbids  any  form  of  fiction  to  be  encyclopaedic.  The 
drama  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  most  selective  of  the  forms  of 


362 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


fiction.  Failure  to  remember  this  has  hurt  the  chances  of 
many  a  promising  dramatist.  Few  have  such  skilled  and 
loyal  advisers  as  Lord  Tennyson  found  in  Sir  Henry  Irving 
when  his  over-long  Becket  must  be  cut  for  stage  production. 
How  much  of  the  following  scene  in  the  original  do  we  think 
at  first  sight  we  can  spare?  Much  which  Sir  Henry  removed 
we  should  like  to  keep,  but  time-limits  forbade  and  he  cut 
with  exceeding  skill  to  the  best  dramatic  phrasing  offered 
of  the  essentials  of  the  scene. 

ACT  I.  SCENE  1.  Becket* s  House  in  London.  Chamber  barely 
furnished.  Becket  unrobing.  Herbert  of  Bosham  and  Servant. 

ORIGINAL 


Servant.  Shall  I  not  help  your 

lordship  to  your  rest? 
Becket.  Friend,  am  I  so  much 
better  than  thyself 
That  thou  shouldst  help  me? 

Thou  art  wearied  out 
With  this  day's  work,  get  thee 

to  thine  own  bed. 
Leave  me  with  Herbert,  friend. 
(Exit  Servant.) 
Help  me  off,  Herbert,  with  this 
—  and  this. 
Herbert.  Was  not  the  people's 
blessing  as  we  past 
Heart-comfort  and  a  balsam  to 
thy  blood? 
Becket.  The     people     know 
their   Church   a  tower   of 
strength, 
A  bulwark  against  Throne  and 

Baronage. 
Too  heavy  for  me,  this;  off  with 
it,  Herbert! 
Herbert.  Is  it  so  much  heavier 
than  thy  Chancellor's  robe  ? 


REVISION 

Servant.  Shall  I  not  help  your 

lordship  to  your  rest? 
Becket.  Friend,  am  I  so  much 
better  than  thyself 
That  thou   shouldst  help  me? 

Thou  art  wearied  out 
With  this  day's  work,  get  thee  to 

thine  own  bed. 
Leave  me  with  Herbert,  friend. 
(Exit  Servant.) 
Help  me  off  Herbert,  with  this 
—  and  this. 
Herbert.  Was  not  the  people's 
blessing  as  we  past 
Heart-comfort  and  a  balsam  to 
thy  blood? 
Becket.  The      people     know 
their    Church  a  tower  of 
strength, 
A  bulwark  against  Throne  and 

Baronage. 
Too  heavy  for  me,  this;  off  with 
it,  Herbert! 
Herbert.  Is  it  so  much  heavier 
than  thy  Chancellor's  robe? 


DIALOGUE 


363 


Reelect.  No;  but  the  Chancel- 
1«  >r's  and  the  Archbishop's 
'I       ther    more    than    mortal 
man  can  bear. 
Herbert.  Not    heavier    than 
thine    armour    at    Thou- 
loi: 
Becket.  O  Herbert,  Herbert, 
in  my  chancellorship 
I  more  than  once  have  gone 
against  the  Church. 
Herbert.  To  please  the  King? 
Becket.  Ay,  and  the  King  of 
kings, 
Or  justice;  for  it  seem'd  to  me 

but  just 
The   Church   should   pay   her 

scutage  like  the  lords. 
But  hast  thou  heard  this  cry  of 

Gilbert  Foliot 
That  I  am  not  the  man  to  be 

your  Primate, 
For  Henry  could  not  work  a 

miracle  — 
Make  an  Archbishop  of  a  sol- 
dier? 
Herbert.  Ay, 

For  Gilbert  Foliot  held  himself 
the  man. 
Becket.  Am  I  the  man?    My 
mother,  ere  she  bore  me, 
Dream'd  that  twelve  stars  fell 

glittering  out  of  heaven 
Into  her  bosom. 
Herbert.   Ay,    the    fire,    the 
light, 
The  spirit  of  the  twelve  Apos- 
tles enter'd 
Into  thy  making. 
Becket.     And   when   I   was 
a  child, 


Becket.  No;  but  the  Chancel- 
lor's and  the  Archbishop's 
Together  more  than  mortal 
man  can  bear. 

Herbert.  Not  heavier  than 
thine  armour  at  Toulouse? 


Becket.  But  hast  thou  heard 
this  cry  of  Gilbert  Foliot 

That  I  am  not  the  man  to  be 
your  Primate, 

For  Henry  could  not  work  a 
miracle  — 

Make  an  Archbishop  of  a  sol- 
dier? 
Herbert.  Ay, 

For  Gilbert  Foliot  held  himself 
the  man. 


364 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


The  Virgin,  in  a  vision  of  my 

sleep, 
Gave  me  the  golden  keys  of 

Paradise.  Dream, 
Or  prophecy,  that? 
Herbert.    Well,    dream    and 

prophecy  both. 
Becket.  And     when     I    was 

of  Theobald's    household, 

once  — 
The  good  old  man  would  some- 
times have  his  jest  — 
He  took  his  mitre  off,  and  set  it 

on  me, 
And   said,   "My  young  Arch- 
bishop— thou  wouldst  make 
A  stately  Archbishop!"     Jest 

or  prophecy  there? 
Herbert.  Both,  Thomas,  both. 
Becket.  Am  I  the  man?  That 

rang 
Within  my  head  last  night,  and 

when  I  slept 
Methought  I  stood  in  Canter- 
bury Minster, 
And  spake  to  the  Lord  God,  and 

said,  "0  Lord, 
I  have  been  a  lover  of  wines 

and  delicate  meats, 
And  secular  splendours,  and  a 

favourer 
Of  players,  and  a  courtier,  and 

a  feeder 
Of  dogs  and  hawks,  and  apes, 

and  lions,  and  lynxes. 
Am  I  the  man?"  And  the  Lord 

answer'd  me, 
"Thou  art  the  man,  and   all 

the  more  the  man." 
And  then  I  asked  again,   "O 

Lord  my  God 


Becket.  Am  I  the  man?  Tha 

rang 

Within  my  head  last  night,  and 

when  I  slept 
Methought  I  stood  in  Canter- 
bury Minster, 
And  spake  to  the  Lord  God  and 
said, 


DIALOGUE 


365 


the  King  hath  been  my 
friend,  my  brother 
mine    uplifter     in    this 

world,  and  chosen  me 
For  this  thy  great  archbishop- 
rick,  believing 
I  should  go  against  the 

Church  with  him, 
And  I  shall  go  against  him  with 

the  Church, 
And  I  have  said  no  word  of  this 

to  him: 
Am  /  the  man?  "  And  the  Lord 

\vr\l  me, 
"Thou  art  the  man,  and  all  the 

more  the  man." 
And  thereupon,  methought,  He 

drew  toward  me, 
And  smote  me  down  upon  the 

Minster  floor. 
I  fell. 
Herbert.  God  make  not  thee, 

but  thy  foes,  fall. 
Becket.  I     fell.     Why     fall? 

Why    did    he    smite    me? 

What? 
Shall  I  fall  off  —  to  please  the 

King  once  more? 
Not      fight  —  tho'      somehow 

traitor  to  the  King  — 
My  truest  and  mine  utmost  for 

the  Church? 
Herbert.  Thou  canst  not  fall 

that     way.     Let    traitor 

be; 
For  how  have  fought  thine  ut- 
most for  the  Church, 
Save  from  the  throne  of  thine 

archbishoprick? 
And  how  been  made  archbishop 

hadst  thou  told  him, 


"Henry  the  King  hath  been 
my  friend,  my  brother 

And  mine  uplifter  in  this  world, 
and  chosen  me 

For  this  thy  great  archbishop- 
rick, believing 

That  I  should  go  against  the 
Church  with  him, 

And  I  shall  go  against  him  with 
the  Church. 


Am  7  the  man?"  And  the  Lord 

answer'd  me, 
"Thou  art  the  man  and  all  the 

more  the  man." 
And  thereupon,  methought,  He 

drew  toward  me, 
And  smote  me  down  upon  the 

Minster  floor. 
I  fell. 
Herbert.  God  make  not  thee, 

but  thy  foes,  fall 


366 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


"I  mean  to  fight  mine  utmost 

for  the  Church, 
Against  the  King?" 
Becket.  But  dost  thou 

think  the  King 
Forced  mine  election? 
Herbert.  I  do  think 

the  King 
Was  potent  in  the  election,  and 

why  not? 
Why  should  not  Heaven  have 

so  inspired  the  King? 
Be    comforted.  Thou   art   the 

man  —  be  thou 
A  mightier  Anselm. 

Becket.  I    do    believe    thee, 

then.  I  am  the  man. 
And  yet  I  seem  appall'd  —  on 

such  a  sudden 
At  such  an  eagle-height  I  stand 

and  see 
The  rift  that  runs  between  me 

and  the  King. 
I    served    our    Theobald    well 

when  I  was  with  him; 
I  served  King  Henry  well  as 

Chancellor; 
I  am  his  no  more,  and  I  must 

serve  the  Church. 
This   Canterbury  is  only  less 

than  Rome, 
And  all  my  doubts  I  fling  from 

me  like  dust, 
Winnow  and  scatter  all  scruples 

to  the  wind, 
And  all  the  puissance  of  the 

warrior, 
And  all  the  wisdom  of  the  Chan- 
cellor, 
And  all  the  heap'd  experiences 

of  life, 


Becket.  And  yet  I  seem  ap- 
pall'd —  on  such  a  sudden 

At  such  an  eagle-height  I  stand 
and  see 

The  rift  that  runs  between  me 
and  the  King. 


DIALOGUE 


367 


I  cast  upon  the  side  of  Canter- 
bury — 
Our  holy  mother  Canterbury, 

who  sits 
With  tatter'd  robes.   Laics  and 

barons,  thro' 
The   random   gifts   of  careless 

kings,  have  graspt 
II.  r    livings,    her    advowsons, 

granges,  farms, 
And    goodly    acres  —  we    will 

make  her  whole; 
Not  one  rood  lost.  And  for  these 

Royal  customs, 
These  ancient  Royal  customs  — 

they  are  Royal, 
Not  of  the  Church  —  and  let 

them  be  anathema, 
And  all  that  speak  for  them 

anathema. 
Herbert.  Thomas,    thou    art 

moved  too  much. 
Becket.         Oh,  Herbert  here 
I  gash  myself  asunder  from  the 

King, 
Tho'   leaving  each,  a  wound: 

mine  own,  a  grief 
To    show   the  scar   forever  — 

his,  a  hate 
Not  ever  to  be  heal'd.1 


Herbert.  Thomas,    thou    art 

moved  too  much. 
Becket.  O  Herbert,  here 

I  gash  myself  asunder  from  the 

King, 
Tho'  leaving  each,  a  wound; 

mine  own,  a  grief 
To  show  the  scar  forever  —  his, 

a  hate 
Not  ever  to  be  heal'd.2 


Dialogue,  then,  should  avoid  all  unnecessary  detail,  and 
should  avoid  repetition  except  for  desired  dramatic  ends  — 
in  other  words,  must  select  and  again  select. 

Practically  every  illustration  thus  far  used  in  treating 
dialogue  fitted  for  the  stage  has  shown  the  enormous  im- 
portance of  facial  expression,  gesture,  and  voice.  What  the 
voice  may  do  with  just  two  wTords  is  the  substance  of  a  little 

1  Becket.  Tennyson.    The  Macmillan  Co. 

*  Becket.  Arranged  by  Sir  Henry  Irving.  Idem. 


368  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

one-act  piece  made  famous  years  ago  by  Miss  Genevieve 
Ward  and  later  often  read  by  the  late  George  Riddle.  An 
actress  applying  to  a  manager  is  tested  as  to  her  power  to 
express  in  the  two  words  "Come  here"  all  the  emotions 
described  by  her  examiner.  As  will  be  seen,  the  little  play, 
when  read  in  the  study,  lacks  effectiveness.  Given  by  an 
actress  who  can  put  into  the  two  words  all  that  is  demanded, 
it  becomes  varied,  exciting,  and  even  amazing. 

Actress.  .  .  .  Your  selection  may  not  be  in  my  repertoire. 

Manager.  Oh!  yes,  it  is.  I  only  require  two  words:  "Come  here." 

Actress.  Come  here? 

Manager.  Yes,  and  with  the  words,  the  meaning,  emphasis,  and 
expressions,  that  situation,  character,  and  the  surroundings  would 
command. 

Actress.  ( Takes  off  her  bonnet  and  shawl.)  Well,  then,  I  am  ready. 

Manager.  Before  a  mother  stand  a  loving  couple,  who  pray  for 
her  consent;  the  lover  is  poor;  she  battles  with  her  pride,  it  is  a 
great  struggle  for  her;  at  last  with  open  arms  she  cries  — 

Actress.  Come  here! 

Manager.  A  mother  calls  her  little  daughter,  who  has  done 
something  to  vex  her. 

Actress.  Come  here! 

Manager.  And  now  it  is  her  step-child. 

Actress.  Come  here! 

Manager.  A  carriage  is  dashing  by,  the  child  is  in  the  street,  the 
mother's  heart  is  filled  with  terror,  she  calls  her  darling  and 
cries  out  — 

Actress.  Come  here! 

Manager.  In  tears  and  sorrow  a  wife  has  bid  adieu  to  her  de- 
parting husband,  whom  the  State  has  called  to  defend  his  country 
on  the  battlefield;  her  only  consolation  is  in  her  children,  these  she 
calls,  and  presses  to  her  heart. 

Actress.  Come  here! 

Manager.  The  husband  has  returned,  and  full  of  joy  she  calls 
her  children  as  she  observes  him  coming  home. 

Actress.  Come  here! 

Manager.  While  in  his  arms,  she  now  observes  his  servant,  and 
as  with  every  one  she  would  divide  her  joy  she  calls  to  him  — 


DIALOGUE  369 

Come  here! 

1  1.  f. ■elingsof  a  mother  in  all  her  joys  and  tribulation, 
'  jH-rfectly  sustained.  Now  show  me,  how  in  despair 
a  widow,  who  lias  lost  all   she  possessed  through  fire,  confronts 
creditors,  who  clamor  for  their  dues,  and  whose  cruelty  has 
killed  her  husband.  She  stands  by  his  body  and  points  to  all  that 
is  left  her,  the  remains  of  her  dead  husband,  and  calls  on  them 
.  >k  at  their  work. 
Come  here! 
Manager.  I  must  confess  you  depict  pain  as  if  you  felt  it. * 

Mark,  when  running  through  the  scene  in  which  Iago 
tempts  Othello  to  his  final  undoing  (Act  III,  Scene  3.),  the 
variety  of  intonation  required  in  the  repetitions  of  "Hon- 
est" and  "Think."  In  a  novel  containing  this  scene  the 
absence  of  the  actors'  trained  intonations  would  cost  the 
author  much  labor  in  describing  how  the  words  should  be 
uttered. 

Othello.  Farewell,  my  Desdemona;  I'll  come  to  thee  straight. 

Desdemona.  Emilia,  come.  —  Be  as  your  fancies  teach  you; 
e'er  you  be,  I  am  obedient. 

(Exeunt  Desdemona  and  Emilia.) 

Othello.  Excellent  wretch!  Perdition  catch  my  soul, 
But  I  do  love  thee!  and  when  I  love  thee  not, 
Chaos  is  come  again. 

Iago.  My  noble  lord,  — 

Othello.  What  dost  thou  say,  Iago? 

Iago.  Did  Michael  Cassio,  when  you  woo'd  my  lady, 
Know  of  your  love? 

Othello.  He  did,  from  first  to  last.  Why  dost  thou  ask? 

Iago.  But  for  a  satisfaction  of  my  thought; 
irther  harm. 

Othello.  Why  of  thy  thought,  Iago? 

Iago.  I  did  not  think  he  had  been  acquainted  with  her. 

Othello.  O,  yes;  and  went  between  us  very  oft. 

Iago.  Indeed! 

Othello.  Indeed!  ay,  indeed.  Discern'st  thou  aught  in  that? 
Is  he  not  honest? 

1  Gtorqe  RiddU't  Readings.  Walter  II.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston. 


370  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Iago.  Honest,  my  lord? 

Othello.  Honest,  ay,  honest. 

Iago.  My  lord,  for  aught  I  know. 

Othello.  What  dost  thou  think? 

Iago.  Think,  my  lord? 

Othello.  Think,  my  lord! 

By  heaven,  he  echoes  me, 
\s  if  there  were  some  monster  in  his  thought 
Too  hideous  to  be  shown.  —  Thou  dost  mean  something. 
I  heard  thee  say  even  now,  thou  lik'st  not  that, 
When  Cassio  left  my  wife.  What  didst  not  like? 
And  when  I  told  thee  he  was  of  my  counsel, 
Of  my  whole  course  of  wooing,  thou  criedst,  "Indeed!" 
And  didst  contract  and  purse  thy  brow  together, 
As  if  thou  then  hadst  shut  up  in  thy  brain 
Some  horrible  conceit.  If  thou  dost  love  me, 
Show  me  thy  thought. 

Even  passages  in  a  play  which  look  very  unpromising 
should  not  be  finally  judged  till  a  flexible,  well-trained  voice 
has  done  its  best  to  bring  out  any  emotion  latent  in  the 
words.  If  they  were  originally  chosen  by  an  author  writing 
in  full  sympathetic  understanding  of  his  figures,  they  will, 
properly  spoken,  reveal  unexpected  emotional  values.  Here 
is  a  passage  from  Kyd's  Spanish  Tragedy  at  which  many  a 
critic  has  poked  fun.  At  first  sight  it  undoubtedly  seems 
merely  "words,  words,  words." 

Hieronimo.  O  eyes!  no  eyes,  but  fountains  fraught  with  tears: 
O  life!  no  life  but  lively  form  of  death: 
O  world !  no  world  but  mass  of  public  wrongs, 
Confus'd  and  fill'd  with  murder  and  misdeeds: 
O  sacred  heav'ns!  if  this  unhallow'd  deed, 
If  this  inhuman  and  barbarous  attempt; 
If  this  incomparable  murder  thus, 
Of  mine,  but  now  no  more  my  son, 
Should  unreveaPd  and  unrevenged  pass, 
How  should  we  term  your  dealings  to  be  just 
If  you  unjustly  deal  with  those  that  in  your  justice  trust?  l 

1  The  Origin  of  the  English  Drama,  vol.  n,  p.  48.  T.  Hawkins,  ed.    Clarendon  Press, 
Oxford,  1773. 


DIALOGUE  371 

If  we  remember  what  the  play  has  already  told  us  of 
ronimo:  that  having  found  his  son  hanging  murdered  in 
arbor,  he  enters  in  a  perfect  ecstasy  of  grief;  and  if  we 
recall  that  the  Elizabethan  loved  a  style  as  ornate  as  this, 
feeling  it  no  barrier  between  him  and  the  thought  behind  it; 
the  look  of  the  passage  begins  to  change.  Put  the  feeling  of 
the  father  into  the  voice  as  one  reads,  and  lo,  these  lines  are 
Dot  a  bad  medium  for  expressing  Hieronimo's  grief.  They 
v  lack  the  simplicity  we  demand  today,  but  strong,  clear 
feeling  may  be  brought  out  from  behind  them  for  any 
audience.  For  an  Elizabethan  audience  it  came  forth  in  a 
style  delightful  in  itself.  The  fact  is,  time  cannot  wholly  spoil 
the  value  even  of  lines  phrased  according  to  the  standards  of 
some  literary  vogue  of  the  moment  if  the  author  originally 
wrote  them  with  an  imagination  kindled  to  accuracy  of 
feeling  by  complete  sympathy  with  his  characters.  Never 
judge  the  dialogue  of  a  play  only  by  the  eye.  Hear  it  ade- 
quately, interpretively  spoken.  Then,  and  then  only,  judge 
it  finally. 

•It  is  almost  impossible,  also,  to  separate  the  voice  from 
gesture  and  facial  expression  as  aids  in  dramatic  dialogue. 
1'nquestionably  each  of  these  would  help  the  voice  in  the 
illustrations  just  given  from  Come  Here,  Othello,  and  the 
Spanish  Tragedy.  When  Antony,  absorbed  in  Cleopatra, 
and  therefore  unwilling  to  listen  to  the  messenger  bearing 
tidings  of  the  utmost  importance  from  Rome,  cries,  "Grates 
me:  the  sum!"1  it  is  not  merely  the  intonation  but  the 
accompanying  gesture  in  the  sense  of  general  bodily  move- 
ment, and  the  facial  expression,  which  make  the  condensed 
phrasing  both  natural  and  immensely  effective.  When  Frank- 
ford  (A  Woman  Killed  With  Kindness,  Act  III,  Scene  2)2 
asks  his  old  servant,  Nicholas,  for  proof  of  Mrs.  Frankford's 

1  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  Act  1,  Scene  1. 

•  Belles-Lettres  Series.  K.  L.  Bates,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  New  York 


372  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

unfaithfulness  the  answer  is  not,  "I  saw  her,"  or  "I  saw  her 
and  her  lover  with  my  eyes,"  but  simply  "Eyes,  eyes."  The 
last  are  what  rightly,  in  dramatic  dialogue,  may  be  called 
"gesture  words,"  words  demanding  for  their  full  effect  not 
only  the  right  intonation,  but  facial  expression  and  all  that 
pantomime  may  mean.  The  old  man  lifts  his  head,  and, 
though  unwillingly,  looks  his  master  straight  in  the  face  as 
he  speaks.  Perhaps  he  even  emphasizes  by  lifting  his  hand 
t  oward  his  eyes.  With  the  concomitants  of  action  and  voice, 
the  words  take  on  finality  and  equal:  "What  greater  proof 
could  I  have?  I  saw  the  lovers  with  these  eyes." 

So  close,  indeed,  is  the  relation  between  action  and  phras- 
ing that  often  we  cannot  tell  whether  dialogue  is  good  or 
bad  till  we  have  made  sure  of  the  "business"  implied  by  it, 
or  to  be  found  in  it  by  an  imaginative  worker.  The  following 
passage  from  The  Revesby  Sword  Play  is  distinctly  mislead- 
ing because  of  the  word,  "looking-glass"  unless  one  studies 
the  context  closely  for  implied  business,  and  above  all, 
understands  the  sword  dances  of  the  period  in  which  the 
play  was  written. 

Fool.  Well,  what  dost  thou  call  this  very  pretty  thing? 
Pickle  Herring.  Why,  I  call  it  a  fine  large  looking-glass. 
Fool.  Let  me  see  what  I  can  see  in  this  fine  large  looking-glass. 
Here's  a  hole  through  it,  I  see.  I  see,  and  I  see! 

Pickle  Herring.  You  see  and  you  see,  and  what  do  you  see? 

Fool.  Marry,  e'en  a  fool,  —  just  like  thee! 

Pickle  Herring.  It  is  only  your  own  face  in  the  glass.1 

A  "looking-glass"  with  "a  hole  through  it"  seems  nearly 
a  contradiction  in  terms,  but  the  word  "glass"  is  synony- 
mous with  "nut,"  a  name  given  to  the  swords  of  English 
Folk  Dances  when  so  interwoven  as  to  make  a  kind  of 
frame  about  a  central  space.  This  space  is  often  large 
enough  for  a  man's  head.   The  Fool  has  seen  the  dancers 

1  Pre-Shakesperean  Drama,  vol.  i,  p.  300.  J.  M.  Manly.  Ginn  &  Co.,  Boston. 


DIALOGUE 

h  a  nut.    Holding  it  up,  he  asks  Pickle  Herring 

Pickle  Herring,  seeing  the  FooFs  face  through 

the  opening  and  seizing  his  chance  for  a  jest,  calls  the  nut  a 

•king-glass."  The  Fool  carries  on  the  conceit.    Looking 

through  the  hole  he  and  Pickle  Herring  jibe  at  each  other. 

whole  Revesby  Sword  Play  provides  illustration  after 

illustration  of  the  inseparability  of  words  and  business  in 

good  dramatic  dialogue. 

"business"  is  meant  ordinarily  either  illustrative 
action  called  for  by  a  stage  direction  or  clearly  implied  in 
the  text.  By  "latent  business"  is  meant  the  illustrative 
action  which  a  sympathetic  and  imaginative  producer  finds 
in  lines  either  ordinarily  left  without  business  or  treated  with 
some  conventional  action.  Mr.  William  PoeFs  historic  re- 
1  of  Everyman  was  crowded  with  such  imaginative  and 
richly  interpretive  business.   When  Death  cried, 

Everyman,  thou  art  mad!  Thou  hast  thy  wits  five, 
And  here  on  earth  will  not  amend  thy  life! 
For  suddenly  I  do  come  — 

on  that  last  line  he  stretched  out  one  arm  and  with  the  index 
t  of  his  hand  barely  touched  the  heart  of  Everyman. 
In  the  gesture  there  was  a  suggestion  of  what  might  be  going 
to  happen,  even  a  suggestion  that  already  Death  thus 
claimed  Everyman  for  his  own.  It  pointed  finely  the  imme- 
diate cry  of  Everyman, 

O  wretched  caitiff,  whither  shall  I  flee, 
That  I  might  scape  this  endless  sorrow?  * 

The  text  did  not  call  for  this  gesture:  it  belongs  to  the  best 

of  interpretive  business. 

Few  untrained  persons  hear  what  they  write:  they  merely 

see  it.   The  skilled  dramatist  never  forgets  that  he  has  to 

help  him  in  his  dialogue  all  that  intonation,  facial  expression, 

1  Early  Play$,  p.  72.  C.  G.  Child.  Riverside  Literature  Series,  No.  191.  Houghton  Mifflin 
-ton. 


374  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

gesture,  and  the  general  action  of  his  characters  may  do  for 
him.  Which,  after  all,  is  the  more  touching,  the  cry  of  pleas- 
ure with  which  some  child  of  the  streets,  at  a  charity  Chris- 
mas  tree,  gazes  at  a  rag  doll  some  one  holds  out  to  her,  or 
the  silent  mothering  gesture  with  which  she  draws  it  close 
to  her,  her  face  alight?  It  is  just  because,  at  times,  facial 
expression,  gesture,  and  movement  may  so  completely  ex- 
press all  that  is  needed  that  pantomime  is  coming  to  play 
a  larger  and  larger  part  in  our  drama.  Older  readers  of  this 
book  may  recall  the  late  Agnes  Booth  and  her  long  silent 
scene  in  Jim,  The  Penman.  By  comparison  of  a  letter  and  a 
cheque,  Kate  Ralston  becomes  aware  that  her  husband  is  a 
famous  forger,  Jim,  the  Penman.  Through  all  this  great  scene 
of  an  otherwise  cheap  play,  the  physical  movement  was  very 
slight.  The  actress,  three-quarters  turned  toward  the  audi- 
ence, sat  near  a  table.  It  was  her  facial  expression  and, 
rarely,  a  slight  movement  of  the  arms  or  body  which  con- 
veyed her  succession  of  increasingly  intense  emotions.  The 
significant  pantomime  began  with  "She  puts  cheque  with 
others."  The  acting  of  the  next  seven  lines  of  stage  direction 
held  an  audience  with  increasing  intensity  of  feeling  for 
some  five  minutes. 

Nina  (Mrs.  Ralston)  has  just  told  her  husband  that  she 
discovered  Captain  Redwood  asleep  in  the  conservatory  at 
the  end  of  Act  I.  Though  she  does  not  know  it,  this  shows 
her  husband  that  all  his  incriminating  interview  with  Dr. 
Hartfeld  may  have  been  overheard.  He  falls  into  disturbed 
reverie  and  is  so  absorbed  in  thinking  out  the  situation  that 
he  is  oblivious  to  what  she  does. 

Nina.  Now  then,  for  my  pass-book. 

(Opens  pass-book  and  takes  passed  cheques  out  of  side 
pocket  of  book.  Music.) 
Ralston.  (Aside.)  He  heard  all!  If  she  had  told  me,  she  would 
have  saved  me. 


DIALOGUE  375 

na.  (Looking  at  a  cheque.)  What  is  this  cheque?  I  don't  re- 
iber  it.  A  cheque  for  6ve  guineas  in  favor  of  Mrs.  Chapstone. 
I  never  gave  her  a  cheque.  Oh,  I  recollect,  that  same  evening 
I  mothered  you  to  take  some  tickets  and  you  took  them  in  my 
name.  I  never  had  the  tickets,  by-the-bye.  I  suppose  she  sold 
them  over  again.  Yes,  to  be  sure,  you  wrote  the  cheque.  You 
asked  permission  to  sign  my  name.  How  wonderfully  like  my 
writing!  Why,  it  quite  deceives  me,  it's  so  marvelous! 

{Ralston,  in  chair,  is  lost  in  thought,  and  hardly  attends  to 
what  she  says.  She  puts  cheque  with  others  and  goes 
through  accounts.  Pauses,  puts  pass-book  down,  and 
takes  up  cheque  again,  examines  it;  turns  her  head  and 
looks  at  Ralston,  observes  his  absorption,  and  after  an- 
other look  at  him  takes  from  drawer  the  letter  which  Per- 
cival  gave  her  and  the  other.  She  places  them  and  the 
cheque  together,  almost  in  terror;  comparing  them,  a  look 
of  painful  conviction  comes  over  her  face,  which  changes 
into  one  of  terrible  determination.  She  rises  from  cliair. 
Stop  music  on  the  word  "James.")1 

The  greatest  recent  instance  of  pantomime  is  undoubt- 
edly the  third  scene  of  Act  III  of  Mr.  Galsworthy's  Justice. 
Set  in  Falder's  cell,  it  is  meant  to  illustrate  the  loneliness, 
the  excitability,  and  even  the  brutishness  of  a  prisoner's  life. 
Many  people,  while  admitting  the  effectiveness  of  this  word- 
less scene,  have  declared  it  emotionally  so  overwhelming 
that  they  could  not  endure  seeing  it  a  second  time. 

Falder's  cell,  a  whitewashed  space  thirteen  feet  broad  by  seven  deep, 
and  nine  feet  high,  with  a  rounded  ceiling.  The  floor  is  of  shiny  black- 
ened bricks.  The  barred  window  of  opaque  glass  with  a  ventilator,  is 
high  up  in  the  middle  of  the  end  wall.  In  the  middle  of  the  opposite  end 
wall  is  a  narrow  door.  In  a  corner  are  the  mattress  and  bedding  rolled 
up  (two  blankets,  two  sheets,  and  a  coverlet).  Above  them  is  a  quarter- 
circular  wooden  shelf,  on  which  is  a  Bible  and  several  little  devotional 
books,  piled  in  a  symmetrical  pyramid;  there  are  also  a  black  hair- 
brush, tooth-brush,  and  a  bit  of  soap.  In  another  corner  is  the  wooden 
frame  of  a  bed,  standing  on  end.  There  is  a  dark  ventilator  over  the 

»  Samuel  French,  New  York. 


376  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

window,  and  another  over  the  door.  Folder's  work  (a  shirt  to  which  he 
is  putting  button  holes)  is  hung  to  a  nail  on  the  wall  over  a  small 
wooden  table,  on  which  the  novel,  "Lorna  Doone,"1  lies  open.  Low 
down  in  the  corner  by  the  door  is  a  thick  glass  screen,  about  a  foot 
square,  covering  the  gas-jet  let  into  the  wall.  There  is  also  a  wooden 
stool,  and  a  pair  of  shoes  beneath  it.  Three  bright  round  tins  are  set 
under  the  window. 

In  the  fast  failing  daylight,  Folder,  in  his  stockings,  is  seen  standing 
motionless,  with  his  head  inclined  towards  the  door,  listening.  He 
moves  a  little  closer  to  the  door,  his  stockinged  feet  making  no  noise.  He 
stops  at  the  door.  He  is  trying  harder  and  harder  to  hear  something, 
any  little  thing  that  is  going  on  outside.  He  springs  suddenly  upright  — 
as  if  at  a  sound,  and  remains  perfectly  motionless.  Then,  with  a  heavy 
sigh,  he  moves  to  his  work,  and  stands  looking  at  it,  with  his  head 
doivn ;  he  does  a  stitch  or  two,  having  the  air  of  a  man  so  lost  in  sadness 
that  each  stitch  is,  as  it  were,  a  coming  to  life.  Then  turning  abruptly, 
he  begins  pacing  the  cell,  moving  his  head,  like  an  animal  pacing  its 
cage.  He  stops  again  at  the  door,  listens,  and,  placing  the  palms  of 
his  hands  against  it  with  his  fingers  spread  out,  leans  his  forehead 
against  the  iron.  Turning  from  it,  presently,  he  moves  slowly  back 
towards  the  window,  tracing  his  way  with  his  finger  along  the  top  line 
of  the  distemper  that  runs  round  the  wall.  He  stops  under  the  window, 
and,  piclcing  up  the  lid  of  one  of  the  tins,  peers  into  it.  It  has  grown 
very  nearly  dark.  Suddenly  the  lid  falls  out  of  his  hands  with  a  clatter, 
the  only  sound  that  has  broken  the  silence  —  and  he  stands  staring  in- 
tently at  the  wall  where  the  stuff  of  the  shirt  is  hanging  rather  white 
in  the  darkness  —  he  seems  to  be  seeing  somebody  or  something  there. 
There  is  a  sharp  tap  and  click  ;  the  cell  light  behind  the  glass  screen 
has  been  turned  up.  The  cell  is  brightly  lighted.  Folder  is  seen  gasping 
for  breath. 

A  sound  from  far  away,  as  of  distant,  dull  beating  on  thick  metal, 
is  suddenly  audible.  Falder  shrinks  back,  not  able  to  bear  this  sudden 
clamour.  But  the  sound  grows,  as  though  some  great  tumbril  icere 
rolling  towards  the  cell.  And  gradually  it  seems  to  hypnotise  him. 
He  begins  creeping  inch  by  inch  nearer  to  the  door.  The  banging 
sound,  travelling  from  cell  to  cell,  draws  closer  and  closer;  Folder's 
hands  are  seen  moving  as  if  his  spirit  had  already  joined  in  this  beat- 
ing,  and  the  sound  swells  till  it  seems  to  have  entered  the  very  cell. 

1  Note  that  this  is  a  literary  detail  effective  for  readers  only.  At  best  the  first  row  of  spec- 
tators alone  could  identify  the  title  of  the  book. 


DIALOGUE  377 

rdy  raises  his  clenched  fists.   Panting  violently,  he  flings 
'f  at  his  door,  and  beats  on  it. 

The  curtain  falls.1 

Perhaps  an  even  more  interesting  illustration  of  panto- 
mime, localise  it  gives  us,  instead  of  the  heightening  emo- 
tion of  one  i>erson,  the  action  of  two  characters  upon  each 
r,  is  found  in  Hugo  von  Hofmannsthal's  Die  Frau  im 

Vr. 

0  remains  leaning  over  the  parapet  thus  for  a  long  time.  Suddenly 

she  thinks  she  hears  something  as  the  curtain  behind  her,  separating 

her  balcony  from  the  room,  is  thrown  open.   Turning  her  head  she  sees 

her  husband  standing  in  the  doorway.    She  springs  up;  her  features 

d  with  the  utmost  anguish.    Messer  Braccio  stands  si- 

in  the  doorway.    He  wears  a  simple  dark  green  dressing-gown, 

without  weapons;  low  shoes.  He  is  very  tall  and  strong.  His  face  lias 

■ality  that  often  shows  itself  in  the  old  pictures  of  great  lords  and 

n.    He  has  an  exceedingly  large  forehead,  and  little,  dark 

.  thick  black  hair,  short  and  curly,  and  a  small  beard  round  his  face. 

ora  wislies  to  speak,  but  can  bring  no  sound  from  her  throat. 

r>raccio  motions  for  her  to  draw  in  tfie  ladder.   Dianora  does 

so  automatically,  rolls  it  together,  and  as  though  unconscious,  lets  the 

bundle  fall  at  her  feet.  Braccio  regards  her  calmly.  Then  he  grasps  his 

left  hip  with  his  right  hand,  also  with  his  left  hand,  and  looking  down, 

that  he  has  no  dagger.  Making  an  impatient  movement  of  the  lips 

inces  down  into  the  garden  and  behind  him.    He  lifts  his  right 

hand  for  an  instant  and  looks  at  its  palm.  He  goes  back  into  the  room 

with  fi  rm ,  unhurr  ied  steps. 

Dianora  looks  after  him  continually;  she  cannot  take  her  eyes  from 
him.    When  the  curtain  falls  behind  him,  she  passes  her  fingers  over 
heeks  and  through  her  hair.    Then  she  folds  her  hands  and  with 
wildly  twitching  lips  silently  prays.    Then  she  throws  her  arms  back- 
'  and  grasps  the  stone  coping  with  her  fingers,  a  movement  re- 
vealing firm  resolution  and  a  hint  of  triumph. 

Braccio  steps  out  through  the  door  again,  carrying  in  his  left  hand 
a  stool  which  he  places  in  the  dooncay,  and  then  sits  dmcn  opposite 
his  wife.  His  expression  has  not  changed.  From  time  to  time  he  lifts 
his  right  liand  mechanically  and  regards  the  small  wound  in  its  palm. 

»  Juttict.    Copyright,  1910,  by  John  Galsworthy.  Cbas.  Scribner'a  Sons,  New  York. 


378  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Braccio.  (His  tone  is  cold,  slightly  disdainful.  He  indicates  the 
ladder  with  his  foot  and  his  eyes.)  Who  is  it? 

(Dianora  lifts  her  shoulders  tthen  lets  them  fall  again  slowly.) 
Braccio.  I  know. 

(Dianora  lifts  her  shoulders,  then  lets  them  fall  again  slowly. 
Her  teeth  are  pressed  tightly  together.) 
Braccio.  (Raising  his  hand  with  the  movement  but  touching  his 
wife  only  with  his  glance;  then  he  turns  his  gaze  toward  the  garden 
again.)  Palla  degli  Albizzi.1 

Such  elaborate  pantomime  as  the  cases  just  cited  is  natu- 
rally rare,  but  a  dramatist  is  always  watching  for  an  oppor- 
tunity to  shorten  by  pantomime  a  speech  or  the  dialogue  of 
a  scene,  or  to  intensify  by  it  the  effect  of  his  words.2  Is  any- 
thing in  Shore  Acres,  by  James  A.  Heme,  more  memorable 
than  the  last  scene?  In  it  Uncle  Nat,  who  has  established 
the  happiness  of  the  household,  lights  his  candle  deliber- 
ately and  goes  slowly  up  the  long  staircase  to  his  bedroom, 
humming  softly.  He  is  the  very  picture  of  spiritual  content. 
Words  would  have  spoiled  that  scene  as  they  have  spoiled 
many  and  many  a  scene  of  an  inexperienced  dramatist. 

Iris,  at  the  end  of  Act  III  of  Pinero's  play  of  that  name,  is 
on  the  point  of  leaving  Bellagio.  Maldonado  has  left  lying 
on  her  table  a  checkbook  on  a  bank  in  which  he  has  placed 
a  few  hundred  pounds  in  her  name.  Because  of  the  defalca- 
tion of  her  lawyer,  she  is  in  financial  straits.  Maldonado 
wishes  to  help  her  but  also  to  gain  power  over  her.  Unwilling 
to  take  the  checkbook,  she  has  urged  him  to  remove  it. 
Lacking  firmness  of  character,  however,  she  lets  him  have 
it,  saying  she  will  destroy  it. 

With  a  troubled,  half -guilty  look,  Iris  attires  herself  in  her  hat  and 
cape  ;  after  which,  carrying  her  gloves,  she  returns  to  her  dressing-bag. 
Glancing  round  the  room  to  assure  herself  that  she  has  collected  all  her 
small  personal  belongings,  her  eyes  rest  on  the  checque-book  which  lies 
open  on  the  writing-table.  She  contemplates  it  for  a  time,  a  gradually 

1  Die  Frau  im  Fenster.  Theater  in  Versen.  H.  von  Hofmannsthal.  S.  Fischer,  Berlin. 
8  The  final  scene  of  Act  IV  of  Nathan  Hale  shows  effective  use  of  pantomime. 


DIALOGUE  379 

increasing  fear  shotting  itself  in  her  face.  Ultimately  she  walks  slowly 
table  and  picks  up  a  book.   She  is  fingering  it  in  an  uncertain, 
frightened  way  when  the  servant  returns. 

in-servant.  (Standing  over  the  bag.)  Is  there  anything  more, 
ma'am  — ? 

(She  hesitates  helplessly ;  then,  becoming  conscious  that  she 
is  being  stared  at,  she  advances,  drops  the  book  into  the 
bag,  and  passes  out.  The  man  shuts  the  bag  and  is  fol- 
lowing her  as  the  curtain  falls.) l 

This  passage  from  Act  I  of  The  Great  Divide  shows  panto- 
mime supplementing  speech  as  the  dramatist  of  experience 
frequently  employs  it.  A  writer  of  less  sure  feeling  would 
have  permitted  his  characters  some  unnecessary  or  involved 
speech. 

(Ruth  selects  a  red  flower,  pids  it  in  the  dark  mass  of  her  hair,  and 
looks  out  at  the  open  door.)  What  a  scandal  the  moon  is  making  out 
in  that  great  crazy  world!  Who  but  me  could  think  of  sleeping  on 
such  a  night? 

(She  sits  down,  folds  the  flowers  in  her  arms,  and  buries  her 
face  in  them.  After  a  moment,  she  starts  up,  listens,  goes 
hurriedly  to  the  door,  draws  tlie  curtains  before  the  window* 
comes  swiftly  to  the  table,  and  blows  out  the  light.  The 
room  is  left  in  total  darkness.  There  are  muttering  voices 
outside,  the  latch  is  tried,  then  a  heavy  lunge  breaks  the  bolt. 
A  man  pushes  in,  but  is  hurled  back  by  a  taller  man,  with 
a  snarling  oath.  A  third  figure  advances  to  the  table,  and 
strikes  a  match.  As  soon  as  the  match  is  lighted  Ruth  lev- 
els the  gun,  which  she  has  taken  from  its  rack  above  the 
mantel.  There  is  heard  the  click  of  the  hammer,  as  the 
gun  misses  fire.  It  is  instantly  struck  from  her  hand  by 
the  first  man  (Dutch),  who  attempts  to  seize  her.  She 
evades  him  and  tries  to  wrest  a  pistol  from  a  holster  on 
the  wall.  She  is  met  by  the  second  man  (Shorty),  who 
frustrates  the  attempt,  pocketing  the  weapon.  While  this 
has  been  going  on,  the  third  man  (Ghent)  has  been  fum- 
bling with  the  lamp,  which  he  has  at  last  succeeded  in 

>  Walter  H.  Baker  &  Co.,  Boston;  W.  Heioemann,  London. 


380  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

lighting.  AU  three  are  dressed  in  rude  frontier  fashion , 
the  one  called  Shorty  is  a  Mexican  half-breed,  the  others 
are  Americans.  Ghent  is  younger  than  Dutch,  and  taller, 
but  less  'powerfully  built.  AU  are  intoxicated,  but  not 
sufficiently  so  to  incapacitate  them  from  rapid  action. 
The  Mexican  has  seized  Ruth  and  attempts  to  drag  her 
toward  the  inner  room.  She  breaks  loose  and  flies  back 
again  to  the  chimney  place,  where  she  stands  at  bay. 
Ghent  remains  motionless  and  silent  by  the  table,  gazing 
at  her.) 

Dutch.  (Uncorking  a  whiskey  flask.)  Plucky  little  catamount.  I 
drink  its  health.  {Drinks.) 

Ruth.  What  do  you  want  here?  1 

Hofmannsthal,  in  his  Electra,  uses  pantomime  as  only 
one  detail,  but  no  words  could  so  paint  the  mad  triumph  of 
the  sister  of  Orestes  as  does  her  "incredible  dance." 

(Electra  has  raised  herself.  She  steps  down  from  the  thresJiold» 
her  head  thrown  back  like  a  Mamad.  She  lifts  her  knees, 
stretches  out  her  arms;  it  is  an  incredible  dance  in  which 
she  steps  forward. 
Chrysothemis  appearing  again  at  the  door,  behind  her 
torches,  a  Throng,  faces  of  Men  and  Women.) 
Chrysothemis.    Electra! 

Electra.  (Stands  still,  gazing  at  her  fixedly.)  Be  silent  and  dance. 
Come  hither  all  of  you! 
Join  with  me  all !  I  bear  the  burden  of  joy, 
And  I  dance  before  you  here.  One  thing  alone 
Remains  for  all  who  are  as  happy  as  we; 
To  be  silent  and  dance. 

(She  does  a  few  more  steps  of  tense  triumph,   and  falls 
a-heap.  Chrysothemis  runs  to  her.  Electra  lies  motionless. 
Chrysothemis  runs  to  the  door  of  the  house  and  knocks.) 
Chrysothemis.  Orestes!  Orestes!  (Silence.) 

Curtain.2 

Without  question,  then,  speech  in  the  drama  may  often 
give  way  in  part  or  wholly  to  pantomime.  The  inexperienced 

1  The  Great  Divide,  Act  i.   The  Macmillan  Co.,  New  York. 
1  Translated  by  Arthur  Symons.  Brentano,  New  York. 


DIALOGUE  381 

dramatist  should  be  constantly  alert  to  see  to  what  extent 
in  substitute  it  for  dialogue.1 

In  all  that  has  been  said  of  pantomime,  of  course  tech- 
nical pantomime  is  not  meant.  The  Cammedia  deW  arte, 
tomime  artists  like  the  Ravel  Brothers  or  Mme.  Pilar- 
Morin,  have  a  code  of  gesture  to  symbolize  fixed  mean- 
ings. What  is  meant  here  is  the  natural  human  pantomime 
of  people  whose  faces  and  bodies  portray  or  betray  their 
feelings. 

Another  word  of  warning  in  regard  to  pantomime.  When 
a  writer  of  plays  once  becomes  well  aware  of  the  great  value 
of  pantomime,  he  is  likely  to  overwork  it.  Assuming  that 
the  actor  or  actors  may  convey  almost  anything  by  physical 
movement,  he  trusts  it  too  much.  Let  him  who  is  for  the 
moment  under  the  spell  of  pantomime  study  the  moving 
picture  show.  Pantomime  may  ordinarily  convey  physical 
action  perfectly.  Emotion  naturally  and  easily  expressed 
by  action  pantomime  may  convey,  but  when  action  for  its 
clearness  depends  on  knowledge  of  what  is  going  on  in  the 
mind  of  the  actor,  pantomime  begins  to  fail.  Great  artists 
like  Mme.  Pilar-Morin  may  carry  us  far  even  under  these 
conditions,  but  most  actors  cannot.  In  a  motion  picture 
play  like  Cabiria,  contrast  the  scenes  in  which  the  Roman 
and  his  slave  flee  before  the  crowd  from  part  to  part  of  the 
temple  (mere  action),  or  the  scene  of  the  terror  of  the  wine 
merchant  (in  which  the  face  and  body  tell  the  whole  story) 
with  the  scene  in  which  the  nurse  meets  the  Roman  and  his 
slave  on  the  wall  of  the  city  and  begs  their  aid  in  saving  the 
child,  or  the  scenes  in  which  Sophonisba  struggles  with  her 
anxieties  and  mad  desires.  The  second  group  of  pictures 
without  the  explanations  thrown  on  the  screen  would  have 
ittle  meaning.  Pantomime  is  safe,  not  when  it  pleases  us 
to  use  pantomime  rather  than  to  write  dialogue,  but  when 

1  For  such  skilful  substitution  of  pantomime  for  words,  see  pp.  888-89,  Lady  Winder- 
wme$  Fan. 


382  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

our  characters  naturally  act  rather  than  speak,  or  when  we 
can  devise  for  them  natural  action  as  clear  as  speech  or 
clearer  than  speech.  Use  pantomime,  but  use  it  cautiously. 
Speech  is  the  greatest  emotional  weapon  of  the  dramatist. 
It  best  reveals  emotion,  and  best  of  all  creates  responsive 
emotion.  However,  as  most  inexperienced  dramatists  use 
far  too  many  words  rather  than  too  few,  the  value  rather 
than  the  danger  of  pantomime  should  probably  be  stressed 
here.  What  seems  natural,  what  makes  for  illusion,  is  the 
final  test. 

It  is  this  test  of  naturalness  which  has  gradually  excluded, 
except  in  special  instances,  the  soliloquy  and  the  aside.  The 
general  movement  of  drama  in  the  past  ten  years  has  been 
toward  better  and  better  characterization  in  plays  of  all 
kinds.  The  newer  melodrama  and  farce  show  us,  not  the 
mere  comic  puppets  of  the  past,  but  people  as  real  as  the 
form  represented  —  be  it  comedy,  farce,  tragedy,  or  melo- 
drama —  will  permit.  This  new  tendency  has  largely  driven 
out  the  soliloquy  and  the  aside.  We  should  not,  however, 
go  to  extremes,  for  occasionally  we  do  swear  under  our 
breath  or  comment  in  asides,  and  as  long  as  people  do  either, 
such  people  should  be  so  represented.  Moreover,  we  must 
admit  that  the  insane,  the  demented,  the  invalid  left  much 
to  himself,  the  hermit,  whether  of  the  woods  or  the  hall  bed- 
room in  a  city  boarding  house,  do  talk  to  themselves  and 
often  at  great  length.  Neither  the  aside  nor  the  soliloquy 
is,  then,  objectionable  in  itself.  It  is  the  use  of  either  by 
persons  who  would  probably  use  nothing  of  the  sort,  or  their 
use  in  order  to  avoid  exposition  otherwise  difficult  which  is 
to  be  decried.  It  is  particularly  this  latter  fault  to  which 
Sir  Arthur  Pinero  calls  attention  when  treating  the  faulty 
technique  of  R.  L.  Stevenson  as  a  playwright: 

"  I  will  read  you  one  of  the  many  soliloquies  —  the 
faulty  method  of  conducting  action  and  revealing  charac- 


DIALOGUE  383 

ter  by  soliloquy  was  one  from  which  Stevenson  could  never 
emancipate  himself.  It  is  a  speech  delivered  by  Deacon 
Brodie  while  he  is  making  preparations  for  a  midnight 
gambling  excursion. 

(Brodie  closes,  locks,  and  double-bolts  the  doors  of  his  bedroom.) 
Deacon  Brodie.  Now  for  one  of  the  Deacon's  headaches!  Rogues 
all,  rogues  all!  {He  goes  to  the  clothes  press  and  proceeds  to  change 
his  coat.)  On  with  the  new  coat  and  into  the  new  life!  Down  with 
the  Deacon  and  up  with  the  robber!  Eh  God!  How  still  the  house 
is!  There's  something  in  hypocrisy  after  all.  If  we  were  as  good 
as  we  seem,  what  would  the  world  be?  The  city  has  its  vizard  on 
and  we  —  at  night  we  are  our  naked  selves.  Trysts  are  keeping, 
bottles  cracking,  knives  are  stripping;  and  here  is  Deacon  Brodie 
flaming  forth  the  man  of  men  he  is!  How  still  it  is!  —  My  father 
and  Mary  —  Well!  The  day  for  them,  the  night  for  me;  the  grimy 
cynical  night  that  makes  all  cats  grey,  and  all  honesties  of  one 
complexion.  Shall  a  man  not  have  half  a  life  of  his  own?  not  eight 
hours  out  of  twenty-four?  Eight  shall  he  have  should  he  dare  the 
pit  of  Tophet.  Where's  the  blunt?  I  must  be  cool  tonight,  or  — 
steady  Deacon,  you  must  win;  damn  you,  you  must!  You  must  win 
back  the  dowry  that  you've  stolen,  and  marry  your  sister  and 
pay  your  debts,  and  gull  the  world  a  little  longer!  The  Deacon's 
going  to  bed  —  the  poor  sick  Deacon!  AUons!  Only  the  stars  to 
see  me!  I'm  a  man  once  more  till  morning!  [Act  1,  Tableau  1, 
Scene  9.] l 

Sir  Arthur  knows  whereof  he  speaks,  for  past-master  as 
he  has  shown  himself  since  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  in 
the  art  of  giving  necessary  exposition  and  characterization 
without  soliloquy,  he  was  a  bad  offender  in  his  early  days, 
as  the  following  extract  from  the  opening  of  The  Money 
Spinner  shows: 

(Directly  Margot  has  disappeared,  there  is  a  knocking  out- 
side the  door,  right.  It  is  repeated,  then  the  doors  slowly 
open  and  the  head  of  Monsieur  Jules  Faubert  appears.) 
Faubert.  (Who  also  speaks  with  the  accent  of  a  foreigner^)  Boycott, 

1  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  the  Dramatist,  p.  15.  Sir  A.  W.  Pinero.   Chiswick  Press,  London 
For  the  play  see  Three  Plays,  Henley  and  Stevenson.   Chas.  Scribner's  Sons,  New  York. 


384  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

my  friend,  are  you  at  home?  My  friend  Boycott,  do  you  hear  me? 
(Receiving  no  answer,  he  enters  rather  cautiously  and  looks  around. 
He  is  in  black,  wearing  a  long,  tightly  buttoned  frock  coat  and  a  tall 
hat.  His  liair  is  red  and  closely  cropped.  His  voice  is  soft  and  his 
manner  stealthy  and  mechanical.)  Where  is  Boycott,  my  friend?  Ah, 
he  has  not  yet  taken  his  breakfast.  (He  crosses  over  to  the  curtains, 
left,  and  looks  through.)  No  one  to  be  seen.  Boycott  asks  me  to  call 
for  him  at  ten  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  it  is  now  a  quarter  past 
ten  by  the  Great  Clock,  and  he  is  not  visible.  (Walking  round  the 
room,  inspecting  the  objects  with  curiosity.)  Yet  he  could  not  have 
left  the  house  for  I  have  been  watching  at  the  front  door  since  eight 
o'clock.  (Takes  letters  from  top  of  Pianette.)  Besides,  here  are  his 
letters  unopened.  (Examines  tliem  narrowly,  scrutinizing  the  writ- 
ing, and  weighing  tliem  in  his  hand.)  One,  Mr.  Boycott,  with  the 
post-mark  of  London.  Two,  Monsieur  Boycott  with  the  post-mark 
of  Rouen.  Three,  Madame  Boycott  with  the  post-mark  of  Paris. 
(Replacing  letters.)  Ah,  I  have  not  yet  the  pleasure  of  the  acquain- 
tance of  Madame  Boycott.  Poor  soul,  perhaps  she  will  know  me 
some  day.  (Going  over  to  the  door,  right.)  Well,  I  shall  call  again 
after  breakfast.  My  friend  Boycott  is  getting  very  unpunctual  — 
a  bad  sign  —  a  very  bad  sign.1 

The  unnaturalness  of  the  two  foregoing  illustrations  needs 
no  comment.  The  Elizabethan  author,  knowing  that  above 
all  else  the  dramatist  must  make  clear  why  his  people  do 
what  they  do,  used  soliloquy  with  the  utmost  frankness  as 
the  easiest  method  of  exposition.  Here  are  three  specimens, 
one  from  Webster  and  two  from  Shakespeare. 

Cardinal.  The  reason  why  I  would  not  surfer  these 
About  my  brother  is  because  at  midnight 
I  may  with  better  privacy  convay 
Julias  body,  to  her  owne  lodging.  O,  my  conscience! 
I  would  pray  now :  but  the  divell  takes  away  my  heart 
For  having  any  confidence  in  praier. 
About  this  houre  I  appointed  Bosola 
To  fetch  the  body:  when  he  hath  serv'd  my  turne, 
He  dies.  (Exit)2 

1  Samuel  French,  New  York. 

2  The  Duchesse  of  Malfi,  Act  v,  Scene  4.    Belles-Lettres  Series.  M.  W.  Sampson,  ed 
D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston  and  New  York. 


DIALOGUE  385 

Iago.  That  Cassio  loves  her  I  do  well  believe't; 
That  she  loves  him,  'tis  apt  and  of  great  credit; 
The  Moor,  howbeit  that  I  endure  him  not, 
Is  of  a  constant,  loving,  noble  nature, 
And  I  dare  think  he'll  prove  to  Desdemona 
A  most  dear  husband.  Now,  I  do  love  her  too; 
Not  out  of  absolute  lust,  though  peradventure 
I  stand  accountant  for  as  great  a  sin, 
But  partly  led  to  diet  my  revenge, 
For  that  I  do  suspect  the  lusty  Moor 
Hath  leap'd  into  my  seat;  the  thought  whereof 
Doth,  like  a  poisonous  mineral,  gnaw  my  inwards; 
And  nothing  can  or  shall  content  my  soul 
Till  I  am  even'd  with  him,  wife  for  wife; 
Or  failing  so,  yet  that  I  put  the  Moor 
At  least  into  a  jealousy  so  strong 
That  judgement  cannot  cure.  Which  thing  to  do, 
If  this  poor  trash  of  Venice,  whom  I  trash 
For  his  quick  hunting,  stand  the  putting  on, 
I  '11  have  our  Michael  Cassio  on  the  hip, 
Abuse  him  to  the  Moor  in  the  rank  garb  — 
For  I  fear  Cassio  with  my  night-cap  too  — 
Make  the  Moor  thank  me,  love  me,  and  reward  me, 
For  making  him  egregiously  an  ass 
And  practising  upon  his  peace  and  quiet 
Even  to  madness.  'Tis  here,  but  yet  confus'd; 
Knavery's  plain  face  is  never  seen  till  us'd.  (Exit.)"- 

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  't  Iago.  What  he  will  do  with  it 
Heaven  knows,  not  I; 
I  nothing  but  to  please  his  fantasy.2 

1  Othello,  Act  n,  Scene  1.  ■  Othello,  Act  in,  Scene  S. 


386  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Echegaray's  The  Great  Galeoto  (1881),  though  a  part  of 
the  newer  movement  in  the  drama,  shows  soliloquy. 


SCENE.  Madrid  of  our  day. 
PROLOGUE 

A  study;  to  the  left  a  balcony;  on  the  right  a  door;  in  the  middle  a 
table  strewn  with  papers  and  books,  and  a  lighted  lamp  upon  it. 
Towards  the  right  a  sofa.  Night. 

SCENE  1. 

Ernest.  (Seated  at  a  table  and  preparing  to  write.)  Nothing  — 
impossible.  It  is  striving  with  the  impossible.  The  idea  is  there; 
my  head  is  fevered  with  it;  I  feel  it.  At  moments  an  inward  light 
illuminates  it,  and  I  see  it.  I  see  it  in  its  floating  form,  vaguely 
outlined,  and  suddenly  a  secret  voice  seems  to  animate  it,  and  I 
hear  sounds  of  sorrow,  sonorous  sighs,  shouts  of  sardonic  laughter 
—  a  whole  world  of  passions  alive  and  struggling  —  They  burst 
forth  from  me,  extend  around  me  and  the  air  is  full  of  them. 
Then,  then  I  say  to  myself:  "  'Tis  now  the  moment."  I  take  up  my 
pen,  stare  into  space,  listen  attentively,  restraining  my  very  heart- 
beats, and  bend  over  the  paper  —  Ah,  but  the  irony  of  impotency! 
The  outlines  become  blurred,  the  vision  fades,  the  cries  and  sighs 
faint  away  —  and  nothingness,  nothingness  encircles  me  —  The 
monotony  of  empty  space,  of  inert  thought,  of  dreamy  lassitude! 
and  more  than  all  the  monotony  of  an  idle  pen  and  lifeless  paper 
that  lacks  the  life  of  thought!  Ah,  how  varied  are  the  shapes  of 
nothingness,  and  how,  in  its  dark  and  silent  way,  it  mocks  creatures 
of  my  stamp!  So  many,  many  forms.  Canvas  without  color,  bits 
of  marble  without  shape,  confused  noise  of  chaotic  vibrations.  But 
nothing  more  irritating,  more  insolent,  meaner  than  this  insolent 
pen  of  mine  (throws  it  away),  nothing  worse  than  this  white  sheet 
of  paper.  Oh,  if  I  cannot  fill  it,  at  least  I  may  destroy  it  —  vile 
accomplice  of  my  ambition  and  my  eternal  humiliation.  Thus, 
thus  —  smaller  and  still  smaller.  (Tears  up  paper.  Pauses.)  And 
then!  How  lucky  that  nobody  saw  me!  For  in  truth,  such  fury  is 
absurd  and  unjust.  No,  I  will  not  yield.  I  will  think  and  think  until 


DIALOGUE  387 

I  have  conquered  or  am  crushed.  No,  I  will  not  give  up.    Let  me 
§ee,  let  me  see  —  if  in  that  way  —  l 

Such  soliloquy,  even  if  conventionally  justifiable  in  its 
own  time,  is  rarely,  if  ever,  necessary.  Scene  2  of  Echegaray's 
play  shows  Ernest  and  Don  Julian  discussing  the  former's 
difficulty  in  working.  What  could  be  easier,  then,  than  to 
cut  the  scene  just  cited  to  Ernest  seated  at  a  writing  table 
and  showing  by  his  pantomime  how  impossible  he  finds 
composition?  Why  should  he  not  act  out  the  lines,  "I  take 
up  my  pen,  stare  into  space,  listen  attentively,  —  bend  over 
the  paper  .  .  .  and  nothingness,  nothingness"?  If  as  a  cli- 
max he  throws  away  his  pen  and  tears  up  his  paper,  it  cer- 
tainly should  be  clear  that  he  is  thoroughly  exasperated  with 
his  failure  to  write  what  he  wishes.  In  Scene  2  a  very  slight 
change  or  amplification  in  the  phrasing  will  permit  him  to 
bring  out  whatever  of  importance  in  Scene  1  the  suggested 
revision  has  omitted. 

Doubtless  it  would  not  be  so  easy  to  get  rid  of  the  solilo- 
quies of  the  Cardinal,  Iago,  and  Emilia,  but  ingenuity  in 
handling  the  scene  preceding  and  the  scene  following  solilo- 
quies will  usually  dispose  of  all  or  most  of  them.  WTien  Lady 
Windermere's  Fan  of  Wilde  first  appeared,  hardly  any  one 
seriously  objected  to  its  soliloquies.  They  were  an  accepted 
convention  of  the  stage.  When  Miss  Margaret  Anglin  re- 
vived the  play  very  successfully  a  year  or  two  ago,  she 
rightly  felt  these  soliloquies  to  be  outworn.  By  use  of  pan- 
tomime, in  some  cases  hardly  more  than  the  pantomime 
called  for  in  the  stage  directions,  she  disposed  of  all  except 
an  occasional  line  or  two  of  the  original  soliloquies.  The 
instances  cited  from  her  prompt  book  of  the  play  show  one 
soliloquy  cut  to  stage  directions  and  two  lines  of  the  original, 
and  the  second  cut  to  mere  stage  direction. 

1  Drama  Ltague  Strict.  Hannah  Lynch,  tr.  Doubleday,  Page  &  Co. 


388 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


ACT  I. 


Lady  Windermere.  How  hor- 
rible! I  understand  now  what 
Lord  Darlington  meant  by  the 
imaginary  instance  of  the  couple 
not  two  years  married.  Oh!  it 
can't  be  true  —  she  spoke  of 
enormous  sums  of  money  paid 
to  this  woman.  I  know  where 
Arthur  keeps  his  bank  book  — 
in  one  of  the  drawers  of  that 
desk.  I  might  find  out  by  that. 
I  will  find  out.  (Opens  drawer.) 
No,  it  is  some  hideous  mistake. 
(Rises  and  goes  C.)  Some  silly 
scandal!  He  loves  me!  He  loves 
me!  But  why  should  I  not  look? 
I  am  his  wife,  I  have  a  right  to 
look!  (Returns  to  bureau,  takes 
out  book  and  examines  it,  page  by 
page,  smiles  and  gives  a  sigh  of 
relief.)  I  knew  it,  there  is  not 
a  word  of  truth  in  this  stupid 
story.  (Puts  book  back  in  drawer. 
As  she  does  so,  starts  and  takes 
out  another  book.)  A  second  book 

—  private  —  locked!  (Tries  to 
open  it  but  fails.  Sees  paper 
knife  on  bureau,  and  with  it  cuts 
cover  from  book.  Begins  to  start 
at  the  first  page.)    Mrs.  Erlynne 

—  £600  —  Mrs.  —  Erlynne  — 
£700  —  Mrs.  Erlynne  —  £400. 
Oh!  it  is  true!  it  is  true!  How 
horrible!  (Throws  book  on  floor.)1 


(Lady  Windermere  sits  left 
of   centre,    looks    toward 
desk,  rises,  starts  toward 
desk,  hesitates  centre,  goes 
to  desk,  tries  drawer,  hunts 
for  and  finds  key,  unlocks 
drawer,    takes   out   check 
book,  looks  over  stubs,  finds 
nothing  and  is  relieved, 
then  sees  first  entry.) 
Lady  Windermere.  Mrs.  Er- 
lynne —  £600  —  Mrs.  Erlynne 
—  £700  —  Mrs.       Erlynne  — 
£400.  Oh!  it  is  true!  it  is  true! 


1  Plays,  vol.  i.  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston. 


DIALOGUE 


389 


ACTIH. 


Lady  Windermere.  (Standing 
by  the  fireplace.)  Why  doesn't 
This  waiting  is  hor- 
rible. Be  should  be  here.  Why 
is  be  n«>t  lure,  to  wake  by  pas- 
■onate  words  some  fire  within 
1  [am cold  —  cold  as  a  love- 
less thing.  Arthur  must  have 
read  my  letter  by  this  time.  If 
he  cared  for  me,  he  would  have 
come  after  me,  and  have  taken 
me  back  by  force.  But  he  doesn't 
care.  He's  entrammeled  by  this 
woman  —  fascinated  by  her  — 
dominated  by  her.  If  a  woman 
wants  to  hold  a  man,  she  has 
merely  to  appeal  to  what  is 
worst  in  him.  We  make  gods  of 
men  and  they  leave  us.  Others 
make  brutes  of  them  and  they 
fawn  and  are  faithful.  How 
hideous  life  is!  .  .  .  Oh!  it  was 
mad  of  me  to  come  here,  hor- 
ribly mad.  And  yet  which  is  the 
worst,  I  wonder,  to  be  at  the 
mercy  of  a  man  who  loves  one, 
or  the  wife  of  a  man  who  in  one's 
own  house  dishonors  one?  What 
woman  knows?  What  woman 
in  the  whole  world?  But  will  he 
love  me  always,  this  man  to 
whom  I  am  giving  my  life? 
What  do  I  bring  him?  Lips  that 
have  lost  the  note  of  joy,  eyes 
that  are  blighted  by  tears,  chill 
han<ls  and  icy  heart.  I  bring 
him  nothing.  I  must  go  back  — 
no;  I  can't  go  back,  my  letter 


(Lady  Windermere  discov- 
ered at  fireplace,  L.,  crosses 
to  chair,  L.  of  C,  takes 
cloak  from  chair,  puts 
cloak  on  crossing  to  door 
U.L.y  stops,  decides  to 
stay,  crosses  to  R.  of  D.C. 
Enter  Mrs.  Erlynne.) 


390  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

has  put  me  in  their  power  — 
Arthur  would  not  take  me  back! 
That  fatal  letter!  No!  Lord 
Darlington  leaves  England  to- 
morrow. I  will  go  with  him  —  I 
have  no  choice.  (Sits  down  for  a 
few  moments.  Then  starts  up  and 
puts  on  her  cloak.)  No,  no!  I 
will  go  back,  let  Arthur  do  with 
me  what  he  pleases.  I  can't  wait 
here.  It  has  been  madness  my 
coming.  I  must  go  at  once.  As 
for  Lord  Darlington  —  Oh!  here 
he  is!  What  shall  I  do?  What 
can  I  say  to  him?  Will  he  let  me 
go  away  at  all?  I  have  heard 
that  men  are  brutal,  horrible. 
...  Oh!  (Hides  her  face  in  her 
hands.) 

Enter  Mrs.  Erlynne,  L.1 

Soliloquy  when  a  character  is  left  alone  on  the  stage  is  a 
perfect  illustration  of  the  difference  between  permanent  and 
ephemeral  technique.  As  a  device  for  easy  exposition,  it  has 
been  popular  from  the  beginning  of  drama  till  recently. 
Now,  though  one  may  use  it  in  a  rough  draft,  a  technique 
which  is  likely  to  become  permanent  in  this  respect  forces 
us  to  go  over  this  draft,  cutting  soliloquy  to  mere  action  and 
the  few  exclamations  which  the  character  might  utter  under 
the  circumstances.  Soliloquy  has  no  such  permanent  place 
in  technique  as  have  preliminary  exposition,  suspense,  and 
climax.  Soliloquy,  when  other  people  are  on  the  stage  and 
known  by  the  speaker  to  be  listening  is  also  absurd.  It  is 
because  of  this  fact  that  the  dramatic  or  psychologic  mono- 
logue, the  form  taken  by  a  very  large  portion  of  Browning's 
voluminous  poetry,  breaks  down  if  we  attempt  to  stage  it. 
"Some  speaker  is  made  to  reveal  his  character,  and,  some- 

1  Plays,  vol.  L  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston. 


DIALOGUE  391 

<  s,  by  reflection,  or  directly,  the  character  of  some  one 

else  —  to  set  forth  some  subtle  and  complex  soul-mood,  some 

,  all-determining  movement  or  experience  of  a  life, 

or,  it  may  be,  to  ratiocinate  subtly  on  some  curious  question 

beology,  morals,  philosophy,  or  art.  Now  it  is  in  strictly 

lug  the  monologue  character  that  obscurity  often 

results.  A  monologue  often  begins  with  a  startling  abrupt- 

>,  and  the  reader  must  read  along  some  distance  before 

gathers  what  the  beginning  means.  Take  the  monologue 
of  Fra  Lippo  Lippi  for  example.  The  situation  is  necessarily 
left  more  or  less  unexplained.    The  poet  says  nothing  in 

E  propria  persona,  and  no  reply  is  made  to  the  speaker  by  the 
person  or  persons  addressed.  Sometimes  a  look,  a  gesture  or 
a  remark  must  be  supposed  on  the  part  of  the  one  addressed, 
which  occasions  a  responsive  remark.  Sometimes  a  speaker 
imputes  a  question,  and  the  reader  is  sometimes  obliged  to 
p  and  consider  whether  a  question  is  imputed  by  the 
iker  to  the  one  he  is  addressing,  or  is  a  direct  question 
of  his  own.  This  is  often  the  case  throughout  The  Ring  and 
Book:1 1 

Giuseppe  Caponsacchi.  Answer  you,  Sirs?  Do  I 
understand  aright? 
Have  patience!  In  this  sudden  smoke  from  hell,  — 
So  things  disguise  themselves,  —  I  cannot  see 
My  own  hand  held  thus  broad  before  my  face 
And  know  it  again.  Answer  you?  Then  that  means 
Tell  over  twice  what  I,  the  first  time,  told 
Six  months  ago:  'twas  here,  I  do  believe, 
Fronting  you  same  three  in  this  very  room, 
I  stood  and  told  you:  yet  now  no  one  laughs, 
Who  then  .  .  .  nay,  dear  my  lords,  but  laugh  you  did, 
As  good  as  laugh,  what  in  a  judge  we  style 
Laughter  —  no  levity,  nothing  indecorous,  lords! 
Only,  —  I  think  I  apprehend  the  mood: 
There  was  the  blameless  shrug,  permissible  smirk, 

1  Introduction  to  Browning,  pp.  85-88.  H.  Coraon.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co. 


392  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

The  pen's  pretence  at  play  with  the  pursed  mouth, 

The  titter  stifled  in  the  hollow  palm 

Which  rubbed  the  eyebrow  and  caressed  the  nose, 

When  first  I  told  my  tale :  they  meant,  you  know, 

"The  sly  one,  all  this  we  are  bound  believe! 

"Well,  he  can  say  no  other  than  what  he  says. 

"We  have  been  young,  too,  —  come,  there's  greater  guilt! 

"Let  him  but  decently  disembroil  himself, 

"Scramble  from  out  the  scrape  nor  move  the  mud,  — - 

"WTe  solid  ones  may  risk  a  finger-stretch!" 

And  now  you  sit  as  grave,  stare  as  aghast 

As  if  I  were  a  phantom:  now  'tis  —  "Friend, 

"Collect  yourself!"  —  no  laughing  matter  more  — 

"Counsel  the  Court  in  this  extremity, 

"Tell  us  again!"  —  tell  that,  for  telling  which, 

I  got  the  jocular  piece  of  punishment, 

Was  sent  to  lounge  a  little  in  the  place 

Whence  now  of  a  sudden  here  you  summon  me 

To  take  the  intelligence  from  just  —  your  lips, 

You,  Judge  Tommati,  who  then  tittered  most,  — 

That  she  I  helped  eight  months  since  to  escape 

Her  husband,  is  retaken  by  the  same 

Three  days  ago,  if  I  have  seized  your  sense.1 


It  may  be  true  that  when  one  reads  a  dramatic  monologue, 
the  changes  in  thought  caused  by  some  movement  or  look 
of  an  imagined  hearer  may  seem  sufficiently  motivated. 
When,  on  the  other  hand,  this  monologue  is  staged,  it  be- 
comes exceedingly  unreal  because  we  feel  that  the  second 
person  would  not  be  silent  but  would  interrupt  with  ques- 
tion or  comment.  More  than  this,  unless  the  listening  actor 
changes  from  pose  to  pose  with  rapid  plasticity,  he  will  be- 
come stiff  in  attitude,  thus  making  us  conscious  of  him  when 
we  should  be  listening  to  the  speaker.  Increasing  the  num- 
ber of  hearers  does  not  relieve  the  situation,  but  merely  in- 
creases the  number  of  possible  interrupters  or  of  people  who 
stand  about  the  stage  more  and  more  stiffly.    Soliloquy  is, 

1  The  Ring  arid  the  Book.  Robert  Browning.  Tauchnitz  ed.,  vol.  iv.  Leipzig. 


DIALOGUE  393 

therefore,  to  be  avoided  except  when  it  seems  or  can  be 
com  perfectly  natural.  Monologue,  acceptable  per- 
haps to  a  reader,  becomes  well-nigh  impossible  on  the  stage. 
The  aside  must  be  subjected  to  very  nearly  the  same 
.In  Two  Loves  and  a  Life  of  Tom  Taylor  and  Charles 
le,  Musgrave  and  his  daughter,  Anne,  are  opening  let- 
Burreptitiously.    They  come  to  the  letter  of  William 
Hyde,  which  the  girl  opens  with  reluctance,  crying, — 

.  father,  it  is  a  blank! 
rr.  A  blank!  Then  it  is  as  I  thought! 
How? 
Musgrave.  Here,  girl! 

(He  takes  the  letter  and  holds  it  to  the  fire  in  the  brazier.) 
r.  See!  Letters  become  visible! 
Musgrave.  A  stale  trick.     Tis  done  with  lemon  juice  or  milk, 
when  folks  would  keep  what  they  write  from  those  who  are  in  their 
I .  Politicians  correspond  so,  Anne,  and  rebels. 
Anne.  But  William  Hyde  is  neither,  father. 

grave.  Of  course  not.  Now  then! 
Anne.  (Aside.)  Thank  Heaven! 'tis  all  about  his  calling! 

is  grave.  Read!  (Aside.)  I  have  learned  the  key  to  their  cypher, 
I  have  copied  from  the  priest's  letter. 
Anne.  (Reads.)  "Dear  Will,  we  have  thine  advices,  and  shall 
be  at  Lancaster  Fair.  All  the  smart  fellows  — " 

Musgrave.  (To  himself.)  Ah!  Bardsea  Hole  —  all  the  Jacobite 
gentlemen  —  good. 
Anne.  (Reads.)  "By  the  time  the  grilse  come  ashore  — '* 
Musgrave.  (To  himself.)  Grilse?  ammunition.  Go  on. 

me.  (Reads.)  "Which  shall  be  as  you  fix,  on  Tuesday  the 
10th,  at  ten  of  the  clock,  p.m.    There  is  a  bill  against  you  and  the 
old  clothier,  payable  at  Ulverstone  today,  drawn  by  the  butcher. 
!       :  out  and  see  that  he  does  not  nab  either  of  you  — " 
Musgrave.  (Aside.)  The  proclamation! 

.)  "For  your  friends  assembled.  John  Trusty." 
Musgrave.  From  Townley.  It  is  as  I  suspected. 

(He  starts  up.) 
Anne.  Father! 

;ravc.  I'm  a  made  man,  Anne.  Give  me  joy  —  joy! l 

1  Act  u,  Scene  2.  Samuel  French.  New  York. 


394  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

In  this  once  popular  drama  we  have  five  asides  close  to- 
gether, for  of  course  "to  himself"  is  the  equivalent  of  an 
aside.  All  are  bad,  for  in  each  case  the  other  person  on  the 
stage  must  be  supposed  not  to  hear,  and  the  aside  is  merely 
a  device  for  telling  us  what  the  speaker  is  thinking.  They 
vary  in  badness,  however,  for  while  Musgrave  might  well 
explain  "grilse"  to  Anne  as  "ammunition,"  he  says,  "I 
have  learned  the  key  to  their  cipher,  which  I' have  copied 
from  the  priest's  letter,"  not  as  something  which  he  is 
necessarily  thinking  at  the  time,  but  as  something  which 
the  audience  needs  to  know  at  this  point.  An  aside  is 
objectionable  when  a  man  speaks  what  he  would  be  careful 
only  to  think,  either  because  of  the  very  nature  of  his 
thought  or  because  somebody  is  near  at  hand  who  should 
not  overhear.  Asides  should  be  kept  for  confidential  re- 
marks which  may  be  made  to  some  person  standing  near 
the  speaker,  but  could  not  be  heard  by  persons  standing  at 
a  greater  distance;  and  to  what  naturally  breaks  from  us 
in  a  moment  of  irritation,  terror,  or  other  strong  emotion. 
Asides  of  the  first  group,  confidential  remarks,  gain  much 
in  naturalness  if  spoken  in  half  tones.  Nothing  could  be 
more  preposterous  than  the  old  stage  custom  of  coming 
down  to  the  footlights  to  tell  an  audience  in  clear-cut  tones 
confidences  which  must  not  be  overheard  by  people  close 
at  hand  on  the  stage.  Asides  which  are  only  brief  solilo- 
quies are  little  better.  Asides  in  which  the  speaker  merely 
says  to  the  audience  what  he  might  perfectly  well  say  to  the 
people  on  the  stage  are  foolish  unless  the  author  wishes  tc 
make  the  point  that  the  character  has  the  habit  of  talking 
to  himself.  The  following  from  Vanbrugh's  The  Provoked 
Wife  shows  two  entirely  natural  uses  of  the  aside  by  Lady 
Brute,  and  one  debatable  use  by  Sir  John. 


DIALOGUE  395 

ACT  III.  Scene  opens.  Sir  John,  Lady  Brute,  and  Belinda  rising 
from  the  Table 

Sir  John.  Will  it  so,  Mrs.  Pert?  Now  I  believe  it  will  so  increase 
it,  (sitting  and  smoaking)  I  shall  take  my  own  House  for  a  Paper* 
mill. 

Lady  Brute.  (To  Belinda  aside.)  Don't  let's  mind  him;  let  him 
say  what  he  will. 

Sir  John.  (Aside.)  A  Woman's  Tongue  a  Cure  for  the  Spleen  — 
Oons  —  If  a  Man  had  got  the  Head-ach,  they'd  be  for  applying 
the  same  Remedy. 

Lady  Brute.  You  have  done  a  great  deal,  Belinda,  since  yes- 
Vnlay. 

Belinda.  Yes,  I  have  work'd  very  hard;  how  do  you  like  it? 

Lady  Brute.  O,  'tis  the  prettiest  Fringe  in  the  World.  Well, 
Cousin,  you  have  the  happiest  fancy.  Prithee  advise  me  about 
altering  my  Crimson  Petticoat. 

Sir  John.  A  Pox  o'  your  Petticoat;  here's  such  a  Prating,  a  Man 
can't  digest  his  own  Thoughts  for  you. 

Lady  Brute.  (Aside.)  Don't  answer  him.  —  W7ell,  what  do  you 
advise  me? 

Belinda.  Why  really  I  would  not  alter  it  at  all.  Methinks  'tis 
very  pretty  as  it  is.1 

Sir  John's  aside,  if  addressed  to  the  audience,  is  bad;  if 
meant  to  illustrate  his  habit  of  grumbling  to  himself,  it  is 
permissible. 

Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  protests  against  complete  disuse 
of  the  aside.  "In  discarding  the  'aside'  in  modern  drama 
we  have  thrown  away  a  most  valuable  and,  at  times,  a  most 
necessary  convention.  Let  any  one  glance  at  the  'asides' 
of  Sir  John  Brute  in  The  Provoked  Wife,  and  he  will  see  what 
a  splendid  instrument  of  rich  comedy  the  'aside'  may  be- 
come. How  are  we  as  spectators  to  know  what  one  char- 
acter on  the  stage  thinks  of  the  situation  and  of  the  other 
characters,  unless  he  tells  us;  or  unless  he  conveys  it  by 
facial  play  and  gestures  which  are  the  equivalent  of  an 

»  PIay$,  vol.  u,  pp.  150-51.  J.  Tonson.  London,  1730. 


396  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

'aside'?  The  'aside'  is  therefore  as  legitimate  a  convention 
of  drama  as  the  removal  of  the  fourth  wall.  More  and  more 
the  English  modern  drama  seems  to  be  sacrificing  every- 
thing to  the  mean  ambition  of  presenting  an  exact  photo- 
graph of  real  life."1 

Of  course  Mr.  Jones  is  quite  right  in  wishing  to  keep  the 
aside  for  cases  in  which  it  is  perfectly  natural.  His  illustra- 
tion of  Sir  John  Brute  is,  however,  not  wholly  fortunate,  for 
his  asides  are  not  conventional  but  are  characterizing 
touches.  Surely  we  must  all  admit  that  a  certain  type  of 
drunkard  likes  to  mumble  to  himself  insulting  speeches 
which  he  hasn't  quite  the  courage  to  speak  directly  to  other 
people,  but  rather  hopes  they  may  overhear.  Study  the 
asides  of  Sir  John  Brute  —  they  are  not  very  many  after 
all  —  and  note  that  practically  every  one  might  be  said 
directly  to  the  people  on  the  stage.  All  of  them  help  to 
present  Sir  John  as  the  heavy  drinker  who  talks  to  himself 
and  selects  for  his  speeches  to  himself  his  particularly  in- 
sulting remarks. 

Why,  too,  are  "facial  play  and  gestures"  more  objection- 
able than  the  conventional  aside?  The  fundamental  trouble 
with  the  aside  which  should  not  be  overheard  by  people  on 
the  stage  is  that,  if  spoken  naturally,  it  would  be  too  low 
for  the  audience  to  hear,  and  if  spoken  loud  enough  to  be 
heard,  would  so  affect  the  other  characters  as  to  change 
materially  the  development  of  the  scene.  The  aside  should, 
therefore,  be  used  with  great  care. 

Congreve,  writing  of  ordinary  human  speech  said,  "I 
believe  if  a  poet  should  steal  a  dialogue  of  any  length,  from 
the  extempore  discourse  of  the  two  wittiest  men  upon  earth, 
he  would  find  the  scene  but  coldly  received  by  the  town."  2 

1  The  Foundations  of  a  National  Drama,  p.  23.  H.  A.  Jones.  George  H.  Doran  Company, 
New  York. 

*  Concerning  Huwiour  in  Comedy.  A  Letter.  European  Theories  of  the  Drama,  pp.  213- 
214.  Ed.  B.  H.  Clark.   Stewart  and  Kidd  Co.,  Cincinnati. 


DIALOGUE  397 

In  everyday  speech,  that  is,  we  do  not  say  our  say  in  the 
most  compact,  characteristic,  and  entertaining  fashion.  To 
gain  all  that,  we  must  use  more  concentration  and  selection 
than  we  give  to  ordinary  human  intercourse.  Just  that  con- 
centration of  attention,  which  produces  needed  selection, 
a  dramatist  must  give  his  dialogue.  To  this  concentration 
and  selection  he  is  forced  by  the  time  difficulty  already 
explained.  Into  the  period  sometimes  consumed  by  a  single 
bit  of  gossiping,  perhaps  shot  through  with  occasional 
flashes  of  wit,  but  more  probably  dull,  —  into  the  space  of 
two  hours  and  a  quarter,  —  the  dramatist  must  crowd  all 
the  happenings,  the  growth  of  his  characters,  and  the  close 
reasoning  of  his  play.  Dramatic  dialogue  is  human  speech 
so  wisely  edited  for  use  under  the  conditions  of  the  stage 
that  far  more  quickly  than  under  ordinary  circumstances 
the  events  are  presented,  in  character,  and  perhaps  in  a 
phrasing  delightful  of  itself. 

Picking  just  the  right  words  to  convey  with  gesture, 
voice  and  the  other  stage  aids  of  dialogue  the  emotions  of 
the  characters  is  so  exacting  a  task  that  many  a  writer  tries 
to  dodge  it.  He  thinks  that  by  prefacing  nearly  every 
speech  with  "Tenderly,"  "Sarcastically,"  "With  much 
humor,"  in  other  words  a  statement  as  to  how  his  lines 
should  be  read,  commonplace  phrasings  may  be  made  to 
pass  for  the  right  emotional  currency.  This  is  a  lazy  trick 
of  putting  off  on  the  actor  what  would  be  the  delight  of  the 
writer  if  he  really  cared  for  his  work  and  knew  what  he 
wished  to  say.  Of  course,  from  time  to  time  one  needs  such 
stage  directions,  but  the  safest  way  is  to  insist,  in  early 
drafts,  on  making  the  text  convey  the  desired  emotion  with- 
out such  statements.  Otherwise  a  writer  easily  falls  into 
writing  unemotionalized  speeches,  the  stage  directions  of 
which  call  upon  the  actor  to  provide  the  emotion. 

A  similar  trick  is  to  write  incomplete  sentences,  usually 


398 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


ending  with  dashes.  Though  it  is  true,  as  Carlyle  long  ago 
pointed  out,  that  a  thought  or  a  climax  which  a  reader  of 
hearer  completes  for  himself  is  likely  to  give  him  special 
satisfaction,  the  device  is  easily  overdone,  and  too  often  the 
uncompleted  line  means  either  that  the  author  does  not 
know  exactly  what  he  wishes  to  say,  or  that,  though  he 
knows,  the  hearer  or  reader  may  not  complete  the  thought 
as  he  does.  The  worst  of  this  last  trick  is  that  it  may  con- 
fuse the  reader  and,  as  was  explained  earlier  in  this  chapter, 
clearness  in  gaining  the  desired  effect  is  the  chief  essential 
in  dialogue. 

An  allied  difficulty  comes  from  writing  dialogue  in  blocks, 
the  author  forgetting,  in  the  first  place,  that  the  other  people 
on  the  stage  are  likely  to  interrupt  and  break  up  such  speech, 
and  secondly,  that  when  several  ideas  are  presented  to  an 
audience  in  the  same  speech,  they  are  likely  to  confuse 
hearers.  In  these  parallel  passages  from  the  two  quartos  of 
Hamlet,  is  not  the  right-hand  column,  with  its  mingling  of 
rapidly  exchanged  speech  and  description,  much  more  vivid 
and  moving? 


Enter  Ofelia; 
Corambis.  Farewel,  how  now 
Ofelia,    what's    the   news 
with  you? 
Ofelia.  O   my    deare  father, 
such  a  change  in  nature, 
So    great    an   alteration    in   a 

Prince, 
So  pitifull  to  him,  fearefull  to 

mee, 
A  maiden's  eye  ne're  looked  on. 
Corambis.  Why,   what's  the 

matter  my  Ofelia? 
Ofelia.  O  yong  Prince  Ham- 
let,   the    only    floure    of 
Denmark, 


Enter  Ophelia. 
Polonius.  Farewell.  How  now 
Ophelia,  what 's  the  matter? 
Ophelia.  O    my    Lord,    my 
Lord,  I  have  been  so  af- 
frighted. 
Polonium.  With     what     i'th 

name  of  God? 
Ophelia.  My  Lord,  as  I  was 
sowing  in  my  closset, 
Lord  Hamlet  with  his  doublet 

all  unbrac'd, 
No  hat  upon  his  head,  his  stock- 
ins  fouled, 
Ungartred,  and  downe  gyved  to 
his  ancle, 


DIALOGUE 


399 


Hee  is  bereft  of  all  the  wealth  lie 
bad, 

The  Jewell  that  adorn  \1  his  fea- 
ture most 

Is  filcht  and  stolne  away,  his 
wit's  bereft  him. 


Pale    as    his    shirt,  his    knees 

km  eking  each  other, 
And  with  a  look  so  pittious  in 

purport 
As  if  he  had  been  loosed  out 

of  hell 
To  speake  of  horrors,  he  comes 

before  me. 
Polonius.  Mad  for  thy  love? 
Ophelia.  My  lord  I  doe  not 

know, 
But  truly  I  doe  feare  it. 
Polonius.  What  said  he? 
Ophelia.  He  took  me  by  the 

wrist,  and  held  me  hard, 
Then  goes  he  to  the  length  of 

all  his  arme, 
And  with  his  other  hand  thus 

ore  his  brow, 
He  falls  to  such  perusall  of  my 

face 
As  a  would  draw  it.1 

Is  it  probable  that  in  the  following  extract  from  A  Soul's 
Tragedy  of  Browning  the  deeply  interested  and  excited  audi- 
ence would  permit  the  first  bystander  to  complete  uninter- 
rupted his  third  and  very  long  speech?  Are  the  phrasing 
and  thought  really  his,  or  Robert  Browning's? 

ACT  II.  Scene.    The  market  place.   Luitolfo  in  disguise  mingling 
with  the  Populace  assembled  opposite  the  Provost's  Palace. 

1st  Bystander.  (To  Luitolfo.)  You,  a  friend  of  Luitolfo's?  Then, 
your  friend  is  vanished,  —  in  all  probability  killed  on  the  night  that 
his  patron  the  tyrannical  Provost  was  loyally  suppressed  here, 
exactly  a  month  ago,  by  our  illustrious  fellow-citizen,  thrice-noble 
saviour,  and  new  Provost  that  is  like  to  be,  this  very  morning,  — 
Chiappino! 


Luitolfo.  (Aside.)  (If  I  had  not  lent  that  man  the  money  he 

1  The  Devonshire  HamleU,  p.  28. 


4oo  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

wanted  last  spring,  I  should  fear  this  bitterness  was  attributable 
to  me.)  Luitolfo  is  dead  then,  one  may  conclude? 

3rd  Bystander.  Why,  he  had  a  house  here,  and  a  woman  to  whom 
he  was  affianced;  and  as  they  both  pass  naturally  to  the  new  Pro- 
vost, his  friend  and  heir  .  .  . 

Luitolfo.  Ah,  I  suspected  you  of  imposing  upon  me  with  your 
pleasantry!  I  know  Chiappino  better. 

1st  Bystander.  (Our  friend  has  the  bile.  After  all,  I  do  not  dis- 
like finding  somebody  vary  a  little  this  general  gape  of  admiration 
at  Chiappino's  glorious  qualities.)  Pray,  how  much  may  you  know 
of  what  has  taken  place  in  Faenza  since  that  memorable  night? 

Luitolfo.  It  is  most  to  the  purpose,  that  I  know  Chiappino  to 
have  been  by  profession  a  hater  of  that  very  office  of  Provost,  you 
now  charge  him  with  proposing  to  accept. 

1st  Bystander.  Sir,  I'll  tell  you.  That  night  was  indeed  memor- 
able. Up  we  rose,  a  mass  of  us,  men,  women,  children;  out  fled 
the  guards  with  the  body  of  the  tyrant;  we  were  to  defy  the 
world;  but,  next  gray  morning,  "What  will  Rome  say?"  began 
everybody.  You  know  we  are  governed  by  Ravenna,  which  is 
governed  by  Rome.  And  quietly  into  the  town,  by  the  Ravenna 
road,  comes  on  muleback  a  portly  personage,  Ogniben  by  name, 
with  the  quality  of  Pontifical  Legate;  trots  briskly  through  the 
streets  humming  a  "Cur  fremuere  gentes,"  and  makes  directly  for, 
the  Provost's  Palace  —  there  it  faces  you.  "One  Messer  Chiappino 
is  your  leader?  I  have  known  three-and-twenty  leaders  of  revolts ! " 
(laughing  gently  to  himself)  —  "  Give  me  the  help  of  your  arm 
from  my  mule  to  yonder  steps  under  the  pillar  —  So !  And  now,  my 
revolters  and  good  friend  what  do  you  want?  The  guards  burst 
into  Ravenna  last  night  bearing  your  wounded  Provost;  and,  hav- 
ing had  a  little  talk  with  him,  I  take  on  myself  to  come  and  try 
appease  the  disorderliness,  before  Rome,  hearing  of  it,  resort  to  an- 
other method :  'tis  I  come,  and  not  another,  from  a  certain  love  I 
confess  to,  of  composing  differences.  So,  do  you  understand,  you 
are  about  to  experience  this  unheard-of  tyranny  from  me,  that 
there  shall  be  no  heading  nor  hanging,  no  confiscation  nor  exile: 
I  insist  on  your  simply  pleasing  yourselves.  And,  now,  pray, 
what  does  please  you?  To  live  without  any  government  at  all? 
Or  having  decided  for  one,  to  see  its  minister  murdered  by  the 
first  of  your  body  that  chooses  to  find  himself  wronged,  or  disposed 
for  reverting  to  first  principles  and  a  justice  anterior  to  all  institu- 
tions, —  and  so  will  you  carry  matters,  that  the  rest  of  the  world 


DIALOGUE  401 

must  at  length  unite  and  put  down  such  a  den  of  wild  beasts?  As  for 
vengeance  on  what  had  just  taken  place,  —  once  for  all,  the  wounded 
man  assures  me  that  he  cannot  conjecture  who  struck  him;  and 
tins  so  earnestly,  that  one  may  be  sure  he  knows  perfectly  well  what 
intimate  acquaintance  could  find  admission  to  speak  with  him 
late  lasl  evening.  I  come  not  for  vengeance  therefore,  but  from  pure 
curiosity  to  hear  what  you  will  do  next."  And  thus  he  ran  on, 
easily  and  volubly,  till  he  seemed  to  arrive  quite  naturally  at  the 
praise  of  law,  order,  and  paternal  government  by  somebody  from 
rather  a  distance.  All  our  citizens  were  in  the  snare  and  about  to 
be  friends  with  so  congenial  an  adviser;  but  that  Chiappino  sud- 
denly stood  forth,  spoke  out  indignantly  and  set  things  right  again. 
Luitolfo.  Do  you  see?  I  recognize  him  there!1 

People  who  think  ramblingly  and  not  clearly  must  un- 
doubtedly on  the  stage  speak  in  similar  fashion,  but  it  is 
wise  when  possible  to  avoid  stating  two  or  three  ideas  in  the 
same  sentence,  or  developing  two  or  three  ideas  in  one  long 
speech.  An  idea  to  a  sentence,  with  the  development  of 
one  thought  in  a  speech,  is  a  fairly  safe  principle,  though 
not  unalterable.  For  instance,  the  daughter  of  a  widowed 
mother  is  facing  the  fact  that  if  they  are  to  stay  in  their 
meagre  quarters  she  may  have  to  ask  this  as  a  favor  from 
her  employer,  Mr.  Hollings.  The  mother,  not  knowing  that 
he  has  pressed  his  attentions  objectionably,  does  not  under- 
stand the  unwillingness  of  the  girl  to  ask  his  help.  In  answer 
to  her  pleadings  the  girl  cries,  "Oh,  I  would  do  anything 
for  you!  Poor  dear  father!  Mother,  go  to  Mr.  Hollings." 
Here  are  three  different  trains  of  thought  in  one  speech.  The 
first  exclamation  is  a  direct  answer  to  the  mother's  preced- 
ing speech.  For  the  audience  there  is  no  clearness  of  transi- 
tion to  the  second  exclamation,  nor  from  it  to  the  third.  Cut 
the  girl's  answer  to  the  first  sentence.  Then  the  mother, 
seizing  on  the  idea  that  her  daughter  is  willing  to  do  any- 
thing, urges  her  for  this  and  that  reason  to  see  her  em- 
ployer, emphasizing  the  idea  that,  had  the  father  lived,  all 

1  Belles-Lettres  Series,  pp.  271-273.  A.  Bate*,  ed.  D.  C.  Heath  &  Co.,  Boston. 


402  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

their  present  sorrow  would  not  exist.  In  this  case  the  second 
exclamation  falls  into  its  proper  place,  as  a  natural  reply  of 
the  girl  to  her  mother.  If,  too,  as  the  mother  urges  reason 
after  reason  for  going  to  the  employer  for  aid,  the  girl  at 
last  pleads,  "Mother,  you  go  to  Mr.  Hollings,"  this  sen- 
tence also  falls  into  its  proper  place.  It  becomes  the  first 
sign  of  her  yielding,  for  she  is  at  last  willing  that  some  one 
should  intercede  with  the  man.  When  a  writer  finds  himself 
skipping  from  idea  to  idea  within  a  speech  or  a  sentence, 
with  transitions  likely  to  be  unclear  for  the  audience,  he 
should  break  what  he  has  written  into  its  component  parts 
and  let  the  other  people  on  the  stage,  by  their  interruptions, 
queries,  and  comments,  provide  the  connectives  of  speech 
and  thought  which  will  bind  these  ideas  together  properly. 
The  following  rearrangement  by  Miss  Anglin  of  the  original 
text  of  Lady  Windermere9 s  Fan  shows  her  correct  feeling 
that  ideas  originally  treated  together  should  be  separated. 
Lord  Windermere's  reply  is  to  the  first  sentence  of  Mrs. 
Erlynne 's  speech.  It  is  therefore  much  clearer  to  shift  her 
two  succeeding  exclamations  to  her  next  speech. 

ORIGINAL  REVISION 

Mrs.  Erlynne.  (C.)  How  do  Mrs.  Erlynne.  (C.)  How  do 
you  do,  again,  Lord  Winder-  you  do,  again,  Lord  Winder- 
mere?      How    charming    your  mere? 

sweet  wife  looks!    Quite  a  pic-  Lord  Windermere.    (In  a  low 

ture!  voice.)    It  was  terribly  rash  of 

Lord  Windermere.    (In  a  low  you  to  come! 

voice.)    It  was  terribly  rash  of  Mrs.  Erlynne.  (Smiling.)  The 

you  to  come !  wisest  thing  I  ever  did  in  my  life. 

Mrs.  Erlynne.  (Smiling.)  The  How  charming  your  sweet  wife 

wisest  thing  I  ever  did  in  my  life,  looks !  Quite  a  picture !  And  by 

And,  by  the  way,  you  must  pay  the  way,  you  must  pay  me  a 

me  a  good  deal  of  attention  this  good    deal    of    attention    this 

evening . >  evening . 

1  Flays  of  Oscar  Wilde,  vol.  i,  Lady  Windermere's  Fan.  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston. 


DIALOGUE  403 


Often  dialogue  which  is  clear  sentence  by  sentence  is,  as 
a  whole,  somewhat  confusing  to  an  audience.  Frequently  a 
careful  re-ordering  of  the  parts  of  the  speech,  or  of  a  group 
of  speeches,  will  dispose  of  the  trouble.  Occasionally  a  play- 
wright allows  his  ordering  of  his  ideas  to  obscure  the  cue,  or 
important  idea.  Undoubtedly  the  important  word  in  what 
follows  is  "christenings,"  but  Chasuble  runs  on  into  various 
other  matters  before  Jack  speaks.  Consequently  a  hearer 
is  a  little  startled  when  Jack  takes  up  the  idea  of  christen- 
ings instead  of  anything  following  it. 

Chasuble.  In  Paris!  (Shakes  his  head.)  I  fear  that  hardly  points 
to  any  very  serious  state  of  mind  at  the  last.  You  would  no  doubt 
wish  me  to  make  some  slight  allusion  to  this  tragic  domestic  afflic- 
tion next  Sunday.  (Jack  presses  his  hand  convulsively.)  My  ser- 
mon on  the  meaning  of  the  manna  in  the  wilderness  can  be  adapted 
to  almost  any  occasion,  joyful,  or,  as  in  the  present  case,  distress- 
ing. (.4//  sigh.)  I  have  preached  it  at  harvest  celebrations,  christen- 
ings, confirmations,  on  days  of  humiliation  and  festal  days.  The 
last  time  I  delivered  it  was  in  the  Cathedral,  as  a  charity  sermon 
on  behalf  of  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Discontent  among  the 
Upper  Orders.  The  Bishop,  who  was  present,  was  much  struck  by 
some  of  the  analogies  I  drew. 

Jack.  Ah!  That  reminds  me,  you  mentioned  christenings  I  think, 
Dr.  Chasuble?  I  suppose  you  know  how  to  christen  all  right? 
(Dr.  Chasuble  looks  astounded.)  I  mean,  of  course,  you  are  continu- 
ally christening,  aren't  you?  * 

It  is  true  that  the  last  part  of  Chasuble's  speech  illus- 
trates his  volubility,  and  that  the  way  in  which  Jack  picks 
up  the  idea,  "christening,"  shows  that  he  is  so  absorbed 
in  his  purpose  as  to  pay  no  attention  to  anything  Chasuble 
says  after  "christenings."  Here,  therefore,  the  method  is 
probably  justified,  but  ordinarily  the  end  of  one  speech  leads 
into  the  next,  and  when  something  which  breaks  the  se- 
quence stands  between,  it  must  prove  its  right  to  be  there, 
or  be  postponed  for  later  treatment,  or  be  cut  out  altogether. 

1  Idem,  vol.  u.    The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest. 


404 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


What  re-ordering  will  do  for  a  dialogue  which  is  unin- 
teresting and  somewhat  confused  was  shown  in  the  revising 
of  the  extract  from  the  John  Brown  play  (pp.  309-313). 
There  is  a  brilliant  instance,  in  Miss  Anglin's  version  of 
Lady  Windermere *s  Fan,  of  re-ordering  such  that  a  climax 
of  interest  develops  from  groups  of  somewhat  independent 
sentences. 


ORIGINAL 

Lady  Plymdale.  My  dear 
Margaret,  what  a  fascinating 
woman  your  husband  has  been 
dancing  with!  I  should  be  quite 
jealous  if  I  were  you!  Is  she  a 
great  friend  of  yours? 

Lady  Windermere.  No. 

Lady  Plymdale.  Really?  Good 
night,  dear. 

(Looks  at  Mr.  Dumby,  and 
exit.) 

Dumby.  Awful  manners  young 
Hopper  has! 

Cecil  Graham.  Ah!  Hopper  is 
one  of  Nature's  gentlemen,  the 
worst  type  of  gentleman  I  know. 

Dumby.  Sensible  woman, 
Lady  Windermere.  Lots  of  wives 
would  have  objected  to  Mrs.  Er- 
lynne  coming.  But  Lady  Win- 
dermere has  that  uncommon 
thing  called  common  sense. 

Cecil  Graham.  And  Winder- 
mere knows  that  nothing  looks 
so  like  innocence  as  an  indiscre- 
tion. 

Dumby.  Yes;  dear  Winder- 
mere is  becoming  almost  mod- 
ern.   Never  thought  he  would 


REVISION 

Dumby.  Awful  manners  young 
Hopper  has! 

Cecil  Graham.  Ah!  Hopper  is 
one  of  Nature's  gentlemen,  the 
worst  type  of  gentleman  I  know. 

Lady  Jedburgh.  What  a  fas- 
cinating woman  Mrs.  Erlynne 
is!  She  is  coming  to  lunch  on 
Thursday,  won't  you  come  too? 
I  expect  the  Bishop  and  dear 
Lady  Merton. 

Lady  Windermere.  I  am  afraid 
I  am  engaged,  Lady  Jedburgh. 

Lady  Jedburgh.  So  sorry. 
Good  night.  Come,  dear. 

{Exeunt  Lady  Jedburgh  and 
Miss  Graham.) 

Dumby.  Sensible  woman, 
Lady  Windermere.  Lots  of 
wives  would  have  objected  to 
Mrs.  Erlynne  coming.  But 
Lady  Windermere  has  th?t  un- 
common thing  called  common 
sense. 

Cecil  Graham.  And  Winder- 
mere knows  that  nothing  looks 
so  like  innocence  as  an  indiscre- 
tion. 

Dumby.  Yes;    dear    Winder- 


DIALOGUE 


405 


(Boies  to  Lady  Windermere 
ami  cn't.) 
Lady    Jidhurgh.  Good  night, 
Lady  Windermere.  What  a  fas- 
cinating woman  Mrs.  Erlynne 
is!  She  is  coining  to  lunch  on 
Thursday.       Won't   you   come 
I  expect  the  Bishop  and 
dear  Lady  Mcrton. 

Lady  Windermere.  I  am  afraid 
I  am  engaged,  Lady  Jedburgh. 
Lady    Jedburgh.     So    sorry. 
Come,  dear. 

(Exeunt  Lady  Jedburgh  and 

Miss  Graham.) 

Enter    Mrs.    Erlynne    and 

Lord  Windermere. 

Mrs.  Erlynne.  Charming  ball 

it  has  been!   Quite  reminds  me 

of  old  days.    (Sits  on  the  sofa.)1 


mere  is  becoming  almost  mod- 
ern. Never  thought  he  would. 
Lady  Plymdale.  Dumby! 
(Dumby  bows  to  Lady  Win- 
dermere and  exit.) 
Lady    Plymdale.    My     dear 
Margaret,   what   a   fascinating 
woman  your  husband  has  been 
dancing  with!  I  should  be  quite 
jealous  if  I  were  you!  Is  she  a 
great  friend  of  yours? 
Lady  Windermere.  No! 
Lady  Plymdale.  Really?  Good 
night,  dear. 

(Lady  Plymdale  exits.) 

Enter    Mrs.    Erlynne    and 

Lord  Windermere. 

Mrs.  Erlynne.  Charming  ball 

it  has  been!  Quite  reminds  me 

of  old  days.     (Sits  on  the  sofa.) 


Dialogue  may  be  both  clear  and  characterizing  yet  fail 
because  it  is  difficult  to  speak.  Too  many  writers,  as  has 
been  said,  do  not  hear  their  words  but  see  them.  Could  any 
one  who  heard  his  words  have  penned  the  lines,"  She  says 
she's  sure  she'll  have  a  shock  if  she  sees  him."  That  time 
"apt  alliteration"  was  so  artful  that,  setting  her  trap,  she 
caught  a  dramatist.  Here  is  the  amusing  comment  of  a 
critic  on  an  author's  protest  that  her  lines  have  been  mis- 
quoted and  made  to  sound  difficult  to  deliver: 

In  the  review  of  the Theatre's  opening  bill  there  occurred 

a  line  purporting  to  come  from  Miss  Blank's  psychic  play,  The 
Turtle.  Miss  Blank  writes,  "The  line,  which  was  either  incorrectly 
spoken  or  heard,  was  not,  'How  does  one  know  one  is  one's  self?' 
but  '  How  is  one  to  know  which  is  one's  real  self  when  one  feels  so 
different  with  different  people?'"  Naturally  the  reviewer  of  a  play 
is  as  open  to  mistakes  in  noting  down  lines  as  the  actor  is  in  speak- 

1  Play  qf  Otcar  Wilde,  vol.  1.  J.  W.  Luc*  &  Co.,  Boston. 


4o6  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

ing  them,  particularly  if  the  author  is  much  given  to  the  "one-one- 
one"  style  of  construction.  If,  however,  Miss  Blank  prefers  her 
own  version  of  the  sentence,  she  is  welcome  to  it. 

Of  course  each  writer  is  perfectly  sure  that  his  own  ear 
will  keep  him  from  errors  of  this  kind,  but  even  the  greatest 
err.  Did  Shakespeare  write  the  opening  lines  of  Measure  For 
Measure,  he  the  master  of  exquisitely  musical  and  per- 
fectly chosen  dramatic  speech?  Some  scholars  believe  he 
did.  If  so,  in  that  second  speech  of  the  Duke  which  wearies 
the  jaws  and  tempts  to  every  kind  of  slurring,  Jove  certainly 
nodded. 

Enter  Duke,  Escalus,  Lords  and  Attendants 

Duke.  Escalus! 

Escalus.  My  lord. 

Duke.  Of  government  the  properties  to  unfold, 
Would  seem  in  me  to  affect  speech  and  discourse, 
Since  I  am  put  to  know  that  your  own  science 
Exceeds,  in  that,  the  lists  of  all  advice 
My  strength  can  give  you:  then  no  more  remains, 
But  that,  to  your  sufficiency  .  .  . 

...  as  your  worth  is  able, 
And  let  them  work. 

Are  the  following  straight  translations  from  the  old  French 
farce,  Pierre  Patelin,1  as  easy  to  speak  as  the  revisions? 

TRANSLATION  REVISION 

Guillemette.  And  don't  forget  Guillemette.  And  if  any  one 

your  dram,  if  you  can  come  by  offers  to  stand  treat,  don't 
it  for  nothing.  refuse. 

(Patelin  is  trying  to  cheat  {Patelin  is  trying  to  cheat 

the  Draper  out  of  a  piece  the  Draper  out  of  a  piece 

of  cloth.)  of  cloth.) 

Patelin.  I   don't   care:   give  Patelin.  I  don't  care :  give  me 

me  my  money's  worth.   (Whis-  my  money's  worth.    (Whisper- 

1  Walter  H.  Baker  Co.,  Boston. 


DIALOGUE  407 

pe ring  in  the  Drapers  ear.)  I      ing  in  the  Draper's  ear.)  I  know 
know  <>f  another  coin  or  two      of  some  chink  — 
thai  oobody  ever  got  a  smell  of. 

Draper.  Now  you're  talking!  Draper.  Now  you're  talking! 

That  would  he  capital. 

Patelin.  In  a  word,  I  am  hot  Patelin.  (Letting  his  hand  fall 

for  this  piece,  and  have  some  I      on  the  goods.)  This! 
must. 

The  first  revision  certainly  gives  lines  easier  to  speak. 
The  writer  of  the  second  revision  hears  it  and  knows  the 
ure,  facial  expression,  and  intonation  which  must  go 
with  "This!"  Dialogue  which  is  perfectly  clear  and  char- 
acterizing should  not  be  allowed  to  pass  in  the  final  revision 
if  at  any  point  it  is  unnecessarily  difficult  to  deliver. 

From  the  preceding  discussion  it  must  be  clear  that  the 
three  essentials  of  dialogue  are  clearness,  helping  the  on- 
ward movement  of  the  story,  and  doing  all  this  in  charac- 
ter. Dialogue  is,  naturally,  still  better  if  it  possesses  charm, 
grace,  wit,  irony,  or  beauty  of  its  own.  Dialogue  which 
merely  states  the  facts  is,  as  we  have  seen,  likely  to  be  dull 
or  commonplace.  Well  characterized  dialogue  still  falls 
short  of  all  dialogue  may  be  if  it  has  none  of  the  attributes 
just  mentioned.  Feeling  this  strongly,  the  dramatists 
throughout  the  ages  have  striven  to  give  their  dialogue 
attractiveness  because  of  its  style,  forgetting  that  above  all 
for  the  dramatist  it  is  true  that  "style  is  the  man,"  and  that 
"style  is  a  thinking  out  into  language."  Lyly,  Shakespeare, 
in  some  of  the  scenes  of  his  early  plays,  Kyd  in  The  Spanish 
Tragedy,  John  Dryden  in  his  Heroic  Drama,  Cibber  and 
Lillo  in  their  rhythmic  prose  which  often  might  be  perfectly 
well  printed  as  blank  verse,  strove  to  decorate  their  dialogue 
from  without  —  something  sure  to  fail,  either  with  the  im- 
mediate audience  or  writh  posterity.  If  the  charm,  the  grace, 
the  wit,  the  irony  of  the  dialogue  does  not  come  from  the 
characters  speaking,  that  dialogue  fails  in  what  has  been 


408  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

shown  to  be  one  of  its  chief  essentials,  right  characterization. 
Congreve  emphasized  this  in  that  classic  of  dramatic  criti- 
cism, his  letter  Concerning  Humour  in  Comedy.1  "A  char- 
acter of  a  splenetic  and  peevish  humour  should  have  a 
satirical  wit.  A  jolly  and  sanguine  humour  should  have  a 
facetious  wit.  The  former  should  speak  positively;  the 
latter,  carelessly:  for  the  former  observes  and  shows  things 
as  they  are;  the  latter  rather  overlooks  nature,  and  speaks 
things  as  he  would  have  them;  and  his  wit  and  humour  have 
both  of  them  a  less  alloy  of  judgment  than  the  others."  Un- 
doubtedly, however,  the  dramatist  may  do  much  in  helping 
a  character  to  reveal  these  qualities,  particularly  beauty  of 
thought  or  phrasing.  It  is  a  conventional  use  supposed  to 
make  for  beauty  which  The  Rehearsal  ridicules  in  the  fol- 
lowing scene,  for  at  nearly  all  crises  the  Heroic  Drama  rested 
on  a  simile  for  its  strongest  effect. 

Prettyman.  How  strange  a  captive  am  I  grown  of  late! 
Shall  I  accuse  my  love  or  blame  my  fate? 
My  love  I  cannot;  that  is  too  divine: 
And  against  fate  what  mortal  dares  repine? 

Enter  Chloris 

But  here  she  comes. 

Sure  'tis  some  blazing  comet!  is  it  not?  (Lies  down.) 

Bayes.  Blazing  comet!  Mark  that;  egad,  very  fine. 

Prettyman.  But  I  am  so  surpris'd  with  sleep,  I  cannot  speak  the 
rest.  (Sleeps.) 

Bayes.  Does  not  that,  now,  surprise  you,  to  fall  asleep  in  the 
nick?  His  spirits  exhale  with  the  heat  of  his  passion,  and  all  that, 
and,  swop,  he  falls  asleep,  as  you  see.  Now,  here  she  must  make  a 
simile. 

Smith.  Where's  the  necessity  of  that,  Mr.  Bayes? 

Bayes.  Because  she's  surprised.  That's  a  general  rule;  you  must 
ever  make  a  simile  when  you're  surprised;  'tis  the  new  way  of 
writing. 

1  Dramatic  Works,  vol.  n,  pp.  222-223.  London,  1773. 


DIALOGUE 


409 


Chloris.  As  some  tall  pine  which  we  on  jEtna  find 
T  haw  stood  the  rage  of  many  •  boist'roni  wind, 
Peeling  without  thai  flames  within  do  play, 
Which  would  consume  his  root  and  sap  away; 
I ;        ■■■( -ads  hifl  worsted  arms  unto  the  skies: 
Bflently  grieves,  all  pal**,  repines,  and  di 

ihrouded  up,  your  bright  eye  disappears. 
Break  forth,  bright  scorching  sun,  and  dry  my  tears.  (Exit.) 

John.  Mr.  Bayes,  methinks  this  simile  wants  a  little  application, 

too. 
Bayes.  No  faith ;  for  it  alludes  to  passion,  to  consuming,  to  dying, 
and  all  that,  which,  you  know,  are  the  natural  effects  of  an  amour. 

(Act  11,  sc.  3.)  ■ 


Why  is  it  that  the  citation  from  Shakespeare  in  the  left- 
hand  column  is  less  satisfactory  than  that  in  the  right-hand? 

York.  To  do  that  office  of 

thine  own  good  will 
Which  tired  majesty  did  make 

thee  offer, 
The  resignation  of  thy  state  and 

crown 


To  Henry  Bolingbroke. 

King  Richard.  Give  me  the 

crown.  —  Here  cousin,  seize 

the  crown; 
Here,  cousin, 
On  this  side  my  hand,  and  on 

that  side  thine. 
Now  is  this  golden  crown  like  a 

deep  well 
That  owes  two  buckets,  filling 

one  another, 
The  emptier  ever  dancing  in  the 

air, 
The  other  down,  unseen,  and 

full  of  water. 
That  bucket  down  and  full  of 

tears  am  I, 


Viola.  If  I  did  love  you  in  my 
master's  flame, 

With  such  a  suffering,  such  a 
deadly  life, 

In  your  denial  I  would  find  no 
sense, 

I  would  not  understand  it. 
Olivia.  Why,     what     would 

you? 
Viola.  Make    me    a    willow 
cabin  at  your  gate, 

And  call  upon  my  soul  within 
the  house; 

Write    loyal    cantons    of    con- 
temned love 

And  sing  them  loud  even  in  the 
dead  of  night; 

Halloo  your  name  to  the  rever- 
berate hills 

And  make  the  babbling  gossip 
of  the  air 

Cry  out " Olivia! "  O,  you  should 
not  rest 


1  Geo  Villiers,  Duke  of  Buckingham.  Selected  Drama*  of  John  Dryden,  with  The  Rehearsal, 
p.  399.  G.  R.  Noycs.  ed.   Scott,  Freeman  &  Co. 


410  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Drinking  my  griefs,  whilst  you      Between  the  elements  of  air  and 

mount  up  on  high.  earth, 

Bolingbroke.  I   thought   you      But  should  pity  me! 

had  been  willing  to  resign.  Olivia.  You  might  do  much.2 

King  Richard.  My  crown  I 

am;  but  still  my  griefs  are 

mine. 
You  may  my  glories  and  my 

state  depose, 
But  not  my  griefs;  still  I  am 

king  of  those.1 

The  second  extract  is  the  more  effective  because  the  on- 
ward sweep  of  the  emotion  of  the  scene  reveals  beauty  as  it 
moves,  but  the  first  shows  King  Richard  checking  the  course 
of  his  natural  emotion  in  order  suavely  and  perfectly  to 
develop  his  comparison.  Of  course  there  is  beauty  in  the 
first  extract,  but  it  is  not  genuine  dramatic  beauty.  Why 
does  one  find  the  following  passage  from  The  Importance  of 
Being  Earnest  (Act  I),  delightful  as  it  is,  less  fine  than  the 
passage  from  The  Way  of  the  World  (Act  II,  Scene  5)  ? 

THE  IMPORTANCE  OF  BEING  EARNEST 

Lady  Bracknell.  (Sitting  down.)  You  can  take  a  seat,  Mr.  Worth- 
ing. (Looks  in  her  pocket  for  notebook  and  pencil.) 

Jack.  Thank  you,  Lady  Bracknell,  I  prefer  standing. 

Lady  Bracknell.  (Pencil  and  notebook  in  hand.)  I  feel  bound  to 
tell  you  that  you  are  not  down  on  my  list  of  eligible  young  men, 
although  I  have  the  same  list  as  the  dear  Duchess  of  Bolton  has. 
We  work  together,  in  fact.  However,  I  am  quite  ready  to  enter 
your  name,  should  your  answers  be  what  a  really  affectionate 
mother  requires.  Do  you  smoke? 

Jack.  Well,  yes,  I  must  admit  I  smoke. 

Lady  Bracknell.  I  am  glad  to  hear  it.  A  man  should  always  have 
an  occupation  of  some  kind.  There  are  far  too  many  idle  men  in 
London  as  it  is.   How  old  are  you? 

Jack.  Twenty-nine. 

1  Richard  the  Second,  Act  iv,  Scene  1.  2  Twelfth  Night,  Act  i,  Scene  5. 


DIALOGUE  411 

Lady  Bracknell.  A  very  good  age  to  be  married  at.  I  have  always 
been  of  opinion  that  a  man  who  desires  to  get  married  should  know 
Other  everything  or  nothing.    Which  do  you  know? 

Jack.  (After  some  hesitation.)  I  know  nothing,  Lady  Bracknell. 

Lady  Bracknell.  I  am  pleased  to  hear  it.  I  do  not  approve  of 
anything  that  tempers  with  natural  ignorance.  Ignorance  is  like 
a  delicate  exotic  fruit;  touch  it  and  the  bloom  is  gone.  The  whole 
theory  of  modern  education  is  radically  unsound.  Fortunately 
in  Kn  gland,  at  any  rate,  education  produces  no  effect  whatsoever. 
If  it  did,  it  would  prove  a  serious  danger  to  the  upper  classes,  and 
probably  lead  to  acts  of  violence  in  Grosvenor  Square.  What  is 
your  income? 

Jack.  Between  seven  and  eight  thousand  a  year. 

Lady  Bracknell.  (Makes  a  note  in  her  book.)  In  land  or  invest- 
ments? 

Jack.  In  investments,  chiefly. 

Lady  Bracknell.  That  is  satisfactory.  What  between  the  duties 
expected  of  one  during  one's  lifetime,  and  the  duties  exacted  from 
one  after  one's  death,  land  has  ceased  to  be  either  a  profit  or  a  pleas- 
ure. It  gives  one  position  and  prevents  one  from  keeping  it  up. 
That's  all  that  can  be  said  about  land. 

Jack.  I  have  a  country  house  with  some  land,  of  course,  at- 
tached to  it,  about  fifteen  hundred  acres,  I  believe;  but  I  don't  de- 
pend on  that  for  my  income.  In  fact,  as  far  as  I  can  make  out,  the 
poachers  are  the  only  people  who  are  making  anything  out  of  it. 

Lady  Bracknell.  A  country  house!  How  many  bedrooms?  Well, 
that  point  can  be  cleared  up  afterwards.  You  have  a  town  house, 
I  hope?  A  girl  with  a  simple  unspoiled  nature,  like  Gwendolen, 
could  hardly  be  expected  to  reside  in  the  country. 

Jack.  Well,  I  own  a  house  in  Belgrave  Square,  but  it  is  let  by 
the  year  to  Lady  Bloxham.  Of  course,  I  can  get  it  back  whenever 
I  like,  at  six  months'  notice. 

Lady  Bracknell.  Lady  Bloxham?  I  don't  know  her. 

Jack.  Oh,  she  goes  about  very  little.  She  is  a  lady  considerably 
advanced  in  years. 

Lady  Bracknell.  Ah,  nowadays  that  is  no  guarantee  of  re- 
spectability of  character.   WTiat  number  in  Belgrave  Square? 

Jack.  149. 

Lady  Bracknell.  (Shaking  her  head.)  The  unfashionable  side.  I 
thought  there  was  something.  However,  that  could  easily  be 
altered. 


412  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Jack.  Do  you  mean  the  fashion  or  the  side? 

Lady  Bracknell.  {Sternly.)  Both,  if  necessary,  I  presume.  What 
are  your  politics? 

Jack.  Well,  I'm  afraid  I  really  have  none.  I  am  a  Liberal 
Unionist. 

Lady  Bracknell.  Oh,  they  count  as  Tories.  They  dine  with  us. 
Or  come  in  the  evening,  at  any  rate.  Now  to  minor  matters.  Are 
your  parents  living? 

Jack.  I  have  lost  both  my  parents. 

Lady  Bracknell.  Both?  —  That  seems  like  carelessness.  Who 
was  your  father?  He  was  evidently  a  man  of  some  wealth.  Was  he 
born  in  what  the  Radical  papers  call  the  purple  of  commerce,  or 
did  he  rise  from  the  ranks  of  the  aristocracy? 

Jack.  I'm  afraid  I  really  don't  know.  The  fact  is,  Lady  Brack- 
nell, I  said  I  had  lost  my  parents.  It  would  be  nearer  the  truth  to 
say  that  my  parents  seem  to  have  lost  me  —  I  don't  actually 
know  who  I  am  by  birth.   I  was  —  well,  I  was  found. 

Lady  Bracknell.  Found! 

Jack.  The  late  Mr.  Thomas  Cardew,  an  old  gentleman  of  a  very 
charitable  and  kindly  disposition,  found  me  and  gave  me  the  name 
of  Worthing,  because  he  happened  to  have  a  first-class  ticket  for 
Worthing  at  the  time.  Worthing  is  a  place  in  Sussex.  It  is  a  sea- 
side resort. 

Lady  Bracknell.  Where  did  the  gentleman  who  had  a  first-class 
ticket  for  this  seaside  resort  find  you? 

Jack.  {Gravely.)  In  a  hand-bag. 

Lady  Bracknell.  A  hand-bag! 

Jack.  {Very  seriously.)  Yes,  Lady  Bracknell.  I  was  in  a  hand- 
bag—  a  somewhat  large,  black  leather  hand-bag,  with  handles 
to  it  —  an  ordinary  hand-bag  in  fact. 

Lady  Bracknell.  In  what  locality  did  this  Mr.  James,  or  Thomas, 
Cardew  come  across  this  ordinary  hand-bag? 

Jack.  In  the  cloak-room  at  the  Victoria  Station.  It  was  £iven 
to  him  in  mistake  for  his  own. 

Lady  Bracknell.  The  cloak-room  at  Victoria  Station? 

Jack.  Yes,  the  Brighton  line. 

Lady  Bracknell.  The  line  is  immaterial.  Mr.  Worthing,  I  confess 
I  feel  somewhat  bewildered  by  what  you  have  just  told  me.  To  be 
born,  or  at  any  rate,  bred  in  a  hand-bag,  whether  it  had  handles 
or  not,  seems  to  me  to  display  a  contempt  for  the  ordinary  de- 
cencies of  family  life  that  remind  one  of  the  worst  excesses  of  the 


DIALOGUE  413 

French  Revolution.  And  I  presume  you  know  what  that  unfortu- 
movement  led  to?  As  for  the  particular  locality  in  which  the 
haml-bog  was  found,  a  cloak-room  at  a  railway  station  might  serve 
to  conceal  a  social  indiscretion  —  has  probably,  indeed,  been  used 
for  that  pur]x)se  before  now  —  but  it  could  hardly  be  regarded  as 
an  assured  basis  for  a  recognized  position  in  good  society. 

Jack.  May  I  ask  you  then  what  you  would  advise  me  to  do?  I 
need  hardly  say  I  would  do  anything  in  the  world  to  ensure  Gwen- 
dolen*! happiness. 

Lady  Bracknell.  I  would  strongly  advise  you,  Mr.  Worthing,  to 
try  and  acquire  some  relations  as  soon  as  possible,  and  to  make  a 
definite  effort  to  produce  at  any  rate  one  parent,  of  either  sex,  be- 
fore the  season  is  quite  over. 

Jack.  Well,  I  don't  see  how  I  could  possibly  manage  to  do  that. 
I  can  produce  the  hand-bag  at  any  moment.  It  is  in  my  dressing- 
room  at  home.  I  really  think  that  should  satisfy  you,  Lady 
Bracknell. 

Lady  Bracknell.  Me,  sir!  What  has  it  to  do  with  me?  You  can 
hardly  imagine  that  I  and  Lord  Bracknell  would  dream  of  allowing 
our  only  daughter  —  a  girl  brought  up  with  the  utmost  care  — 
to  marry  into  a  cloak-room,  and  form  an  alliance  with  a  parcel? 
Good  morning,  Mr.  Worthing! 

(Lady  Bracknell  sweeps  out  in  majestic  indignation.) l 

THE  WAY  OF  THE  WORLD 

Enter  Mrs.  MiUamant,  Witvxrud,  Mincing 

Mirabell.  Here  she  comes,  i'faith,  full  sail,  with  her  fan  spread 
and  streamers  out,  and  a  shoal  of  fools  for  tenders;  ha,  no,  I  cry 
her  mercy, 

Mrs.  Fainall.  I  see  but  one  poor  empty  sculler;  and  he  tows 
her  woman  after  him. 

Mirabel!.  (To  Mrs.  MiUamant.)  You  seem  to  be  unattended, 
Madam  —  you  us'd  to  have  the  beau  monde  throng  after  you;  and 
a  flock  of  gay  fine  perukes  hovering  round  you. 

Witu-oud.  Like  moths  about  a  candle,  —  I  had  like  to  have  lost 
my  comparison  for  want  of  breath. 

Mrs.  MiUamant.  Oh,  I  have  denied  myself  airs  today,  I  have 
walk'd  as  fast  through  the  crowd  — 

1  Play$qfOtcar  Wilde,  vol.  11.  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston. 


4H  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Witwoud.  As  a  favourite  just  disgraced;  and  with  as  few  follow- 
ers. 

Mrs.  Millamant.  Dear  Mr.  Witwoud,  truce  with  your  simili- 
tudes; for  I  am  as  sick  of  'em  — 

Witwoud.  As  a  physician  of  good  air  —  I  cannot  help  it,  Madam, 
though  'tis  against  myself. 

Mrs.  MUlamard.  Yet  again!  Mincing,  stand  between  me  and 
his  wit. 

Witwoud.  Do,  Mrs.  Mincing,  like  a  screen  before  a  great  fire.  I 
confess  I  do  blaze  today,  I  am  too  bright. 

Mrs.  Fainall.  But,  dear  Millamant,  why  were  you  so  long? 

Mrs.  Millamant.  Long!  Lord,  have  I  not  made  violent  haste? 
I  have  ask'd  every  living  thing  I  met  for  you;  I  have  enquir'd 
after  you,  as  after  a  new  fashion. 

Witwoud.  Madam,  truce  with  your  similitudes  —  no,  you  met 
her  husband,  and  did  not  ask  him  for  her. 

Mrs.  Millamant.  By  your  leave,  Witwoud,  that  were  like  en- 
quiring after  an  old  fashion,  to  ask  a  husband  for  his  wife. 

Witwoud.  Hum,  a  hit,  a  hit,  a  palpable  hit,  I  confess  it. 

Mrs.  Fainall.  You  were  dress'd  before  I  came  abroad. 

Mrs.  Millamant.  Ay,  that's  true  —  0  but  then  I  had  —  Mincing, 
what  had  I?  why  was  I  so  long? 

Mincing.  0  mem,  your  La'ship  staid  to  peruse  a  pacquet  of 
letters. 

Mrs.  Millamant.  0,  ay,  letters  —  I  had  letters  —  I  am  perse- 
cuted with  letters  —  I  hate  letters  —  nobody  knows  how  to  write 
letters,  and  yet  one  has  'em  one  does  not  know  why  —  they  serve 
one  to  pin  up  one's  hair. 

Witwoud.  Is  that  the  way?  Pray,  Madam,  do  you  pin  up  your 
hair  with  all  your  letters?  I  find  I  must  keep  copies. 

Mrs.  Millamant.  Only  with  those  in  verse,  Mr.  Witwoud,  I 
never  pin  up  my  hair  with  prose.  I  think  I  try'd  once,  Mincing. 

Mincing.  O  mem,  I  shall  never  forget  it. 

Mrs.  Millamant.  Ay,  poor  Mincing  tift  and  tift  all  the  morning. 

Mincing.  'Till  I  had  the  cramp  in  my  fingers,  I'll  vow,  mem. 
And  all  to  no  purpose.  But  when  your  Laship  pins  it  up  with 
poetry,  it  fits  so  pleasant  the  next  day  as  anything,  and  is  so  pure 
and  so  crips. 

Witwoud.  Indeed,  so  crips. 

Mincing.  You're  such  a  critic,  Mr.  Witwoud. 

Mrs.  Millamant.  Mirabell,  did  you  take  exceptions  last  night? 


DIALOGUE  415 

0  ay,  and  went  away — 'now  I  think  on't,  I'm  angry  —  no,  now 

1  think  on't  Vm  pleas'd  —  for  I  believe  I  gave  you  some  pain. 
Mirabell.  Does  that  please  you? 

Mrs,  Millamant.   Infinitely;  I  love  to  give  pain. 

Mirabell.  Von  wou'd  affect  a  cruelty  which  is  not  in  your  nature; 
your  true  vanity  is  in  the  power  of  pleasing. 

Mrs.  Millamant.  O  I  ask  your  pardon  for  that  —  one's  cruelty 
»nt  Vs  power;  and  when  one  parts  with  one's  cruelty,  one  parts 
with  one's  power;  and  when  one  has  parted  with  that,  I  fancy  one's 
old  and  Ugly. 

Mirabell.  Ay,  ay,  suffer  your  cruelty  to  ruin  the  object  of  your 
power,  to  (1  stroy  your  lover  —  and  then  how  vain,  how  lost  a 
thing  you'll  be!  nay,  'tis  true:  you  are  no  longer  handsome  when 
you've  lost  your  lover;  your  beauty  dies  upon  the  instant;  for 
beauty  is  the  lover's  gift;  'tis  he  bestows  your  charms  —  your  glass 
is  all  a  cheat.  The  ugly  and  the  old,  whom  the  looking-glass  morti- 
fies, yet  after  commendation  can  be  flatter'd  by  it,  and  discover 
beauties  in  it;  for  that  reflects  our  praises  rather  than  our  face. 

Mrs.  Milhunant.  O  the  vanity  of  these  men!  Fainall,  d'ye  hear 
him?  If  they  did  not  commend  us,  we  were  not  handsome!  now 
you  must  know  they  cou'd  not  commend  one,  if  one  was  not  hand- 
some. Beauty  the  lover's  gift  —  Lord,  what  is  a  lover,  that  it  can 
give?  Why,  one  makes  lovers  as  fast  as  one  pleases,  and  they  live 
as  long  as  one  pleases,  and  they  die  as  soon  as  one  pleases;  and 
then  if  one  pleases,  one  makes  more. 

H'itwoud.  Very  pretty.  Why,  you  make  no  more  of  making  of 
lovers,  Madam,  than  of  making  so  many  card-matches. 

Mrs.  Millamant.  One  no  more  owes  one's  beauty  to  a  lover  than 
one's  wit  to  an  echo;  they  can  but  reflect  what  we  look  and  say;  vain 
empty  tilings  if  we  are  silent  or  unseen,  and  want  a  being. 

Mirabell.  Yet  to  those  two  vain  empty  things  you  owe  the  two 
greatest  pleasures  of  your  life. 

Mrs.  Millamant.  How  so? 

Mirabell.  To  your  lover  you  owe  the  pleasure  of  hearing  your- 
selves prais'd ;  and  to  an  echo  the  pleasure  of  hearing  yourselves  talk. 

H'itwoud.  But  I  know  a  lady  that  loves  talking  so  incessantly, 
she  won't  give  an  echo  fair  play;  she  has  that  everlasting  rotation 
of  the  tongue,  that  an  echo  must  wait  'till  she  dies  before  it  can 
catch  her  last  words. 

Mf$.  Millamant.  O  fiction!  Fainall,  let  us  leave  these  men.1 

*  Dramatic  Workt  0/  William  Congreve,  vol.  n.  pp.  111-117.  S.  Crowder,  London,  1773. 


416  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Is  not  the  dialogue  of  Congreve  the  finer  because  one  feels 
in  Wilde  the  ringmaster  showing  off  his  figures,  and  with 
Congreve  is  not  conscious  of  the  author  at  all?  That  is,  the 
wit  of  the  first  passage  is  an  assisted  wit,  edged,  underscored, 
selectively  phrased  by  a  skilful  author.  In  the  second, 
everything  springs  seemingly  unassisted  from  the  characters. 
The  range  of  accomplishment  from  obvious  search  for  beauty 
in  consciously  made  similes,  through  such  relatively  fine 
accomplishment  as  Wilde  shows,  to  such  perfect  work  as 
that  of  Congreve,  should  be  carefully  studied  by  the  would- 
be  dramatist.  John  Ford's  wonderful  lines 

Parthenophil  is  like  to  something  I  remember, 
A  great  while  since,  a  long,  long  time  ago 

hold  the  memory  not  merely  because  of  the  loveliness  of 
their  haunting  melody,  but  because  they  are  in  character 
and  help  to  portray  the  wistful  bewilderment  of  the  mo- 
ment. Why  go  far  afield  searching  for  the  phrase  that  shall 
give  charm,  grace,  beauty?  Look  into  the  souls  of  your 
characters  and  find  them  there.  Either  you  haven't  seen 
them  or,  not  being  there,  they  cannot  properly  appear  in 
your  text.  Mr.  W.  B.  Yeats  tells  of  rehearsing  a  young 
actress  who  stumbled  constantly  over  the  line 

And  then  I  looked  up  and  saw  you  coming  toward  me,  I  know 
not  whether  from  the  north,  the  south,  the  east  or  the  west. 

She  gave  it  with  no  sense  of  its  contained  rhythm,  and 
always  came  to  a  full  stop  after  "toward  me,"  adding  the 
last  words  almost  unwillingly.  When  asked  why  she  did 
this,  she  said  that  all  which  followed  seemed  to  her  unneces- 
sary: the  important  fact  was  contained  in  what  preceded. 
It  took  much  rehearsing  to  make  the  young  woman  see  that 
the  music  of  the  line  is  characteristic  of  the  dales  people, 
and  so  has  characterizing  value,  and  that  she  had  totally 
forgotten  the  situation  of  the  woman  speaking.   A  peddler 


DIALOGUE  417 

has  come  to  the  only  hut  in  a  lonely  valley.  The  woman  wel- 
comes him  heartily,  not  that  she  may  buy,  but  because  after 
days  in  which  she  has  seen  no  one  except  her  "man,"  she 
reedy  for  talk.  Having  bargained  as  long  as  she  can, 
very  regretfully  she  sees  the  man  departing,  and,  other 
topics  being  exhausted,  she  tells  him  of  her  pleasure  in  his 
coming,  spinning  out  her  phrase  as  long  as  she  possibly  can 
in  order  to  hold  him.  Out  of  that  set  of  conditions  springs 
a  highly  characterizing  phrase  that  also  has  beauty.  If 
Synge  had  done  no  more  by  his  plays  than  to  make  us  recog- 
nize in  the  speech  of  the  peasant  the  characterizing  power 
and  the  beauty  for  him  who  has  "the  eye  to  see  and  the  ear 
to  hear,"  his  work  would  deserve  permanent  fame.  He 
states  his  ideas  in  the  preface  to  The  Playboy  of  the  Western 
World. 

In  writing  The  Playboy  of  the  Western  World,  as  in  my  other  plays, 
I  have  used  one  or  two  words  only  that  I  have  not  heard  among  the 
country  people  of  Ireland,  or  spoken  in  my  own  nursery  before  I 
could  read  the  newspapers.  A  certain  number  of  the  phrases  I  em- 
ploy I  have  heard  also  from  herds  and  fishermen  along  the  coast 
from  Kerry  to  Mayo,  or  from  beggar-women  and  ballad-singers 
near  Dublin;  and  I  am  glad  to  acknowledge  how  much  I  owe  to  the 
folk-imagination  of  these  fine  people.  Any  one  who  has  lived  in 
red  intimacy  with  the  Irish  peasantry  will  know  that  the  wildest 
*ayings  and  ideas  in  this  play  are  tame  indeed,  compared  with  the 
fancies  one  may  hear  in  any  little  hillside  cabin  in  Geesala,  or  Car- 
,  or  Dingle  Bay.  All  art  is  a  collaboration;  and  there  is  little 
doubt  that  in  the  happy  ages  of  literature,  striking  and  beautiful 
pi  1  rases  were  as  ready  to  the  story-teller's  or  the  playwright's  hand 
as  the  rich  cloaks  and  dresses  of  his  time.  It  is  probable  that 
when  the  Elizabethan  dramatist  took  his  ink-horn  and  sat  down  to 
hil  work  he  used  many  phrases  that  he  had  just  heard  as  he  sat 
at  dinner,  from  his  mother  or  his  children.  In  Ireland,  those  of  us 
who  know  the  people  have  the  same  privilege.  When  I  was  writing 
The  Shadow  of  the  Glen,  some  years  ago,  I  got  more  aid  than  any 
learning  could  have  given  me  from  a  chink  in  the  floor  of  the  old 
Wicklow  house  where  I  was  staying,  that  let  me  hear  what  was 


418  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

being  said  by  the  servant  girls  in  the  kitchen.  This  matter,  I  think, 
is  of  importance  for  in  countries  where  the  imagination  of  the 
people,  and  the  language  they  use,  is  rich  and  living,  it  is  possible 
for  a  writer  to  be  rich  and  copious  in  his  words,  and  at  the  same  time 
to  give  the  reality,  which  is  the  root  of  all  poetry,  in  a  comprehen- 
sive and  natural  form.  In  the  modern  literature  of  towns,  however, 
richness  is  found  only  in  sonnets,  or  prose  poems,  or  in  one  or  two 
elaborate  books  that  are  far  away  from  the  profound  and  common 
interests  of  life.  One  has,  on  one  side,  Mallarme  and  Huysmans 
producing  this  literature;  and  on  the  other  Ibsen  and  Zola  dealing 
with  the  reality  of  life  in  joyless  and  pallid  words.  On  the  stage  one 
must  have  reality,  and  one  must  have  joy;  and  that  is  why  the  in- 
tellectual modern  drama  has  failed,  and  people  have  grown  sick  of 
the  false  joy  of  the  musical  comedy,  that  has  been  given  them  in 
place  of  the  rich  joy  found  only  in  what  is  superb  and  wild  in  real- 
ity. In  a  good  play  every  speech  should  be  as  fully  flavoured  as  a 
nut  or  apple,  and  such  speeches  cannot  be  written  by  any  one  who 
works  among  people  who  have  shut  their  lips  on  poetry.  In  Ireland, 
for  a  few  years  more,  we  have  a  popular  imagination  that  is  fiery 
and  magnificent,  and  tender;  so  that  those  of  us  who  wish  to  write 
start  with  a  chance  that  is  not  given  to  writers  in  places  where  the 
springtime  of  the  local  life  has  been  forgotten,  and  the  harvest  is  a 
memory  only,  and  the  straw  has  been  turned  into  bricks.1 

As  Ibsen  says,  "Style  must  conform  to  the  degree  of  ideal- 
ity which  pervades  the  representation." 

You  are  of  opinion  that  the  drama  ought  to  have  been  written 
in  verse,  and  that  it  would  have  gained  by  this.  Here  I  must  differ 
from  you.  The  play  is,  as  you  must  have  observed,  conceived  in  the 
most  realistic  style;  the  illusion  I  wished  to  produce  was  that  of 
reality.  I  wished  to  produce  the  impression  on  the  reader  that  what 
he  was  reading  was  something  that  had  really  happened.  If  I  had 
employed  verse  I  should  have  counteracted  my  own  intention  and 
prevented  the  accomplishment  of  the  task  I  had  set  myself.  The 
many  ordinary,  insignificant  characters  whom  I  have  intentionally 
introduced  into  the  play  would  have  become  indistinct,  and  indis- 
tinguishable from  one  another,  if  I  had  allowed  all  of  them  to  speak 
in  one  and  the  same  rhythmical  measure.  We  are  no  longer  living 
in  the  days  of  Shakespeare.    Speaking  generally,  the  style  must 

1  J.  W.  Luce  &  Co.,  Boston. 


L  DIALOGUE  419 

form  to  the  degree ol  ideality  which  pervades  the  representation. 
My  new  drama  is  do  tragedy  in  the  ancient  acceptation;  what  I  de- 
1  to  depict  were  human  beings,  and  therefore  I  would  not  let 
them  talk  "the  language  of  the  Gods."  l 

The  dramatist  who  would  write  dialogue  of  the  highest 
order  should  have  not  only  an  inborn  and  highly  trained 
feeling  for  the  emotional  significance  of  the  material  in 
hand;  a  fine  feeling  for  characterization;  ability  to  write 
dialogue  which  states  facts  in  character;  and  the  power  to 
bring  out  whatever  charm,  grace,  irony,  wit,  or  other  spe- 
cially attractive  qualities  his  characters  permit;  also  he 
should  have,  or  develop,  a  strong  feeling  for  the  nicest  use 
of  language.  Dumas  fils  said,  "There  should  be  something 
of  the  poet,  the  artist  in  words,  in  every  dramatist." 

1  The  Letter*  qf  Uenrik  Ibsen,  p.  269.  Letter  to  Edmmnd  Goaae,  January  15,  1874.   Fox, 
Duffield  &  Co.,  New  York. 


CHAPTER  IX 
MAKING  A  SCENARIO 

There  is  frequent  and  decided  divergence  of  opinion  among 
dramatists  as  to  the  value  of  a  scenario,  —  the  outline  of  a 
play  which  the  dramatist  purposes  to  write  or  has  already 
written.  Some  dramatists  very  carefully  prepare  a  detailed 
outline  before  they  settle  down  to  writing  a  play.  Others, 
equally  well-known  on  the  stage  assert:  "I  never  think  of 
mapping  out  in  detail  what  I  intend  to  write.  When  I  begin, 
I  may  know  only  my  central  situation  or  little  more  than 
my  main  characters  in  broadest  outline.  I  simply  write  and 
rewrite  until  the  perfected  manuscript  lies  before  me." 
Another  declares  that  although  he  has  no  scenario,  he  does 
use  some  notes.  Showing  these  notes,  —  an  accumulation 
of  ideas  as  they  have  come  to  him  from  time  to  time,  written 
anywhere  on  a  single  sheet  without  apparent  order  or  form, 
—  he  asks  triumphantly  whether  this  can  be  called  a  scena- 
rio. Whatever  the  opinion  of  a  dramatist  as  to  the  usual 
value  to  him  of  a  scenario,  he  can  hardly  deny  that  there 
are  times  when  it  is  very  convenient  to  have  a  scenario  of  a 
play  not  yet  completed.  Plays  sometimes  have  a  curious, 
unexpected  way  of  forcing  themselves  on  the  attention  of  a 
writer  when  his  mind  should  be  engrossed  with  another 
play.  Ideas  wholly  irrelevant  to  the  play  in  question  keep 
surging  into  the  dramatist's  mind  and  drawing  his  attention 
from  the  subject  in  which  he  wishes  to  be  interested.  Often 
he  can  relieve  his  mind  of  this  Banquo-like  play,  not  by 
stopping  to  write  it  out  in  full,  but  by  putting  a  careful  out- 
line of  it  on  paper  and  storing  this  away  until  such  time  as 
he  has  opportunity  to  work  out  the  play  from  this  scenario. 


SCENARIOS  421 

Or  it  may  be  that  a  dramatist  sees  that  plays  he  has  sub- 
mitted to  some  manager  or  actor  are  not  attractive,  but 
that  some  subject  which  as  yet  lies  only  half-formed  in  his 
mind  finds,  when  mentioned,  a  ready  response.  Here  is  the 
best  opportunity  for  use  of  a  good  scenario.  Submit  such 
to  the  actor  or  manager  in  question  and  even  if  a  contract 
does  not  follow,  the  promise,  "I  will  produce  your  play  if  it 
is  as  good  as  your  scenario  "  is  very  likely  to  be  made.  Ad- 
mitting  then,  for  the  moment,  that  some  dramatists  believe 
they  can  get  on  equally  well  without  a  scenario  as  a  prerequi- 
site for  one  of  their  plays,  what  are  the  main  characteristics 
of  a  good  scenario  —  this  form  of  outline  which  some  drama- 
tists have  found  very  useful  in  their  work? 

In  the  first  place,  the  word  "scenario"  has  been  very 
carelessly  used.  It  is  often  applied  to  as  brief  a  set  of  notes 
as  the  following,  intended  by  Ibsen  merely  to  suggest  to  his 
correspondent  in  the  broadest  possible  way  the  play  which 
he  thinks  might  be  made  from  the  poem  which  he  has  been 
discussing: 

Have  you  not  noticed  that  you  have  in  the  division  of  your 
poem  entitled,  A  Norwegian  Sculptor,  the  subject  for  a  five-act 
popular  play  (Folkeskuespil)  ?  Act  1.  In  the  Mountains.  The 
wood-carver.  The  art-enthusiast  from  the  capital  discovers  him  and 
takes  him  away  with  him.  Act  2.  In  Christiania.  The  boy  the 
hero  of  the  day;  great  hopes;  sent  to  Rome.  Act.  3.  In  Rome.  Life 
there  among  the  artists  and  the  Italian  lower  class.  Act  4.  Many 
years  later.  Return  to  Christiania;  forgotten;  everything  changed. 
Act  5.  At  home  again  in  the  mountain  parish;  ruin.  Write  this  with 
songs  and  dances  and  popular  costumes  and  irony  and  devilry.1 .  . . 

In  the  following  from  Little  Stories  of  New  Plays  we 
have  a  far  better  summary  than  in  the  instance  just  cited, 
but  surely  even  this  is  an  outline  and  not  a  dramatic 
scenario,  for  intentionally  it  does  not  convey  to  a  reader 

1  Letters  qf  Henrik  Ibten,  p.  Si5.  For  a  similar  outline  see  that  on  Fatte,  p.  151. 


422  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

just  that  for  which  he  would  go  to  the  theatre,  the  emo- 
tional treatment  of  the  scenes  —  here  given  only  in  the 
merest  outline. 

GENERAL  JOHN  REGAN 

By  George  A.  Birmingham 

Characters 

Dr.  Lucius  0y Grady.  Constable  Moriarity,  R.I.C. 

Timothy  Doyle.  Tom  Kerrigan,  bandmaster. 

Major  Ken.  Rev.  Father  McCormack. 

Thaddeus  Golligher.  Lord  Alfred  Blakeney. 

Horace  P.  Billing,  Mrs.  de  Courvy. 
C.  Gregg,  district  inspector.       Mrs.  Gregg. 

Sergeant  Colgan,  R.I.C.  Mary  Ellen. 

Into  Ballymoy,  a  sleepy  little  town  in  the  west  of  Ireland,  comes 
Horace  P.  Billing,  one  gentle  summer  day,  and  spins  in  the  market 
place  a  tale  of  a  certain  General  John  Regan,  who,  he  said,  these  many 
years  agone  had  been  born  and  had  sailed  from  Ballymoy  to  free  the 
oppressed  people  of  Bolivia,  and  who  was  the  great  national  hero  of 
that  Republic  from  that  time  to  the  present  day. 

Comes  there  to  listen  to  his  tale  one  Doctor  Lucius  0' Grady,  whose 
nose  can  no  more  keep  out  of  other  people's  business  than  can  his  busy 
brain  refrain  from  all  manner  of  schemings  or  his  tongue  from  utter- 
ing the  grandest,  gloriousest,  whooping  lies  that  the  mouth  of  man 
e'er  uttered. 

To  the  American  tourist  he  unreels  anecdote  and  episode  dealing 
with  tlie  romantic  life  of  the  great  General  while  he  had  been  yet  a  boy 
in  Ballymoy.  He  sends  Golligher,  the  editor  of  the  Connaught  Eagle, 
to  show  the  American  gentleman  the  birthplace  of  the  General,  a  broken 
down  cow-shed,  in  a  nearby  field. 

The  American  leaves  Ballymoy  wildly  excited  and  fermenting  under 
the  constant  nagging  of  the  doctor's  busy  self  and  never  resting  tongue, 
and  promises  that  he  will  be  back  in  a  few  days,  and  that  in  the  mean- 
time, should  the  citizens  of  Ballymoy  have  enough  patriotism  in  them 
to  erect  a  statue  of  their  great  townie  in  the  market  place,  he  would 
contribute  a  hundred  pounds  towards  it. 

This  sets  the  Doctor  at  work  with  even  more  {if  possible)  vim.  He 
gets  Doyle  to  promise  to  contribute  ten  pounds,  the  parish  priest 


SCENARIOS  423 

{though  it  nearly  break*  the  good  father's  heart)  ten  also,  Major  Kent, 
nl  landlord,  another  ten,  and  keep*  the  list  himself  —  explaining 
that  it  is  not  necessary  for  him  to  put  himself  down  for  anything  for  that 
m. 

It  develops  thai  Doyle  has  a  nephew  in  Dublin  who  is  a  mortuary 
sculptor,  and  has  a  statue  of  some  deceased  citizen  on  hand  which 
WOi  never  paid  for.  This  statue  Doyle's  nephew  agrees  to  sell  to 
Bull ymoy  for  some  eighty-odd  pounds.  The  Doctor  arranges  to  buy  it, 
thus  figuring  that  there  will  be  a  balance  of  twenty  pounds  out  of  the 
American's  contribution  to  divide  among  themselves.  This  pleases 
Doyle,  Father  McCormack,  and  Golligher  (who  form  the  statue  com- 
mittee) very  much;  but  unfortunately,  it  develops  also  that  Doyle  has 
neglected  to  get  the  money  from  the  American  for  the  statue  before  he 
left. 

This  does  not  stump  the  Doctor  in  the  least,  however.  Among  his 
plans  for  the  unveiling  of  the  statue  is  the  appearance  of  Mary  Ellen, 
tfie  servant  in  Doyle's  hotel,  as  a  green  fairy,  and  the  appearance  of  the 
Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland  to  make  a  speech.  He  suggests  that  when 
the  Lord  Lieutenant  appears,  they  ask  him  for  five  hundred  pounds  for 
a  pier  —  as  the  town  already  has  but  five  or  six  piers  —  and  that  the 
money  for  the  statue  be  taken  out  of  thai.  The  Major  objects  to  this, 
but  tlie  Doctor's  ability  to  explain  does  not  desert  him,  and  the  Major 
is  satisfied. 

The  great  day  of  the  unveiling  finally  arrives.  The  statue  from  the 
mortuary  sculptor  in  Dublin  is  standing  in  the  market  place,  with  a 
rcil  over  it.  A  letter  comes  from  the  Lord  Lieutenant  to  the  effect  that 
he  has  never  heard  of  General  John  Regan,  can  find  no  record  of  him  in 
any  history  of  any  country  on  the  globe,  and,  in  the  person  of  his  aide 
de  camp,  Lord  Al  Blakeney,  protests  and  accuses  Ballymoy  of  having 
put  a  hoax  over  on  him  and  all  that  sort  of  bally  rot,  by  Jove. 

The  Doctor  rises  to  the  occasion  beautifully.  The  aide  de  camp  is 
made  to  make  a  speech  as  a  representative  of  the  Lord  Lieutenant,  and 
Mary  Ellen  unveils  the  statue,  disclosing  a  hideous  caricature  of  a 
grinning  dead  man  in  an  ill-fitting  business  suit. 

At  that  moment  the  American  appears,  explains  grandly  that 
there  is  no  such  man  as  General  John  Regan,  and  says  that  if  the  Doc- 
tor can  prove  to  him  that  the  General  is  not  a  fiction  he  himself  will  give 
the  five  hundred  pounds  for  the  pier  —  as,  he  says,  "the  show  is  worth 
it!" 

The  Doctor  merely  asks  the  American  to  prove  to  the  satisfaction  of 
the  assembled  townsfolk  that  the  General  does  not  exist. 


424  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Billing  gives  it  up  and  writes  out  a  check  to  the  Doctor's  order  for 
five  hundred  pounds,  while  the  Doctor  poses  grandly  before  the  cheers 
of  the  assembled  and  admiring  populace  of  Ballymoy.1 

Here,  too,  is  an  outline  which  led  to  a  very  dramatic  ser- 
mon. Obviously  it  is  a  satisfactory  summary  of  the  story 
underlying  the  sermon,  but  just  what  it  would  give  a  reader, 
if  it  were  a  perfect  scenario,  is  lacking  —  namely,  suggestion 
of  the  emotional  treatment  of  the  scenes  which  is  to  make 
them  worth  the  manager's  or  actor's  producing: 

AT  THE  TOP  OF  THE  TENEMENT 

The  arrangement  of  the  platform  will  suggest  the  bare  condition  of 
the  home  in  the  first  part  of  the  sermon,  and  in  the  second  part  will 
show  ilie  improved  condition  a  year  later. 

PART  I 

Dan  Howard  comes  home  discouraged.  He  cannot  get  work.  Christ- 
mas is  approaching.  His  wife  keeps  his  courage  up  and  that  of  the 
family.  The  Minister  calls  and  is  not  received  kindly  by  Dan  Howard, 
who  does  not  believe  in  the  church.  He  promises  to  get  Dan  work  and 
thus  proves  himself  a  true  friend  in  need.  Misfortune  has  come  to 
the  home.  The  oldest  boy  is  drinking  and  the  next  son  has  been  arrested 
for  theft.  Things  looks  very  black.  It  is  Christmas  eve  and  the  father 
compels  the  children  to  go  to  bed.  He  tells  them  Santa  Claus  will  not 
come  to-night.  But  they  hang  up  their  stockings  by  the  fireplace. 

PART  II 

A  year  later.  Things  have  changed.  The  home  is  better.  AU  are 
happy  tonight.  The  father  has  had  steady  work  and  so  they  are  to 
have  a  good  Christmas  this  year.  The  boys  are  doing  well.  The  family 
all  go  to  church  now  and  it  has  made  a  difference  in  them  all.  The  child- 
ren have  gone  to  bed  with  joy  tonight.  Dan  Howard  tells  his  wife  what 
a  help  she  has  been  to  him  through  thick  and  thin.  While  they  stand 
talking  they  hear  the  carol  singers  from  the  church,  singing  outside 
their  home.  The  Minister  comes  in  and  is  made  very  welcome.  While 
they  exchange  greetings  the  Christmas  Carol  is  sung  and  the  beautiful 
illuminated  star  shines  out  in  the  night. 

1  The  Green  Book  Magazine,  February,  1914. 


SCENARIOS  425 

The  following  may  be  full  of  dramatic  suggestion  for  its 
writer,  but  if  we  mean  by  scenario  a  document  which,  when 
handed  to  a  manager  or  actor,  is  to  arouse  his  enthusiasm 
because  it  tells  him  interestingly  just  what  a  proposed  play 
will  do,  this  is  not  a  scenario  at  all. 

THE  ETERNAL  TRIANGLE:  A  NIGHTMARE 

[Diagram  of  stage] 

Dramatis  Persona? 

Sylvia  Macshane,  the  actress. 

Norman  Pritchard,  the  manager. 

Laddie  Benton,  the  poet. 

The  Imp,  sentinel  at  Ventilator  X-10,  Hell. 

SCENE:  Room  in  a  well-furnished  apartment,  New  York  City. 
Large  round-topped  window  back  right,  matched  by  large  semicircular 
mirror  over  fireplace  back  left.  Mirror  space  later  serves  as  Ventilator 
X-10. 

SCENARIO 

/.  Curtain  rises  on  crimson  sunset  in  room  of  apartment. 
A  dress  and  Manager  in  jealous  love  scene. 
Enter  the  bone  of  contention  —  the  Poet. 
Quarrel  scene  —  Poet  crushed. 
By  accident  Actress  drinks  Poet's  suicide  potion. 
Poet  strangles  Manager,  Actress  smashes  chair  on  Poet. 
The  lamp  is  knocked  over. 
Black  darkness  accompanied  by  shrieks. 
II.  In  red  glow  of  semi-circular  opening  appear  Imp  and  two 
M  utes. 
Humorous  talk  of  their  job,  guarding  this  ventilator  of  Hell. 
The  Poet's  face  appears,  followed  by  Manager's  and  Actress*. 
Both  Heaven  and  Hell  have  refused  them  admission. 
Explanations  by  Imp  —  they  are  not  truly  dead. 
Renewed  quarrels  —  Actress  shows  she  loves  neither  one. 
She  returns  to  earth. 
They  pursue  her. 
Imp  is  ordered  to  close  ventilator. 
Black  darkness  again. 


426  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

7/7.  Moonlight  in  the  apartment. 

Actress,  Poet,  and  Manager  where  they  fell  on  the  floor. 
They  arouse  —  each  believes  the  others  ghosts. 
Explanations  —  light;  —  the   men's    quarrel    renewed    and 

dropped  forever. 
Poet  and  Manager  plan  to  make  a  play  of  the  nightmare. 
Actress  is  wildly  jealous  of  their  new-found  friendship. 
She  cajoles  each  —  then  quarrels  ferociously  with  each. 
They  are  proof  against  her  and  prepare  to  go. 
She  demands  a  part  in  the  play,  gets  it,  and  stamps  off  to  her 

room. 
Poet  and  Manager  depart  cheerily  planning. 

Obviously  General  John  Regan  is  offered  not  as  a  sce- 
nario, but  a  summary.  All  the  other  so-called  "scenarios" 
are  planned  only  to  suggest  to  the  writer  or  somebody  fully 
acquainted  with  the  content  of  his  mind  on  the  subject  what, 
in  broadest  terms,  may  be  done  with  the  material.  They 
are  all  too  broadly  referential,  too  vague,  to  be  of  real  use 
to  a  manager  or  actor  looking  for  a  play  to  produce. 

What,  then,  is  the  work  a  real  scenario  should  do?  It  must 
show  clearly  just  what  is  the  story,  slight  or  complicated, 
which  the  play  is  to  present.  It  must  make  the  reader  under- 
stand who  the  people  of  the  play  are,  their  relations  to  one 
another,  and  anything  in  their  past  or  present  history  which 
he  must  know  if  the  play  at  the  outset  or  in  its  course  is  to 
produce  upon  him  the  effect  desired  by  the  writer.  It  must 
tell  him  where  the  play  takes  place  —  that  is,  what  the  set- 
tings are,  and  in  such  a  way  as  to  create  atmosphere  if  any- 
thing more  than  a  mere  suggestion  of  background  is  desir- 
able. It  must  let  the  reader  see  into  how  many  acts  the 
play  will  break  up,  and  into  what  scenes  if  there  be  more 
than  one  setting  to  an  act.  Above  all,  it  must  make  per- 
fectly clear  what  is  the  nature  of  the  play  —  comedy,  trag- 
edy, tragi-comedy,  farce,  or  melodrama,  and  whether  it 
merely  tells  a  story,  is  a  character  study,  a  play  of  ideas,  a 


SCENARIOS  427 

problem  play,  or  a  fantasy.   Proportioning  and  emphasis  as 
a  I  ready  explained  in  chapters  V  and  VI  will,  if  rightly  under- 
!,  bring  out  correctly  in  a  scenario  all  these  matters  of 
form  and  purpose. 

A  good  scenario  begins  with  a  list  of  the  dramatis  per- 
sons, that  is,  a  statement  of  the  names  and,  broadly,  the 
relations  of  the  characters  to  one  another.  If  the  ages  are 
important,  they  may  be  given.  Without  a  list  of  dramatis 
nna  a  reader  must  go  far  into  the  scenario  before  he  can 
decide  who  the  people  are  and  what  are  their  relations  to 
one  another.  As  the  following  scenario  shows,  he  may 
easily  guess  wrong  and  is  sure  to  be  uncertain: 

SCENARIO.  As  the  curtain  rises  Nat  is  seated  at  the  right  of  cen- 
tre table,  planning  an  attack  upon  a  fort  of  blocks  with  an  army  of 
wooden  soldiers.  A  drum  lies  on  the  floor  beside  him.  Enter  Benny, 
a  bag  over  hi*  shoulder.  They  salute  each  other  and  throughout  use 
frequent  military  terms  in  their  talk.  Benny  has  just  returned  from 
the  village  and  he  gives  an  account  of  his  trip  and  his  purchases.  Men- 
tion is  made  of  the  probable  war  with  Spain.  Benny  then  surprises 
Xat  icith  a  letter  from  Harold,  which  proves  to  contain  an  announce- 
ment that  war  has  been  declared  and  that  Harold  has  enlisted.  The 
two  are  proud  and  delighted  at  the  thought  of  their  hero.  They  recall 
his  former  discontent  on  the  farm,  the  day  of  his  departure  to  seek  his 
fortune  in  the  city,  his  statement  that  he  was  "no  soldier1*  —  now  so 
gloriously  disproved.  Harold  enters  in  the  midst  of  their  preparations 
for  dinner.  He  is  gaunt  and  shabby  and  has  a  nervous  hunted  air. 
He  receives  their  plaudits  sullenly.  He  explains  that  he  is  away  on  a 
week's  furlough  and  answers  their  questions  concerning  the  regiment 
and  his  plans  with  nervous  impatience.  .  .  . 

In  this  next  so-called  scenario  who  is  Professor  Ward? 
What  is  his  relation  to  Phronie?  What  is  her  age?  What  is 
the  age  of  Keith  Sanford  and  what  are  the  relations  of  each 
of  these  to  Professor  Ward  himself?  A  good  list  of  dramatis 
persona;  would  clear  all  this  at  once. 


428  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

THE  EYES  OF  THE  BLIND 
ACT  I 

Professor  Ward,  roused  at  daybreak  after  a  night  at  his  desk,  show* 
intense  disappointment  and  nervous  fatigue. 

In  brief  scene  with  Phronie,  he  shows  the  essential  part  she  plays 
in  his  life  as  one  on  whom  he  can  absolutely  depend;  but  when  he  ex- 
presses his  disapproval  of  her  admirer,  Keith  Sanford,  she  shows  clear 
signs  of  rebellious  spirit. 

In  rapid  scene  with  Phronie  and  Keith,  their  spirit  of  youthful 
romance  is  made  clear;  and  Keith  indicates  his  college  ambition,  his 
predicament  regarding  his  "cribbed"  thesis,  and  his  new  attitude 
therein,  ending  with  his  evident  resolve  to  make  a  clean  breast  of  the 
matter.  .  .  . 

There  follows  a  scenario  which  is  somewhat  clearer  than 
the  others  because  it  identifies  the  figures,  but  it  certainly 
leaves  their  relations  rather  confused. 

An  old  white-haired  man,  the  Sire  de  Maletroit,  is  seated  in  the 
chair  to  right  of  fireplace,  in  a  listening  attitude.  The  sound  of  a 
heavy  door  banging  is  heard  and  a  minute  later  a  young  man,  sword  in 
hand,  parts  the  curtains  on  left  and  stands  blinking  in  the  opening. 
He  enters  and  explains  that  he  has  accidentally  gained  entrance  to  the 
house  and  is  unable  to  re-open  the  door.  His  name  is  Denis  de  Beau- 
lieu.  He  seems  amazed  to  have  the  old  man  say  that  he  has  been  wait- 
ing for  him.  Denis  suggests  that  he  must  be  going,  at  which  the  old 
man  bursts  into  a  fit  of  laughter.  Denis  is  insulted  and  offers  to  hew 
the  Maletroifs  door  to  pieces.  He  is  convinced  that  this  is  folly ;  the 
place  is  full  of  armed  men.  The  old  man  rises,  goes  to  door  on  right 
and  calls  upon  his  niece  to  leave  her  prayers  and  receive  her  lover.  She 
comes  in  attended  by  a  priest  and  protests  that  this  is  not  the  man.  The 
uncle  is  incredulous  and  withdraws  with  a  leer. 

Again  a  good  list  of  dramatis  persona?  would  be  helpful. 
Prefix  to  this  the  following: 


SCENARIOS  429 

THE  SIRE  DE  MALETROIT'S  DOOR 

Place:  Chateau  Landon. 
Time:  Fourteenth  century. 

Dramatis  Persona 

Blanche,  orphan  niece  of  Sire  de  Maletroit. 
A  Priest,  chaplain  to  Sire  de  Maletroit. 
The  Sire  de  Maletroit. 
Denis  de  Beaulieu,  a  stranger. 

With  this  prefixed  we  can  read  the  scenario  just  quoted 
for  more  comprehendingly. 

Note  how  clearly  the  following  two  lists  of  dramatis  per- 
sona? take  us  to  the  scenario  proper: 

THE  LEGACY 

The  Persons 

David  Price,  a  young  attorney. 
Reene  Brice,  his  uncle. 
Benjamin  Doyle,  his  fiancee's  father. 
Dr.  Wangren,  family  physician. 
Mrs.  Brice,  the  mother. 
"Ditto"  Brice,  the  sister. 
Katherine  Doyle,  fiancie. 

THE  CAPTAIN:  A  MELODRAMA 

Dramatis  Person® 

Captain  La  Rue,  a  little  sea  captain. 

Bromley  Barnes,  former  special  investigator  for  the  U.S.  customs 

service. 
Patrick  Clancy,  his  friend. 
A  burly  Butler. 
John  Felspar,  junior  partner  of  the  firm  of  Felspar  &  Felspar,  wine 

merchants. 
Two  Dinner  Guests,  members  of  the  firm. 
Carl  Cozzens,  the  firm* s  Canadian  representative. 


430  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

It  is  easy,  however,  to  let  this  list  of  characters  go  too  far 
descriptively.  For  instance,  this  next  list  tells  much  which 
might  better  appear  first  in  the  body  of  the  scenario.  The 
danger  here  is  one  already  mentioned  in  this  book,  namely, 
that  such  careful  characterizing  in  the  dramatis  persona?  or 
program  is  likely  to  make  the  characterization  of  the 
scenario  or  play  inadequate.1 

AN  ENCORE 
Adapted  from  the  story  by  Margaret  Deland 
In  Two  Acts 

Time:  About  1830  in  June. 
Place:  Little  town  of  Old  Chester. 
Between  the  first  and  second  acts  three  weeks  elapse. 

Dramatis  Persona; 

Captain  Price:  Retired  sea-captain,  big,  bluff,  and  hearty,  with 
white  hair  and  big  white  mustachios,  rather  untidy  as  to  dress.  Age, 
about  68. 

Cyrus  Price:  His  son,  weak  and  neat-looking,  very  thin  and  of 
sandy  complexion.  Age,  about  35. 

Mrs.  North:  Sprigfitly,  pretty,  white-haired  little  lady  of  about  65. 
Always  in  black  silk. 

Miss  North:  Her  daughter,  nervous  and  shy,  but  truthful  with  a 
mania  for  taking  care  of  her  mother  and  no  knowledge  of  how  to  wear 
her  clothes;  about  hO. 

Mrs.  Gussie  Price:  A  stout,  colorless  blond,  a  weeping,  vividly 
gowned  lady,  who  rules  her  husband,  Cyrus,  through  her  tears.  Age, 
about  30. 

Flora:  A  colored  maid. 

The  danger  is  shown  to  the  utmost  in  the  following.  The 
characterization  in  the  scenario  to  which  this  was  prefixed 
was  practically  nil. 

Forsythe  Savile:  A  young  lawyer  of  about  thirty,  clever,  and  rather 
versatile.    While  of  great  promise  in  his  profession,  he  is  not  at  all 

1  See  pp.  276-278. 


SCENARIOS  431 

pedantic,  but  has  many  interests.  He  is  well-read,  widely  travelled, 
fond  of  outdoor  sports,  and  is  very  popular.  Perhaps  his  most  promi- 
nent characteristic  is  his  ready  wit.  He  is  rarely  non-plussed,  and 
while  quick'  and  pointed  in  his  remarks,  is  yet  not  ill-natured  with 
them.  He  has  been  Dennings'  most  intimate  friend  ever  since  they 
were  in  college  together,  although  their  lives  lie  along  very  divergent 
lines. 

Richard  Dennings:  A  globe  trotter,  as  a  hunter,  explorer,  and  war- 
orrcsporulcnt.  He  is  clever  and  able,  with  a  tendency  to  act  on  impulse 
rather  than  after  deliberation.  He  is  the  closest  kind  of  friend  to  For- 
sythe. He  has  been  engaged  to  Frances  Langdon,  but  the  engagement  has 
been  broken  off.  This  last  fact  is  not  Icnoun  to  any  save  the  two  them- 
selves. 

Judge  Savile:  A  widower,  and  Forsythe' s  father.  He  has  been  a  very 
successful  man,  and  holds  a  high  place  in  his  profession.  He  is  de- 
voted to  books,  and  cannot  understand  his  son's  taste  for  out-of-door  life, 
and  athletics  in  general.  He  philosophically  accepts  the  inevitable, 
however,  and  is  very  proud  of  Forsythe.  The  Judge  does  not  approve 
of  the  engagement  of  Frances  Langdon  to  Dennings;  he  cannot  under- 
stand Dennings'  uncertain  methods  of  life.  The  Judge  while  saying 
very  little  of  his  opinion  foresees  that  matters  are  very  far  from  being 
finally  settled,  and  is  quietly  awaiting  developments. 

Margaret  Savile:  Forsythe's  younger  sister,  and  a  feminine  edition 
of  him.  She  is  very  pretty,  bright,  and  attractive.  She  and  Forsythe 
are  most  intimate,  more  so  than  brother  and  sister  usually  are. 

Frances  Langdon:  An  intimate  friend  of  Margaret,  and  familiarly 
known  as  "Frank."  She  is  essentially  feminine,  attractive,  witty  and 
talented.  She  is  very  nervous  and  high-strung  —  a  strong  character, 
but  susceptible  to  her  feelings.  She  has  known  the  Saviles  since  she 
was  a  child  and  is  considered  exactly  as  a  relative.  She  has  broken  her 
engagement  to  Richard  Dennings. 

A  butler:  The  usual  English  type. 

That  list  tells  so  much  about  the  characters  that  the 
scenario  proper  could  do  little  but  repeat.  The  writer, 
troubled  by  his  sense  of  repetition,  rested  for  his  characteri- 
zation on  the  slight  chance  that  a  reader  would  remember 
every  detail  of  the  dramatis  persona?.  All  that  a  reader  needs 
to  know  at  the  outset  of  a  scenario  is  who  the  characters 
are,  and,  in  the  broadest  way,  their  relations  to  one  another. 


432  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

A  list  of  dramatis  persona?  should  be  followed  with  a 
statement  of  the  time  and  place  if  they  are  important,  and 
of  the  settings  for  all  the  acts.  A  detailed  description  of  each 
new  setting  should  precede  its  scene  or  act. *  In  the  scenarios 
already  quoted  notice  how  difficult  it  is  to  place  the  char- 
acters as  far  as  setting  is  concerned  and  how  much  would  be 
gained  if  a  good  description  of  the  setting  were  added.  Keep 
the  description  of  a  setting  to  essentials,  that  is,  furniture 
and  decorations  necessary  to  give  requisite  atmosphere  or 
required  in  the  action  of  the  piece.  As  always  in  scenarios 
and  acting  editions  use  "left"  and  "right"  as  "left"  and 
"right"  of  the  actor,  not  of  the  audience. 

THE  SIRE  DE  MALETROITS  DOOR  (See  p.  428) 

SCENE :  A  large  room  in  the  house  of  the  Sire  de  Maletroit;  large 
fireplace  at  centre  back;  curtained  door  on  left  leads  to  stairway;  cur- 
tained door  right  leads  to  chapel.  The  room  is  well  illuminated  by 
candles,  reflecting  the  polish  of  stone  walls.   It  is  scantily  furnished. 

THE  LEGACY  (See  p.  464) 

THE  SCENE:  The  Brice  living-room  comfortably  furnished  in 
walnut.  A  piano  centre  L.,  a  round  table,  rear  R.  Four  entrances: 
upper  L.,  rear  centre,  upper  right,  right  centre.  Curtained  windows 
rear  R.  &  L. 

As  has  already  been  pointed  out  earlier  in  this  book,  it  is 
wholly  unwise  to  call,  in  a  description  of  a  setting,  for  details 
not  really  necessary.  Here  is  the  setting  for  the  dramatis 
personal  quoted  on  p.  431.  It  is  over-elaborate  because  the 
action  of  the  proposed  play  involves  use  of  hardly  any  of 
the  properties  called  for. 

SCENE:  Forsythe  Savile's  "den.1*  It  is  an  odd  room,  a  curious 
mixture  of  library,  smoking-room,  and  museum.  On  the  right  is  a 
large  fireplace,  over  which  are  hung  an  elk's  head,  a  couple  of  rifles, 

1  See  Kismet  Scenario,  pp.  474-507. 


SCENARIOS  433 

queer-looking  Eastern  weapons,  and  other  sporting  trophies  and  evi- 
>s  of  travel.  The  room  is  panelled  in  dark  oak;  low  bookcases 
lint-  the  walls,  and  on  top  of  the  cases  are  small  bronzes,  photographs, 
strange  bits  of  bric-d-brac,  and  a  medley  of  things,  —  such  truck  as  a 
man  with  cultivated  tastes  would  insist  on  accumulating.  There  are 
numerous  pictures,  a  ratfier  heterogeneous  lot;  valuable  engravings, — 
portraits  of  famous  lights  of  the  bench  and  the  bar,  to  judge  by  their 
wigs,  —  a  few  oils  of  the  Meissonier  type;  and  others  which  are  ob- 
viously relics  of  college,  with  medals  slung  across  them  by  brightly  col- 
oured ribbons.  The  furniture  of  the  room  is  of  heavy  oak,  upholstered 
in  dull  crimson  leather.  Capacious  club  armchairs  are  in  convenient 
places,  near  lamps  and  books.  Around  the  hearth  is  a  high  English 
fender,  and  before  it  is  a  great  Davenport  sofa.  On  the  left,  is  a  broad- 
topped  table-desk,  covered  with  papers  and  books,  and  bearing  a  squat 
bronze  lamp  with  a  crimson  shade.  At  one  end  of  the  Davenport  is  a 
low  cabinet,  on  which  are  glasses  and  decanters.  There  is  a  wide  door- 
way at  the  back  of  the  stage  which  gives  the  only  entrance  and  is  hung 
with  heavy  crimson  portieres.  The  centre  of  the  floor  is  filled  by  a  huge 
polar  bear-skin  rug,  with  massive  head  and  the  odd  spaces  are  covered 
by  smaller  fur  rugs.  The  stage  is  dark,  save  for  the  uneertainy  wavering 
light  cast  by  the  wood  fire. 

Time:  The  present,  and  about  half-past  eight  on  a  winter  evening. 

A  sketch  of  the  desired  arrangement  of  the  stage  should 
be  prefixed  to  the  description  of  the  setting.  This  may  be 
as  simple  as  comports  with  clear  picturing  of  the  exact  con- 
ditions required.  Such  drawings  not  only  help  to  clearness, 
they  sometimes  bring  out  difficulties  in  a  proposed  setting 
not  at  once  evident  in  a  description.  Perhaps  the  staging 
called  for  in  what  immediately  follows  may  not  seem  over- 
elaborate  in  the  reading.  A  diagram  at  once  shows  its  awk- 
wardness, expensiveness,  and  undesirability. 

THE  SIRE  DE  MALETROIT'S  DOOR 

The  scene  represents  a  mediaeval  mder  hall  of  a  powerful  nobleman 
of  Paris  with  the  approach  thereto,  the  streets  adjacent  and  several 
other  buildings  thereon,  at  11.80  p.m.,  th-e  streets  in  semi-darkness. 
This  hall  runs  clear  down  the  stage  to  within  tlis  width  of  a  narrow 


434  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

street  of  the  footlights.  This  street  is  supposed  to  run  clear  across  the 
stage.  The  approach  to  the  hall  from  without  is  through  two  doors 
left  which  open  into  a  gloomy  passageway  large  enough  to  contain 
a  dozen  soldiers.  The  door  to  the  left  of  these  two  entrances  opens  in- 
ward from  the  street  running  up  left  at  rigid  angles  to  the  street  by 
the  footlights,  leaving  room  enough  at  the  extreme  left  for  several  door- 
ways which  should  be  set  into  the  houses  so  as  to  form  a  place  sufficient 
to  hide  a  man  who  was  being  searched  for  on  the  sidewalk.  At  the  ex- 
treme rear  of  the  street  going  up  the  stage  is  stone  pavement.  The  walls 
of  the  palace  are  of  thick  stones  and  the  furnishings  of  the  hall  are 
plain  and  gloomy  consisting  of  chairs  and  a  table,  a  tall  clock  with 
a  loud  tick,  curtains  at  the  doors;  and  over  the  fireplace,  which  is 
huge,  hang  a  shield  and  helmet,  the  former  emblazoned  with  the  device 
of  tlie  family,  the  latter  beplumed,  while  under  them  are  two  long 
swords,  crossed,  with  their  points  hidden  behind  the  shield,  these 
blades  both  in  their  scabbards.    The  floors  are  all  of  stone. 

At  the  right  of  the  fireplace  are  two  wide  doors  which  when  opened 
give  a  full  view  of  the  chapel  beyond,  with  the  altar  to  the  rear  in  the 
centre.  The  chapel  need  show  no  more  than  a  private  altar,  the  accom- 
panying candles,  drapery,  and  steps,  lighted  with  a  single  hanging 
lamp  of  the  period  that  swings  before  the  first  step  of  the  altar. 

TJie  cliairs  and  table  in  the  hall  are  of  mission  style.  The  doors 
opening  on  the  street  from  all  of  the  establishments  are  very  wide, 
embossed  in  iron  bands  and  supplied  with  knockers,  heavy  bolts  and 
bars  on  the  inside  wherever  the  inside  is  exposed.  There  is  a  large  fire 
in  the  fireplace.  A  lamp  of  the  period  is  swung  with  heavy  chains  over 
the  table. 

The  diagram  on  the  next  page  shows  how  this  would 
look. 

It  is  in  many  ways  a  bad  setting.  Waiving  all  question 
whether  any  attempt  to  suggest  the  fourth  wall  of  a  room, 
as  in  The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor  Back  by  the  fireplace 
at  centre  front  of  stage  is  wise,  surely  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  to  ask  an  audience  to  imagine  a  street  between  them 
and  the  room  into  which  they  are  looking,  particularly 
when  no  necessary  action  takes  place  in  that  street,  is 
undesirable.  Therefore  the  suggested  "street"  across  the 
front  of  the  stage  may  go.  Where  is  the  value  of  the  street 


436  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

at  the  side?  Little,  if  any,  action  in  it  will  be  seen  except  by 
the  very  small  part  of  the  audience  directly  in  line  with  it. 
For  these  the  settings  below  the  doors  at  stage  left  must  be 
decidedly  pushed  back  or  they  will  lose  important  action  by 
4he  fireplace.  It  is  questionable,  too,  whether  the  fireplace 
should  not  be  moved  down  stage  to  one  side  or  the  other, 
so  important  is  the  facial  expression  of  the  Sire  de  Male- 
troit  as  he  sits  by  it.  For  effective  action,  it  is  better,  also, 
to  separate  fireplace  and  chapel  entrance.  It  is  both  easy 
and  for  acting  purposes  better,  to  stage  this  proposed  play 
with  a  setting  as  simple  as  this: 


Chapel  Backing 
lAlUr  I 


A 


V  -9/  I 


Corridor  I  lfele|  O 

Door  ; 


[ 


Gothic  stone  interior:  Doors,  centre  leading  to  Chapel  or  Oratory; 
lower  right  and  up  left.  All  doors  with  old  tapestry  curtains.  Deep 
mullioned  window  up  right  with  landscape  backing.  Large  Gothic 
fireplace,  with  hooded  chimney,  left.  Corridor  backings  for  all  doors. 
Large  armchair  left  centre  in  front  of  fireplace;  large  oak  table  right 
centre,  with  chairs  on  either  side;  other  furniture  of  period  to  dress 
stage.   Altar  and  furnishings  for  Chapel. 

Nowadays  descriptions  of  settings  are  noticeably  free 
from  the  mystic  R.U.E.,  L.  2  E.,  D.L.C.,  etc.,  which  char- 
acterized stage  directions  of  the  early  Victorian  period. 
When  wings  and  flats,  as  in  some  wood-scenes  today,  were 


TV3.E 


SCENARIOS  437 

used  for  indoor  as  well  as  outdoor  scenes  —  that  is,  before 
the  coming  of  the  box-set  —  the  stage  was  divided  in  this 
way: 

Wt CD. DtL.C. 

itue  L.U.E. 

/  \ 

L.3.  E. 
/  \ 

K.I.E  L./.e. 

7\  XC  C  L.C.  *L. 

Now  that  the  box-set  has  replaced  the  older  fashion  and 
new  devices  are  steadily  improving  on  the  old  wood-wings, 
it  is  enough  to  indicate  clearly  in  the  diagram  and  in  the 
description  what  doors,  windows,  fireplaces,  and  properties 
are  necessary,  and  exactly  where,  if  their  positions  are  essen- 
tial in  the  action.  If  not,  they  may  be  placed  to  suit  the  sense 
of  proportion  of  the  designer  of  the  scenery  and  the  sense  of 
fitness  of  the  producer.  In  any  case,  rarely  today  does  an 
author  need  to  use  all  or  many  of  these  stage  divisions  of 
an  older  day.  The  first  of  the  following  diagrams  shows  how 
simply  an  interior  set  which  makes  no  special  demands  maj 
be  indicated. 


438  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


THE  DANCING  GIRL.  ACT  I1 

Diana  Valrose's  boudoir  at  Richmond.  A  very  elegantly  furnished 
room,  with  light,  pretty  furniture.  Discover  Drusilla  in  handsome 
morning  dress  arranging  flowers  in  large  china  bowl.  Enter  foot' 
man,  announcing  Mr.  Christison.   Enter  John.   Exit  Footman. 

1  Samuel  French,  publisher,  New  York. 


V-/CQ 


c 
8 
0 

a 

o 

-- 


440  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

It  is  often  desirable  to  vary  the  usual  shape  given  a 
room  on  the  stage  —  exactly  rectangular  or  nearly  square. 
The  next  diagram  shows  a  more  complicated  setting,  of 
unusual  shape. 


THE  WALLS  OF  JERICHO.   ACT  I1 

An  ante-room  in  Marquis  of  Steventon's  house  during  a  ball. 
Miss  Wyatt,  a  vivacious  young  American*  has  cake-walked  with 
Twelvetrees  all  the  way  from  the  ball-room. 

Music  under  stage. 

i  Samuel  French,  publisher,  New  York 


442  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Act  II  of  Young  America  calls  for  a  setting  in  which  the 
placing  of  heavy  properties  is  important. 


YOUNG  AMERICA.  ACT  II1 

SCENE.  The  Juvenile  Court,  10  a.m.  —  Two  days  later. 

Two  entrances,  R.  U.  door  leading  to  Judge's  chamber.  L.  2  door 
leading  to  corridor. 

Right  —  Judge's  bench.  It  extends  up  and  down  stage.  Below  it 
Clerk's  bench  upon  which  are  two  card  catalogue  filing  cases  for  court 
records  for  children.  At  L.  of  Judge's  bench  small  docket  for  prisoner. 
At  L.  of  docket,  witness  stand.  It  is  an  18-inch  platform  with  chair 
on  it.    The  docket  and  witness  stand  face  front. 

Left  —  three  benches  for  spectators  and  witnesses.  They  face  front 
and  are  enclosed  within  a  picket  railing.  Gate  with  spring  lock,  near 
left  end  of  front  railing. 

1  Samael  French,  publisher,  New  York. 


444 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


How  the  setting  for  an  outdoor  scene  may  be  indicated 
the  diagram  for  Act  I  of  The  Dancing  Girl  shows. 


THE  DANCING  GIRL.   ACT  I1 

SCENE.  The  Island  of  Saint  Endellion,  off  the 
Cornish  Coast.  At  the  back  is  a  line  of  low  rocks,  and 
beyond,  the  sea.  A  pathway  leads  through  the  rocks 
down  to  the  sea.  On  the  right  side  of  the  stage  is  the 
Quakers1  meeting-house,  a  plain  square  granite  build- 
ing, showing  a  door  and  two  windows.  The  meeting- 
house is  built  on  a  low  insular  rock  that  rises  some  three 
or  four  feet  above  the  stage;  it  is  approached  by  path- 
ways, leading  up  from  the  stage.  On  the  left  side  of  the 
stage,  down  towards  the  audience,  is  David  Ives's  house; 
another  plain  granite  building,  with  a  door  down  stage, 
and  above  the  door,  a  window.  The  house  is  built  into 
a  cliff  that  rises  above  it.  Beyond  the  house  is  a  path- 
way that  leads  up  the  cliff  and  disappears  amongst  the 
rocks  on  the  left  side  towards  the  centre  of  the  stage;  a 
little  to  the  right  w  a  piece  of  rock  rising  about  two  feet 
from  the  stage. 

Time,  An  Autumn  evening. 

i  Samuel  French,  publisher,  New  York. 


I.  Call. 

John  Christum. 
Faith  Ives. 
David  Ives. 
Drusilla  Ives. 


446  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

As  the  chief  purpose  of  the  writer  of  a  scenario  is  imme- 
diately to  grip  the  interest  of  the  reader,  this  dramatic 
outline  must  obviously  provide  any  historical  background 
necessary  to  sympathetic  understanding  of  the  story.  In 
other  words,  a  scenario  must  very  briefly  summarize  the  pre- 
liminary exposition  about  which  so  much  has  already  been 
said  in  the  body  of  this  book.1  The  opening  of  the  scenario, 
already  quoted  in  part  on  p.  428,  may  be  interesting,  but  it 
is  also  puzzling,  for  a  reader  is  not  told  enough  in  regard  to 
the  past  of  the  figures  involved  to  know  how  to  receive  what 
information  is  given.  Much  depends  on  whether  Denis  de 
Beaulieu  is  lying  or  not.  Make  the  reader  somehow  un- 
derstand that  Denis  and  Blanche  have  never  met  before 
and  that  although  the  uncle  believes  Denis  is  her  lover, 
he  is  completely  in  the  wrong.  Then  comedy  immediately 
emerges,  interest  increases. 

Here  is  a  scenario  which  remained  vague  and  confusing, 
till  just  before  the  final  curtain,  because  the  writer  thought 
surprise  more  valuable  than  suspense.  Consequently  he 
held  back  the  one  bit  of  information  which  gives  significance 
and  comic  value  to  the  conduct  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Brede. 

[Diagram  of  setting] 
SCENE.  The  piazza  of  a  mountain  boarding-house.  R,  practicable 
door.   L,  practicable  window.    C,  practicable  step.   On  the  piazza  are 
a  number  of  chairs.    The  bit  of  lawn  in  front  is  not  too  well  kept. 

Characters 

■*,  '    j         r  ordinary,  well-educated  people. 

Major  Halkit,  retired  business  man,  interested  in  stock  companies. 
Mrs.  Halkit,  his  wife,  an  old  gossip,  prim  and  censorious. 
Mr.  Brede  )  t      ,  «<    •     »» 

Mrs.  Brede  J  y0Un9'  handsome>    nwe' 
Jacobus,  Yankee  boarding-house  keeper. 

Brede  and  Jones  come  from  the  house  and  discuss  the  view  from 
the  piazza.   Brede  is  enthusiastic  and  compares  it  with  that  from  the 

1  See  pp.  154-182. 


SCENARIOS  447 

Matlcrhorn.  Mrs.  Brede  and  Mrs.  Jones  come  from  the  house  in  time 
ir  **  Matterhorn'*  and  Mrs.  Brede  expresses  surprise  that  her 
husband  has  climbed  it.  Mr.  Brede,  confused,  says  it  was  five  years 
ago.  and  Mrs.  Hrede  gently  chides  him  for  doing  such  a  thing  during 
the  first  year  of  their  marriage.  Mr.  Jones  and  Mrs.  Brede  talk  aside 
while  Mr.  Brede  explains  to  Mrs.  Jones  that  he  had  left  his  wife 
\  ■  w  York  some  months  after  their  marriage  for  a  hasty  trip  to 
Europe  and  had  climbed  the  Matterhorn  then. 

Mr.  and  Mrs,  Brede  go  doum  the  side  steps  and  off  at  R.C.  for  a 
stroll.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Jones  discuss  them,  and  decide  that  they  are  very 
"  nice  "  people.  During  their  talk  it  develops  that  while  Mr.  Brede 
had  been  telling  Mr.  Jones  that  Mrs.  Brede  had  been  in  this  country 
when  he  climbed  the  Matterhorn,  Mrs.  Brede  had  informed  Mrs. 
Jones  that  her  husband  had  left  her  at  Geneva  and  afterwards  taken 
her  to  Basle,  where  their  first  child  was  born. 

At  this  point  Mrs.  Ilalkit  comes  from  the  house.  She  censures  Mrs. 
Brede  for  not  knowing  how  to  care  for  her  husband  and  children  and  it 
comes  out  tliat  Mrs.  Brede  has  told  Mrs.  Halkit  that  they  have  two  chil- 
dren who  have  been  left  with  her  aunt,  whereas  Mr.  Brede  has  told 
Mr.  Jones  tliat  they  have  three  children  at  present  under  the  care  of 
his  mother-in-law. 

Enter  Major  Halkit  from  the  house.  He  criticizes  Mr.  Brede,  who 
purports  to  be  looking  for  a  business  opening,  for  his  failure  to  take  a 
fine  chance  the  Major  has  pointed  out  to  him. 

The  party  come  to  the  conclusion  that  there  is  something  queer 
about  the  couple  and  are  about  to  call  Jacobus  when  he  appears,  com- 
ing from  the  left.  Before  any  of  the  boarders  have  a  chance  to  speak. 
Jacobus  asks  some  question  about  the  numbering  of  streets  in  New 
York  and  the  fact  is  brought  out  that  Mr.  Brede  told  Mrs.  Jacobus, 
when  he  was  engaging  the  room,  that  he  lived  at  number  thirty-four 
of  his  street,  and  that  the  day  before  Mrs.  Brede  had  informed  Mrs. 
Jacobus  that  their  number  was  thirty-five.  .  .  . 

A  reader  struggling  through  the  paragraphs  of  this 
scenario  finds  very  little  that  is  dramatic  because  the  dra- 
matic values  the  writer  feels  in  his  sentences  cannot  be  the 
reader's  till  he  learns  that  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Brede  are  a  newly 
married  couple  who  wish  to  conceal  the  fact.  Re-read  the 
quotation  with  that  in  mind  and  all  confusion  disappears. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  not  always  easy  to  convey  needed 


448  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

preliminary  exposition  interestingly.  When  much  is  needed, 
there  is  always  danger  that  the  opening  of  the  scenario  will 
be  talky  and  referential  rather  than  definite  and  full  of 
dramatic  action.  The  following  is  by  no  means  as  bad  an 
example  as  might  be  found  of  a  slow  opening  caused  by 
need  for  much  historical  exposition,  but  it  certainly  lacks 
gripping  action: 

SCENARIO  OF  CONISTON 

When  the  curtain  is  raised,  Millicent  Skinner  is  working  about; 
a  second  later  Chester  Perkins  comes  slinking  in,  looking  back  as 
though  pursued  by  the  Evil  One,  and  close  on  his  heels,  another  local 
politician,  Mr.  Dodd,  of  the  Brampton  prudential  school  committee, 
enters  with  the  same  stealthy  and  harassed  air.  Millicent  twits  them 
with  having  run  away  from  Bijah  Bixby  who  is  at  Jonah  Winch's 
store.  They  deny  that  they  are  afraid  of  Bije  or  any  one.  It  is  brought 
out  in  a  sentence  or  two  that  Jethro  Bass,  Cynthia  and  Ephraim  Pres- 
cott  are  away  on  their  Washington  trip,  and  that  Bijah,  knowing  of 
Jethro's  absence,  is  not  likely  to  come  here,  which  is  why  the  two  men 
have  chosen  the  yard  for  a  refuge;  as  they  have  been  planning  petty 
treason  against  the  political  control  of  the  town  by  Jethro  Bass.  Mil- 
licent laughs  at  them  and  goes  in  the  house.  Mr.  Dodd  and  Chester 
recover  their  swagger  and  begin  to  discuss  Bijah  and  his  sneaking  ways. 
Bob  Worthington  enters,  goes  to  the  porch  and  calls  Millicent.  She  re- 
sponds from  a  nearby  window.  He  enquires  when  she  expects  Cynthia 
to  return.  She  tells  him  they  will  be  here  today.  Bob  announces  that  he 
will  return,  a  little  later,  and  goes  out.  Chester  and  Dodd  discuss 
Bob*s  attention  to  Cynthia  and  how  furious  the  elder  Worthington  will 
be  if  his  son  marries  the  ward  of  Jethro  Bass.  Then  they  drift  back 
to  their  first  topic  and  are  soon  absorbed  in  their  wordy  revolt  against 
Jethro  Bass  and  Bijah. 

Chester.  This  town's  tired  of  puttin'  up  with  a  king! 

(Behind  them  Bijah  enters  silently  and  stands  at  their  elbows 
unperceived.) 
Bijah.  Lee  tie  early  for  campaignin',  Chester,  leetle  early. 

(The  other  two  stand  aghast.) 

The  scene  which  follows  between  the  three  men  gives  their  characters, 
the  Coniston  political  atmosphere,  Jethro* s  position  as  boss  of  the  State 


SCENARIOS  449 

and  his  character,  the  cumulating  antagonism  between  Jethro  Bass  and 

Wtaac  Worth ington,  the  relation  between  Jethro  and  Cynthia,  his  ward. 

fldei  to  the  tiro  that  a  nctc  era  is  dawning;  that  "the  railroadst 

by    Worthington,   Sr.,   are  tired,   of  paying  tribute"*   to 

Jethro  and  are  abend  to  turn  and  exterminate  him.    Bixby  says  that 

Jethro' s  power  is  gone,  that  a  greater  than  he  has  risen,  that  Isaac 

mfafhington's  campaign,  brought  forth  undercover  of  a  great  reform 

movement,  will  sweep  the  State  in  the  next  few  months  and  leave  Jethro 

politically  dead.   Bijah  brings  out  a  copy  of  the  last  issue  of  the  New- 

Cuardian  {leaxling  newspaper  of  the  State),  and  reads  them 

"  The  scathing  arraignment  of  Jethro  Bass  .  .  .  showing  how  he  had 

wtbauched  his  own  town  of  Coniston;  how,  enlarging  on  the  same 

methods,  he  had  gradually  extended  his  grip  over  the  county  and  finally 

over  the  State;  how  he  had  bought  and  sold  men  for  his  own  power 

and  profit,  deceived  those  who  had  trusted  him,  corrupted  governors  and 

'ators  .  .  .  how  he  had  trafficked  ruthlessly  in  the  enterprises  of 

the  people"   Bijah  tells  them  that  the  whole  State  is  in  a  stir  over  this 

article,  that  it  is  the  open  declaration  of  war  against  Jethro. 

Ifrre  Alva  Hopkins  and  his  daughter  Cassandra  enter.  Hopkins  has 
read  the  article  and  come  post-haste  to  see  Jethro.  He  and  Bijah  dis- 
the  situation  and  Bijah  tells  them  that  the  postmaster  ship  which 
Jethro  has  promised  to  Ephraim  Prescott  (and  which  it  is  surmised 
they  have  gone  to  Washington  to  secure)  is  to  go  to  Dave  Wheelock; 
that  that  will  be  the  first  tangible  sign  to  the  public  of  the  fall  of  Jethro 
Bass.  .  .  . 

The  cardinal  principle  in  scenario  writing,  as  in  the  play 
itself,  is  that  not  talk  but  action  is  basal.  In  a  scenario, 
however,  action  is  described  rather  than  represented.  As 
we  have  just  seen,  the  lengthy  historical  account  of  what  lies 
behind  the  opening  scene  is  hard  to  convey  without  talki- 
ness.  Many  would-be  dramatists  dodge  this  difficulty,  in- 
deed  the  whole  task  of  making  clear  the  emotional  signifi- 
cance of  the  action  which  the  play  involves,  by  writing 
scenarios  which  are  little  more  than  schedules  of  the  en- 
trances and  exits  of  their  characters.  There  was  something 
of  this  in  the  "Coniston"  scenario.  The  difficulty  is  still 
more  marked  in  the  following: 


450  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

THE  SIRE  DE  MALETROIT'S  DOOR 

SCENE:  The  Maletroit  Entrance-Hall 

[Diagram  of  Setting] 

Characters 

A  Priest. 

The  Sire  de  Maletroit. 

Blanche  de  Maletroit,  his  niece. 

Denis  de  Beaulieu. 

Retainer. 

Discovered,  Retainer  finishing  work  on  the  door,  C.  Enter  Priest, 
L.  U.E.  SliglU  exposition  suggesting  that  a  trap  is  being  set  for  a  girVs 
gallant.  Exit  Priest.  Enter  R.U.E.  the  Sire.  Commends  the  work- 
man s  results,  increasing  the  suspense  regarding  purpose.  Rope  out- 
side window  R,  examined  without  explanation.  Retainer,  questioned 
as  to  news  in  the  town,  remarks  the  presence  of  a  dare-devil  young 
French  soldier  under  safe-conduct  who  is  likely  to  get  into  trouble  with 
the  troops  quartered  in  town,  unless  he  keeps  a  civil  tongue  in  his  head. 
Retainer  dismissed  R,  with  suggestion  that  he  understands  what  is  ex- 
pected of  him. 

The  Sire  calls  Priest,  questions  him  regarding  Blanche,  furthering 
the  exposition. 

Blanche  enters,  dressed  as  bride,  and  bursts  forth  in  troubled  ques- 
tions as  to  the  meaning  of  her  uncle* s  orders  regarding  her  appearance 
at  this  hour  in  such  costume.  The  cause  is  hinted  at  as  an  intrigue,  and 
Blanche  is  ordered  to  retire  and  wait  in  the  chapel. 

The  Sire  indicates  that  the  hour  is  approaching  for  the  "arrival** 
and  the  lights  are  extinguished. 

As  has  been  pointed  out  already,1  entrances  and  exits  are 
of  the  slightest  possible  consequence  except  when  they  count 
in  characterization  or  dramatic  action.  It  is  what  takes 
place  for  the  characters  between  an  entrance  and  exit  which 
a  scenario  must  bring  out  as  briefly  yet  clearly  as  possible. 

This  fault  of  over-emphasizing  entrances  and  exits  is 
closely  related  to  the  "referential"  treatment  of  possible 

1  See  p.  287. 


SCENARIOS  451 

dramatic  material.  The  method  for  this  is:  "Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Brown   enter  and  talk  passionately  about  their  future." 
no  and  Sarah  now  have  a  tempestuous  scene  in  which 
Anne  discloses  to  the  full  her  agony."  Such  scenario  writing 
is  all  too  easy,  for  the  value  of  the  scenario,  like  the  value  of 
the  play,  will  depend  upon  the  ability  of  the  author  to  make 
the  first  scene  passionate  and  the  second  tempestuous  and 
.agonizing.    A  scenario  which  constantly  states  that  at  a 
i given  point  something  of  interest  will  be  done  or  a  very 
powerful  scene  dealing  with  the  emotions  of  one  or  more  of 
the  characters  will  be  written  is  both  useless  and  exasperat- 
ing.  Nobody  wants  to  buy  such  a  dramatic  "  pig  in  a  poke." 
•Compare  a  referential  scenario,  the  first  of  the  three  which 
!  follow,  with  the  other  two.  They  may,  as  parts  of  scenarios, 
have  faults,  but  at  least  they  move,  not  by  references  to 
"sarcasm,  a  horror  that  transfixes,  violent  threats,"  etc., 
'but  by  definitely  roused  emotional  interest. 

THE  SIRE  DE  MALETROIT'S  DOOR 

[Diagram  of  Setting] 

SCENE.  A  baronial  apartment  in  heavy  polished  stone.  At  the 
back  a  large  doorway  hung  with  rich  tapestry  leads  to  a  small  chapel. 
At  the  right  are  two  doors  also  with  tapestry.  In  the  left  back  corner 
is  a  huge  fireplace  carved  with  the  arms  of  the  Maletroits.  At  the  left 
is  a  large  open  window  looking  over  the  parapets  of  the  castle.  A 
heary  table  and  a  chair  or  two  are  all  the  furnishings. 

Place:  Chdteau  London. 
Time:  Fourteenth  Century. 

Dramatis  Personce 

Blanche,  orphan  niece  of  Sire  de  Maletroit. 
A  Priest,  chaplain  to  Sire  de  Maletroit. 
Sire  de  Maletroit. 
Denis  de  Beaulieu,  a  stranger. 

As  the  curtain  rises  Blanche  is  seen  in  the  chapel  kneeling  as  the 
priest  is  finishing  Vie  chanting  of  the  vesper  service.   At  the  close  she 


452  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

rises  and  walks  toward  the  window,  glancing  hastily  about  to  see  that  r,  \ 
one  is  in  the  room.  As  soon  as  the  priest  has  left  she  draws  froi  i 
her  breast  a  letter  which  she  starts  to  read.  She  is  soon  interrupted  I 
the  entrance  of  her  uncle  the  Sire  de  Maletroit,  whose  keen  giant 
detects  her  hasty  crumpling  of  the  note  which  she  has  not  had  time  t 
conceal.  He  greets  her  jovially  and  starts  to  walk  hand  in  hand  wit 
her.  Forcing  open  her  hand,  he  finds  the  note,  which  he  reads  in  ■ 
bitterly  sarcastic  tone,  while  Blanche  stands  transfixed  with  horror 
It  is  a  note  asking  her  to  leave  the  house  door  open  at  midnight  so  tha 
the  writer  may  enter  and  exchange  words  with  her  on  the  stairs.  Witi 
cold  sarcasm,  ill  concealing  his  rage,  the  Sire  forces  from  her  the  ston 
that  a  young  captain  has  met  her  in  church  and  given  her  the  note.  Sh 
denies  that  she  knows  his  name,  and  the  most  violent  threats  will  no 
induce  her  to  tell  it.  She  is  then  sent  to  her  room  to  dress  in  sackclot) 
of  repentance  and  told  to  prepare  to  spend  the  night  in  the  chapel. 

THE  SIRE  DE  MALETROIT'S  DOOR 

Persons  represented 

The  Sire  de  Maletroit. 
Blanche  de  Maletroit,  his  niece. 
Denis  de  Beaulieu,  a  young  soldier. 
A  Priest. 

SCENE.    Large  apartment  of  stone.   On  each  of  the  three  sides 
the  room,  three  doors  curtained  with  tapestry.  On  left,  beside  the  dc 
a  window.   Stone  chimney-piece,  carved  with  arms  of  the  Maletroits. 
Furniture,  mainly  consisting  of  table,  and  heavy  chair  beside  chimney. 

Place:  Chateau  Landon,  France. 
Time:  September,  11^29. 

Curtain  rises  showing  an  old  gentleman  in  a  fur  tipped  coat  seated 
in  the  heavy  chair.  The  old  man  is  mumbling  to  himself  a  sort  of  strange 
murmur,  smiling  and  nodding,  as  he  sips  a  cup  of  wine.  The  room  is 
silent  save  for  the  muttering  of  the  old  man. 

Suddenly,  from  the  direction  of  the  arras  covering  the  door  to  left, 
a  muffled  sound  begins  to  obtrude  itself.  This  sound,  at  first  vague, 
then  waxing  more  and  more  distinct,  resolves  itself  into  steps  cautiously 
mounting  a  flight  of  stairs.  The  steps,  gradually  less  vague,  finally  firm 
and  assertive,  reach  the  tapestried  doorway.  The  click  of  metal,  prob- 
ably that  of  a  sword,  accompanying  the  steps,  echoes  in  the  hush  of  the 
room. 


SCENARIOS  453 

The  arms  parts,  and  a  young  man  blinking  from  dark  into  sudden 

.  .s-tu mbles  into  the  room.    (As  the  tapestry  closes  beh ind  the  youth, 

\rk  jmssageway  and  shadmcy  flight  of  stairs  beyond  are  visible.) 

other  pause  ensues,  during  which  the  young  man  and  the  old 

utinue  to  gaze  at  one  another. 

'*  Pray  step  in,"  begins  the  old  man;  "7  have  been  expecting  you  all 

m$  evening." 

The  youth  shivers  slightly,  hesitating  for  speech.  Finally  he  man- 
ages to  answer.  .  .  . 

MISTRESS  BEATRICE  COPE 

ACT  HI.   SCENE  1 

'Next  day.  White  Oaks.  Late  twilight.  Nightfalls  during  early  part 
of  scene.  Later,  moonlight.  The  great  dining  hall.  It  opens  at  the 
back  on  a  terrace  with  a  large  door  at  centre.  Dame  Pettigrew,  Joyce 
tarui  Eliza  discovered  in  aflutter  over  the  news  of  the  war.  Scotch  raids 
<arc  threatened  from  over  the  border.  There  are  terrible  tales  of  the  loot- 
nngs  by  the  King's  soldiers  of  places  suspected  of  Jacobitry.    Dame 

grew,  as  she  hears  now  this  story,  now  that,  is  first  Whig  and  then 
.Jacobite,  until  she  bewilders  herself  and  the  maids.  They  play  on 
one  another's  nerves  until  they  are  in  sore  fright.  Pettigrew  begins 
\to  collect  her  goods  against  leaving  on  the  morrow,  regretting  that  she 
ihas  sent  for  Beatrice  to  stay  with  her,  who  is  momentarily  expected. 
At  heiglit  of  nervous  strain,  when  all  windows  have  been  closed,  all 
.lights  but  the  fire  are  out,  and  the  women  sit  cowering  and  silent,  the 
mournful  shrilling  of  bagpipes  and  the  heavy  tread  of  feet  coming 
nearer  and  nearer  are  heard.  Joyce  gasps  about  ghosts.   Chilled  with 

r,  no  one  dares  go  to  the  window.  The  procession  reaches  the  end  of 
ithe  lane  and  passes.  Sudden  sharp  rapping  at  door.  Frightened  par- 
ley with  spirits,  as  maids  think.  Beatrice  forces  them  to  open,  and  ap- 
pears. The  pipes  are  the  funeral  train  of  a  Jacobite  killed  on  the 
neighboring  border  and  now  on  the  way  to  Goodrest  for  a  final  mass. 
Beatrice  is  excited  and  anxious  but  brings  order  out  of  chaos  in  the  room. 
Turns  up  lights,  gets  rid  of  Dame  Pettigrew,  and  one  maid,  and  sends 
other  maid  for  supper.  Bids  Joyce,  should  Bill  Lampeter  appear,  send 
him  to  her  at  once.  She  has  «  message  for  Crowe  Hall.  When  Joyce 
'has  departed  ironderingly,  it  appears  that  all  day  Beatrice  has  been 
trying  to  warn  Cope  at  Goodrest  that  they  were  watched  the  day  before, 
but  Iwls  been  unable  till  as  she  rode  over  with  Jessie  she  met  BUI  Lampe- 


454  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

ter  on  the  road.  Dropping  behind,  she  wrote  hastily  on  her  tablets  .  j 
warning,  and  dropping  them  into  Bill's  hands  made  him  fly  to  Good 
rest,  he  to  report  his  success  at  once.  A  knock  at  the  big  door  softly 
Raymond's  voice.  When  she  opens  to  him,  a  passionate  scene  follows 
She  is  at  first  full  of  affection,  mingled  with  dread  of  what  he  may  know 
He  is  fighting  suspicion,  passion  for  her,  and  inability  to  believe  he. 
guilty.  Seeking  her  at  Crowe  Hall,  he  has  followed  her  thither.  A 
first  she  is  too  sincere  to  play  with  him.  He  is  too  anxious  to  be  abh 
to  diplomatize.  He  shows  his  fears  —  that  she  is  intriguing  with  an- 
other, with  the  Pretender.  She  is  maddeningly  incomprehensible  — 
swears  she  knows  no  Pretender,  but  will  not  say  yes  or  no  as  to  meet- 
ing any  one  in  the  wood.  In  his  anger  and  his  desire  to  force  the  truth 
from  her,  by  making  her  feel  the  uselessness  of  protecting  the  Pretender, 
he  lets  drop  more  than  he  realizes  of  plans  to  catch  him  and  for  the 
campaign.  Seeing  that,  had  her  message  not  gone,  her  brother  would 
have  been  trapped,  Beatrice  works  to  delay  Raymond.  She  is  first  coldly 
repellent,  then  alluring,  then  silent,  then  apparently  almost  on  the 
point  of  revelation.  At  last  in  despair  he  breaks  away  into  the  night, 
vowing  vengeance  on  the  destroyer  of  his  happiness  and  cursing  her 
for  a  fickle,  ambitious  thing,  unworthy  a  good  man's  love.  She  stands 
motionless  by  the  table,  then  hurries  to  the  wide  open  door  through 
which  the  moonlight  streams  in  from  the  garden,  calls  again  and  again 
softly,  staggers  back,  and  falls  sobbing  on  the  great  settle.  Van  Brugh 
appears  at  the  open  doors,  closes  them  softly  and  speaks.  He  is  leaving 
the  Hunters  for  good,  for  the  final  Jacobite  blows  are  to  be  struck.  See- 
ing Raymond  ahead  of  him,  he  hid  in  the  garden  till  Raymond  went. 
He  calls  on  "  The  Daughter  of  Charles  Cope"  to  tell  him  for  the  good 
of  the  cause  what  she  knows  of  Raymond's  plans.  She  denies  that  she 
knows  them  fully,  but  cannot  deny  that  she  knows  something  of  them. 
He  shows  that  everything  depends  for  the  Jacobites  on  knowing  the 
movements  of  the  local  forces  for  the  next  few  days.  He  uses  every  ap- 
peal he  can,  her  brother  among  others.  To  this  she  only  answers  that  she 
has  warned  and  saved  him.  All  his  appeals  are  in  vain.  "Raymond  is 
my  husband  in  the  sight  of  God.  His  secrets  should  be  my  secrets,  but 
my  brother  I  cannot  help  to  kill.  To  save  him  I  must  deceive  the  man 
I  love  best  in  all  the  world;  so  be  it.  So  much  I  must  do,  more  I  will 
not."  Sandiland,  the  fanatic  breaking  out  in  him,  curses  her  as  a  rene- 
gade and  unworthy  her  name  and  race.  He  goes.  As  she  stands  mur- 
muring: "  Unworthy  love,  unworthy  my  father's  name!"  suddenly  her 
face  softens.  She  drops  to  the  settle  and  prays  for  a  moment.  Quietly 
she  rises,  saying,  "  Why  count  the  cost  if  Charles'  life  be  saved."  The 


SCENARIOS  455 

i  door  opens  and  Joyce  enters  in  great  excitement  to  say, "  Pill  has  come, 
but  in  bad  plight."  She  fetches  the  boy,  his  clothes  torn,  his  hands  bleed- 
iny  where  ropes  have  cut  the  wrists.    He  has  been  taken  shortly  after 

ng  Heat  rice  and  searched.  He  snatched  the  tablets  from  a  captor's 
hand  and  licked  off  the  message  before  it  was  read.  He  was  then  trussed 
up  behind  a  soldier  on  horseback,  and  started  for  the  "  Maid  in  the 
Valley  "  Tavern,  the  rendezvous  from  which  the  journey  to  Goodrest 
was  to  begin.  By  daring  and  ingenuity  he  slipped  away  at  the  inn. 
"  Then  my  brother  knows  nothing.*'  "  No,  and  they  '11  be  starting 
by  now  from  Vie  Maid  in  tlie  Valley.  They  were  waiting  for  the 
moon  to  be  covered."  "  Where's  Philly,  my  mare?"  "In  the  paddock, 
miss."  "  What  do  you  mean  ?  "  cries  Joyce.  " /  am  going  to  Goodrest." 

>net  To-night,  with  these  rake-hell  soldiers  abroad?"  Beatrice's 
only  answer  is  to  find  her  whip  and  pass  quickly  out  into  the  night. 
Joyce  sinks  down  sobbing  in  window  seat.  Bill  is  in  the  doorway,  wild 
with  excitement.  "Now,  ride,  ride,  Miss  Beatrice.  Ride,  like  Hell!" 

Quick  Curtain 

If  it  is  clear  that  illustrative  action  is  as  essential  in  a 
scenario  as  in  a  play,  it  is  as  true  for  one  form  as  the  other 
that  right  proportioning  and  emphasis  must  make  clear  the 
purpose  of  the  author  in  writing  the  scenario  and  must  take 
a  reader  clearly  to  its  conclusion.  Read  any  one  of  the  fol- 
lowing three  scenarios  and  decide  whether  you  are  clear  as 
to  the  purpose  of  the  author.  What  did  he  think  was 
attractively  dramatic  in  his  material?  What  is  the  central 
interest  of  his  proposed  play?  Just  what  is  the  suspense 
created  near  the  beginning  of  the  play  and  developed 
throughout  from  sub-climaxes  to  a  final  climax?  As  has 
been  carefully  explained,  plays  must  do  all  this.  Therefore 
their  scenarios  must  also. 

THE  FISHING  OF  SUZANNE 

SCENARIO.  Curtain  rises  discovering  Madame  knitting  in  chairt 
upper  rigid,  Helene  embroidering  in  window-seat,  Suzanne  on  sofa9 
trying  to  sew.  Suzanne  gets  into  trouble  and  HSlene  helps  her.  Then 
grandmother  offers  to  tell  her  a  story.    Suzanne  says  that  her  stories 


456  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

are  so  sad,  always  about  her  dead  parents.  HSlene  represses  her.  Enter 
grandfather,  the  Colonel,  rear.  Suzanne  starts  to  show  him  her  seuring 
and  is  repulsed.  Colonel  denounces  the  Dreyfus  situation;  Madame 
trying  to  interfere  when  he  begins  on  the  American  attitude,  finally  gets 
HSlene  and  Suzanne  from  room.  Then  Colonel  learns  that  George  Wil- 
liams, an  American,  loves  HSlene.  He  is  overcome.  Enter  George  rear. 
Embarrassing  situation;  finally  George  gets  up  courage  and  asks  for 
HSlene*  s  hand,  is  refused,  but  goes  away  undaunted.  Enter  HSlene, 
side.  Colonel  says,  "I  will  have  no  friend  of  traitors  place  his  foot 
in  my  house.**  Scene.  Exit  HSlene  sobbing  angrily.  Colonel  disturbed, 
but  when  wife  starts  after  her,  forbids  her  going.  Exit  the  Colonel. 
Madame  again  starts  toward  door.  Suzanne  and  Marie  enter.  Ma- 
dame has  Suzanne  play  with  fishing  rod;  dismisses  Marie  from  room. 
Suzanne  hears  HSlene*  s  sobs.  Asks  if  she  is  sick.  Says  she  will  com- 
fort her.  Madame  feels  guilty  and  leaves.  Suzanne  persuades  HSlene 
to  come  out  and  watch  her  fish.  Catches  some  imaginary  ones.  Dis- 
covers George.  He  sends  up  notes  like  fish.  Later  HSlene  furnishes 
bait.  Then  she  fishes  him  up.  Suzanne  is  dismissed  with  candy,  and 
he  persuades  HSlene  to  elope.  Suzanne  comes  and  says  the  cab  is 
there.  Steps  heard.  George  goes  down  rope.  Marie  tells  of  the  cab. 
HSlene  rushes  into  packing.  Leaves  note  for  mother  with  Suzanne, 
who  wins  a  promise  for  a  speedy  return  from  her.  Exit  HSlene  rear. 
Marie  and  Suzanne  wave  from  window.  Talk.  Soon  Colonel  and 
Madame  enter.  See  disorderly  room.  Suzanne  gives  them  the  note. 
Madame  reads  it  and  breaks  news  to  her  husband.  Defends  HSlene; 
reminds  Colonel  of  their  parents'  political  differences.  Suzanne  tells 
how  HSlene  tlwught  they  did  not  care  for  her  in  her  sorrow.  Both  in 
tears.  Colonel  in  desperation  starts  to  send  for  them  by  Marie.  Enter 
George  and  HSlene  ;  HSlene  unable  to  leave  without  seeing  them.  Colonel 
says  he  may  have  been  too  hasty.  Then  Suzanne  discovers  George's 
Legion  of  Honor  badge.  He  and  Colonel  shake  on  the  old  friendship 
of  the  Republics. 

Curtain 


SCENARIOS  457 

AN  ENCORE 

Adapted  from  a  Story  by  Margaret  Deland 

Time:  About  1S30,  in  June. 

Place:  Little  town  of  Old  Chester. 

Between  the  first  and  second  act  three  weeks  elapse. 

Dramatis  Personal 

Captain  Price:  Retired  sea-captain,  big,  bluff,  and  hearty,  with  white 
hair  and  big  white  miistachios,  rather  untidy  as  to  dress.  Age.  about  68. 

Cyrus  Price :  His  son,  weak  and  neat-looking,  very  thin  and  of 
sand//  complexion.  Age,  about  35. 

Mrs.  Xorth :  SprigJdly,  pretty,  white-haired  little  lady  of  about  65. 
Always  in  black  silk. 

Miss  Xorth :  Her  daughter,  nervous  and  shy,  but  truthful  with  a 
mania  for  taking  care  of  her  motlwr  and  no  knowledge  of  how  to  wear 
her  clothes;  about  40. 

Mrs.  Gussie  Price:  A  stout,  colorless  blond,  a  weeping,  vividly 
gowned  lady,  who  rules  her  husband,  Cyrus,  through  her  tears.  Age, 
about  30. 

Flora :  A  colored  maid. 

Stage  setting :  A  drawing-room  with  a  door  on  either  side  of  the 
back,  leading  into  the  long  front  hall.  A  window  at  the  right,  looking 
the  street.  Between  the  window  and  the  door,  a  stuffed  armchair, 
a  hair-cloth  sofa.  Between  the  doors,  under  a  mantel-shelf,  a  Franklin 
stove,  on  either  side  of  which,  but  a  little  down  stage,  are  two  rockers 
just  alike.  To  the  left  and  back,  grand  piano.  To  the  left,  front,  an- 
other big  chair.  Hassocks;  and  a  knit  shawl  on  almost  every  chair. 
The  only  ornament  on  the  shelf  is  a  stuffed  bird  in  a  glass  case. 

ACT  I 

Miss  Xorth  is  discovered  in  a  very  much  starched  gown,  big  apron, 
dusting-cap,  and  gloves;  arranging  the  chairs  more  evenly  and  dust- 
ing.  Expression  of  heavy  responsibility  in  her  face  and  manner. 

Flora  announces  Mrs.  Price,  who  enters  —  right  door  —  at  once. 
Though  Mary  explains  she  is  busy,  Mrs.  Price  stays.  Sits  on  the  sofa. 
Mary  in  rocking-chair  to  left  of  stove.  Dialogue  in  which  Mary  ex- 
plains she  is  determined  to  let  her  mother  end  life  happily  in  her  native 
town  and  she  expects  her  to  arrive  any  moment.  Mrs.  Price  offers  assist- 


458  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

ance  infixing  up  the  house  and  begins  to  gossip  about  the  fact  that  het 
father-in-law,  the  Captain,  who  lives  in  the  Price  house  just  across  the 
street,  tried  to  elope  with  Mrs.  North  when  she  was  eighteen.  Mary 
becomes  very  indignant,  but  sees  her  mother  through  the  window  and 
dismisses  Mrs.  Price  politely  but  not  sweetly.  Exit  Mrs.  Price  by 
the  right  door,  Mary  by  the  left.  Enter  Mrs.  North  by  the  right  and 
Mary  is  seen  hurrying  by  the  right  door  with  a  small  wooden  chair  in 
her  hand. 

Mrs.  North  begins  to  look  about  the  room  while  she  takes  off  her  ca- 
lash and  leaves  it  on  the  piano,  her  shawl  and  puts  it  on  the  shelf,  her 
gloves  and  leaves  them  on  a  chair.  Mary  enters,  right,  with  the  chair, 
during  this  business  and  remonstrates  with  her  mother  for  getting  out 
of  the  chaise  without  the  aid  of  the  chair.  As  Mrs.  North  drops  her 
things  Mary  picks  them  up.  Mrs.  North  sees  the  Price  house  through 
the  window  and  mentions,  cheerily,  that  the  Captain  used  to  be  her 
beau.  Mary  is  shocked.  Tries  to  have  her  mother  put  on  one  of  the 
little  shawls  and  goes  to  make  her  some  beef -tea.  Hangs  her  things 
on  the  hat-tree  in  hall  beyond  left  door  as  she  goes  out. 

Mrs.  North  discovers  the  Captain  going  down  street  and  calls  him 
in.  Enters  right  door  with  his  pipe.  Both  sit  in  the  rockers  before  the 
stove  and  are  deep  in  reminiscences  when  Mary  enters  left  door.  The 
Captain  is  requested  to  put  up  his  pipe,  not  to  talk  quite  so  loud,  and 
not  to  stay  long  because  of  Mrs.  North's  delicacy.  When  Mary  offers 
to  make  him  some  beef-tea,  too,  so  her  mother  can  take  hers,  he  leaves 
precipitately,  very  much  cowed. 

While  Mary  is  trying  to  soothe  Mrs.  North  after  the  undue  excite- 
ment, Flora  announces  Cyrus  Price  who  has  come  in  search  of  his 
father  —  at  Gussie's  tearful  instigation.  Mary  and  Cyrus  hold  an 
anxious  aside,  while  Mrs.  North  expresses  her  pleasure  at  seeing  the 
Captain  again.  Curtain  falls  on  Mrs.  North  trying  to  pick  out  some 
of  the  old  tunes  on  the  piano,  and  Cyrus  and  Mary  bidding  each  other 
a  stiff  "  Good-morning." 

ACT  II 

The  Captain  and  Mrs.  North  discovered,  the  Captain  with  his  har- 
monica trying  to  teach  Mrs.  North  the  old  airs.  Enter  Mary  at  right 
door,  from  outdoors.  Consternation  ensues  and  in  a  few  moments  the 
Captain  leaves  guiltily.  Then  Mary  explains  that  she  has  been  over 
to  the  Prices  and  requested  Cyrus  to  tell  the  Captain  he  must  keep 
away,  for  they  are  both  too  old  to  be  married.  Mrs.  North  exits  lefU  in 


SCENARIOS  459 

despair.  Flora  announces  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Price:  a  conference  of  war  is 
held  during  which  it  is  decided  that  Cyrus  must  consult  the  minister , 
Dr.  Lavender,  and  Gussie  must  speak  to  the  Captain  himself.  Exeunt 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Price. 

Enter  Mrs.  Xorthfor  her  knitting.  Mary  wraps  her  up  in  a  shawly 
puts  a  Imssock  at  her  feet,  suggests  liglUing  a  fire  in  the  stove,  and 
tries  to  comfort  fier  mother  by  telling  her  she  will  take  her  away  from 
Old  ( '/tester  if  the  ( 'aptain  keeps  on  bothering  her.  Mrs.  North  remon- 
strates feebly,  and  Mary  decides  she  needs  some  beef-tea  after  the 
excitement.   Exit  Mary  to  make  t/ie  tea. 

Enter  the  Captain  witlwut  ringing  or  knocking,  in  great  wrath. 
Gussie  has  spoken  to  him.  At  first  they  laugh  at  the  children's  stupidity 
and  by  degrees  decide  to  carry  out  and  confirm  the  children's  suspicions 
by  eloping.  Enter  Mary.  Confusion,  but  the  Captain  pretends  he  has 
come  to  say  good-bye  to  her  because  he  is  going  away  for  a  few  weeks 
and  under  that  cover,  makes  the  appointment  for  the  eloping. 

Curtain  with  his  exit 


THE  CAPTAIN,  A  MELODRAMA 

[Diagram] 
Dramatis  Persona 

Captain  Tm  Rue.  a  little  sea  captain. 

Bromley  Barnes,  former  special  investigator  for  the  U.S.  Custom^ 
Service. 

Patrick  Clancy,  his  friend. 

A  burly  Butler. 

John  Felspar,  junior  partner  of  the  firm  of  Felspar  &  Felspar,  wine 
merchants. 

Tiro  Dinner  Guests,  members  of  the  firm. 

Carl  Cozzens,  the  firm's  Canadian  representative. 

SCENE.   The  dining-room  of  Felspar's  Summer  Cottage 

Time:  Early  evening 

The  Captain  is  discovered  sitting  on  the  end  of  the  table  next  the 
windene  with  his  legs  dangling  dejectedly.  Suddenly  he  sees  something 
and,  rushing  to  the  window,  goes  through  a  violent  pantomime  im- 
ploring help  and  caution  from  some  one  without  and  indicating  the 


460  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

way  to  enter  the  house.  He  then  wrings  his  hands  and  paces  the  floor 
excitedly  ending  at  D.  R.  C.  where  he  listens.  The  key  turns  in  the  lock 
and  Barnes  and  Clancy  enter  cautiously.  The  Captain  throws  himself 
at  their  feet  and  tells  them  of  being  kidnapped  and  confined  and  his 
Ship's  papers  taken  from  him  and  asks  frantically  for  the  time. 
Barnes  tells  him,  and  the  Captain  becomes  at  once  dejected  and  silent. 
TJie  other  two,  however,  draw  from  him  the  story  of  how  he  has  been 
racing  over  the  Atlantic  to  get  a  cargo  of  champagne  to  an  American 
port  in  time  to  get  the  benefit  of  the  old  tariff  rate,  just  increased  by  the 
governments  concerned.  He  got  in  in  time  but  was  drugged  and  con- 
fined in  this  house  till  too  late  and  his  papers  taken  from  him.  They 
advise  him  to  stay  where  he  is  and,  promising  to  help  him  at  once,  slip 
out  as  they  came.  The  Butler  comes  in  D.  R.  C.  and  begins  setting 
table,  joking  the  Captain  about  the  supper  to  be  held  in  his  honor,  but 
growling  about  the  suddenness  of  his  master's  decision  to  have  it.  The 
Captain  is  excited  and  helps  him  in  mock  politeness.  As  they  are 
working,  Felspar  comes  in.  Butler  tells  him  that  he  has  hired  a  waiter 
for  the  evening,  subject  to  his  approval  —  a  man  who  happened  to  be 
walking  by,  with  a  friend.  Felspar  congratulates  him  and  the  new 
waiter  is  called.  It  is  Clancy.  La  Rue  controls  himself  as  he  recog- 
nizes him.  Felspar  orders  the  Butler  to  lock  La  Rue  in  the  upstairs 
bedroom,  which  has  been  prepared,  till  he  shall  be  wanted,  telling  him 
at  the  same  time  that  all  the  guests  have  arrived  but  Mr.  Cozzens,  who 
is  to  be  brought  directly  to  the  dining-room  when  he  arrives.  The  others 
will  not  wait  for  him.  The  Butler  hurries  La  Rue  off.  Felspar  gives  a 
few  parting  instructions  to  the  new  waiter  and  goes  to  bring  the  guests. 
Clancy  finishes  the  preparations  and  signals  out  the  window  to  Barnes 
to  come.  Felspar  comes  back  with  the  guests  D.  L.  C.  The  Butler 
reappears,  is  called  to  the  door-bell  and  ushers  in  Barnes  as  "Mr. 
Cozzens."  Felspar  introduces  him  as  the  Canadian  representative  of 
the  firm  whom  he  has  never  seen  before.  Barnes  takes  the  cue  and  ex- 
cuses his  costume,  saying  that  he  arrived  late  and  has  not  had  time  to 
change.  All  sit  again  and  Felspar,  telling  the  Butler  to  bring  La  Rue, 
tells  the  company  that  the  ship's  papers  of  the  rival  business  house 
have  come  into  his  hands.  These  he  produces  and  passes  along  the 
table.  Barnes,  at  the  opposite  end,  pockets  them  as  they  come  to  him 
and  refuses  to  give  them  up.  All  are  astonished  and  half-angry.  The 
Butler,  having  brought  in  the  Captain  at  Felspar's  order  (who  stands 
unnoticed  at  the  back)  again  answers  the  bell  and  ushers  in  Mr.  Coz- 
zens, announcing  him  in  a  doubtfid  voice.  Felspar  stutters,  "  You  — 
you  Mr.  Cozzens  ?"  "So  me  mother  and  father  says"  the  new-comer 


SCENARIOS  461 

replies.    "And  you?"  says  the  wine-merchant  wheeling  on  Barnes. 

es  presents  his  card  which  is  read  aloud  by  Felspar,  who  goes  into 
a  white  heat  and  demands  the  papers  back.   Barnes  blandly  refuses. 

>ar  threatens,  saying  he  has  four  to  one.  At  this  point  ( lancy  and 
La  Rue  step  forward  and  signify  their  readiness  to  side  with  Barnes. 
par  laughs  and  tells  them  to  take  the  papers  then  as  the  new  law 
went  iri  to  effect  at  four-thirty  that  afternoon.  But  Barnes  informs  him 
that  the  provisions  of  the  French-American  commercial  treaty  demand 
that  the  customs  houses  remain  open  till  midnight  when  such  a  law 
goes  through,  and  that  they  still  have  several  hours.  Felspar  is  again 
furious  and  orders  them  out  and  the  three  go  together  leaving  the  com- 
pany in  an  angry  stupor. 

Curtain 

Let  it  be  clearly  understood  that  there  is  no  definitely 
established  length  for  a  scenario.  It  may  run  from  one  to 
two  pages  for  a  play  of  one  act  to  twenty  or  more  pages  for  a 
longer  play.  Obviously,  a  scenario  should  be  as  brief  as 
clear  presentation  of  what  it  must  give  permits,  for  it  pri- 
marily exists  as  a  short  cut  for  the  person  who  reads  it  to 
necessary  information  about  a  proposed  play.  Clearness  is 
the  first  essential;  brevity  the  second.  The  exact  length 
must  in  each  case  be  decided  by  the  particular  needs  of  the 
subject  treated  and  the  best  judgment  of  the  writer. 

Above  all,  it  should  be  remembered  that  a  scenario  unless 
it  is  simply  an  abbreviated  presentation  of  a  play  already  in 
manuscript  should  be  considered  something  flexible.  What 
is  meant  by  this  is  that  many  a  writer  working  with  a  sce- 
nario which  has  been  approved  by  a  manager  or  actor  feels 
hampered  because  as  he  writes  he  has  almost  irresistible 
impulses  to  break  away  from  the  scenario  as  planned  into 
situations  or  details  of  characterization  and  even  of  general 
treatment  which,  though  they  occur  to  him  at  the  moment, 
seem  to  him  undoubted  improvements.  Yet  he  hesitates  to 
change  his  plan  because  it  has  been  approved.  This  is  folly. 
A  scenario  is  at  its  best  when  it  concerns  not  a  completed 


462  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

but  a  proposed  play  and  is  held  to  be  not  fixed  but  thor- 
oughly flexible.  If  changes  suggesting  themselves  are  felt 
by  the  writer  to  be  improvements,  he  should  by  all  means 
incorporate  them.  A  good  scenario  bears  much  the  same 
relation  to  a  completed  play  that  an  architect's  plans  bear 
to  a  completed  house.  Where  would  the  carpenter  be  with- 
out such  plans,  yet  where  is  the  set  of  plans  which  has  not 
been  modified  or  even  greatly  changed  while  the  building 
is  in  construction?  "Ibsen  had  no  respect  for  any  drama- 
tist who  proceeded  otherwise  [than  from  a  carefully  pre- 
pared scenario].  Once  besought  by  a  young  dramatist  to 
read  the  manuscript  of  his  new  play,  Ibsen  curtly  asked  for 
the  scenario.  When  the  young  man  proudly  replied  that  he 
needed  no  scenario,  having  followed  his  inspiration  whither- 
soever it  led  him  from  scene  to  scene,  Ibsen  grew  furious 
and  showed  the  pseudo-dramatist  the  door,  declaring  that 
any  one  who  dispensed  with  a  scenario  didn't  know  what  a 
drama  was  and  couldn't  possibly  write  one.  And  yet,  after 
all,  the  scenario  as  first  outlined  by  Ibsen  may  best  be  re- 
garded as  an  experimental  foreshadowing  subject  to  radical 
modification  as  the  writing  of  the  play  itself  proceeds.  It 
serves  as  the  skeleton  framework  for  Ibsen's  later  ideation. 
.  .  .  While  it  is  true,  then,  that  the  material  took  shape  in 
his  mind  long  before  he  wrote  a  word  of  actual  dialogue,  yet 
Ibsen  expressly  acknowledged  that  it  never  took  such  unal- 
terable shape  in  his  mind  as  to  permit  him  to  write  the  last 
act  first  or  the  first  act  last.  During  the  course  of  the  work 
the  details  emerged  by  degrees."1 

The  fact  is,  a  scenario  is  almost  always  a  photograph  of 
the  mind  of  the  person  who  writes  it.  If  he  is  not  ready  to 
write  his  play,  the  scenario  will  show  it,  making  clear 
whether  this  unreadiness  comes  from  insufficiently  under- 

1  European  Dramatists.  Henrik  Ibsen.  A.  Henderson.  Pp.  175-176.  Stewart  &  Kidd  Co., 
Cincinnati. 


SCENARIOS  463 

stood  characterization;  thin  or  incomplete  story;  a  lack  of 
ri^'lit  proportioning  <>f  the  material  so  that  what  is  unimpor- 
tant stems  important;  or  a  general  vagueness  as  to  what 
the  author  wants  to  do  with  his  material.  Just  here  lies  the 
Strong  reason  why  every  would-be  dramatist  will  do  well 
to  become  expert  in  scenario  writing.  He  may  for  a  long 
fool  himself  into  thinking  that  he  can  work  better 
without  a  scenario;  he  may  be  able  to  WTite  without  putting 
on  paper  all  that  in  this  chapter  has  been  required  from  the 
writer  of  a  scenario,  but  sooner  or  later  he  goes  through  all 
the  processes  in  his  mind  and  either  on  paper  or  in  his  brain 
fulfils  these  requirements.  The  very  people  who  shrink 
from  forcing  themselves  to  work  out  all  the  details  required 
by  a  good  scenario  are  merely  dodging  the  inevitable.  They 
avoid  something  irksome  as  a  preliminary  merely  to  do  all 
this  work  before  the  completed  play  is  ready.  He  who  wants 
to  WTite  his  play  rapidly  will  find  that  he  makes  time  in  his 
final  composition  by  taking  all  the  time  he  needs  in  the  pre- 
liminary task  of  drawing  a  good  scenario.  Undeniably,  a 
scenario  is  the  most  effective  way  of  forcing  oneself  to  know 
the  characters  and  the  story  of  a  play  before  one  begins  to 
write  the  play  in  detail.  Work  out  a  scenario  carefully  and 
all  the  difficult  problems  the  play  involves  will  have  been 
solved  except  those  of  dialogue  and  perhaps  some  subtleties 
of  characterization.  Regard  the  resulting  scenario  as  some- 
thing entirely  flexible  and  the  composition  of  the  play 
should  be  safe  and  even  sure.  He  who  steers  by  the  compass 
knows  how7  with  safety  to  change  his  course.  He  who  steers 
by  dead  reckoning  is  liable  to  error  and  delay. 

Often  questions  as  to  scenarios  are  asked  which  imply 
that  there  must  be  some  set  form  fulfilling  all  the  require- 
ments stated  which  can  be  adhered  to  strictly.  Not  at  all. 
These  various  requirements  may  bo  met  in  almost  as  many 
ways  as  there  are  writers.  One  man  may  use  more  descrip- 


464  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

tion.  Another  writer  may  use  more  narration.  Some 
will  use  dialogue  very  freely.  Some  will  characterize  more 
than  others.  Yet  all  these  different  workers  may  produce 
scenarios  equally  good  in  that  they  are  clear,  brief,  move 
by  suggested  dramatic  action,  are  definite  in  genre,  and 
make  thoroughly  evident  their  elements  of  suspense  and 
climax. 

Here  are  some  scenarios  which  use  dialogue  rather  freely. 
They  are  given  not  because  such  use  is  especially  com- 
mendable but  merely  to  illustrate  it. 

THE  LEGACY 

The  persons 

David  Brice,  a  young  attorney. 
Reene  Brice,  his  uncle. 
Benjamin  Doyle,  his  fiancie's  father. 
Dr.  Wangren,  family  physician. 
Mrs.  Brice,  the  mother. 
"Ditto"  Brice,  the  sister. 
Katherine  Doyle,  JlancSe. 

The  Time:  The  present. 
The  Place:  Any  city. 

SCENE.  The  Brice  living-room  comfortably  furnished  in  walnut. 
A  piano  centre  L.,  a  round  table  rear  R.  Four  entrances :  upper  L., 
rear  centre,  upper  right,  right  centre.  Curtained  windows  rear  R.  &  L. 

Joy  seems  to  radiate  through  the  household.  Ditto  and  Katherine 
are  discovered  ;  Katherine,  a  pretty  enthusiast  of  22  playing  dimin- 
uendo a  joy -melody  at  piano;  Ditto,  pretty,  20  and  nervous,  crossing  R. 
with  an  armload  of  tagged  packages  of  various  sizes  and  prettily  tied  — 
birthday  presents  for  her  brother  David.  Arrived  at  table,  rear  R.,  she 
deposits  them. 

Ditto.  (Stacking  packages.)  Don't  you  wish  you  were  getting 
these  birthday  presents,  Katherine? 

Katherine.  (Playing.)  I  am,  Ditto,  dear.  David  is  mine;  there- 
fore, what  is  David's  belongs  to  me. 


SCENARIOS  465 

Ditto.  (Petulantly.)  And  what  is  yours  .  .  . 
Katherine.  (In  fun.)  .  .  .  IK  longs  to  farther. 

(Begins  to  sing  merrily.) 

Enter  Mrs.  Brice,  L„  a  thoughtful  woman   of  50,  quite  grey  and 
though  careworn,  attractive.  She  carries  a  linen  spread  and  goes 
to  the  table.  Katherine  sings  softly,  playing  diminuendo. 
Mr$,  Brice.  (Covering  presents.)  You  are  very  happy  tonight, 
aivn't  you? 

Katherine.  (Cheerily.)  Why  shouldn't  I  be,  Mrs.  Brice?  It  is 
David's  birthday.  (Going  to  her.)  But  you  aren't. 

Mrs.  Brice.  (Bravely.)  Yes,  I  am.  But  you  see  this  is  probably 
David's  last  birthday  at  home  and  .  .  . 

Katlicrine.  (Lovingly.)  By  no  means!  I  shall  bring  him  home 
every  birthday.  (Kissing  her.)  .  .  .  And  once  in  a  while  between. 

Mrs.  Brice.  (As  they  go  down,  arm  in  arm.)  I  know  you  will, 
Katherine,  but  we  mothers  .  .  . 

David.  (Entering  centre  rear,  overcoat,  hat  and  traveling  grip.) 
Hello  everybody!  .  .  .  (Tosses  grip  on  table  and  makes  for  them.) 
.  .  .  Merry  Christmas,  Happy  New  Year  (kisses  mother)  and  a 
quiet  Fourth  of  July.  (Kisses  Katherine.) 

(David  is  a  well-buili  handsome  man  of  28  neatly  dressed 
in  business  suit,  light-weight  overcoat  and  hat.) 
David.    (Removing  coat,  Katherine  assisting.)   Well,  how  are  all 
the  little  details? 

(Coat  off,  he  begins  kissing  Katherine  again.  Enter  Ditto,  R.) 
Ditto.  (Petulantly.)  Do  you  realize  this  is  your  birthday? 
David.  (Kissing  mother.)  I  am  doing  my  best  to  show  it!  (Toss- 
ing Ditto  his  coat.)  Hang  that  up  and  I  will  show  you. 

(Exit  Ditto,  R„  with  his  coat  and  hat.) 
David.  (Coming  down  from  table  with  blue-print  in  hand.)   Now, 
mother  and  child,  look  ye! 

(He  shows  them  the  architectural  plans  of  the  new  cottage 
he  is  going  to  build  as  a  wedding  present  to  Katherine. 
They  like  them  very  much.  More  joy.  Ditto,  reentering, 
is  also  enthusiastic  over  plans. 
David  next  announces  tliat  he  has  been  invited  to  become  a 
member  of  his  employer's  law  firm,  one  of  the  most  suc- 
cessful in  the  State.  More  joy,  manifested  by  another 
round  of  kisses. 
But  he  has  not  only  been  asked  to  join  the  firm;  the  firm 


466  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

has  'promised  him  a  straight  loan,  without  interest,  with 
which  to  build  his  house.  Otherwise  he  would  have  had  to 
borrow  from  a  building  and  loan  association.  Therefore, 
bids  are  now  being  advertised  for  and  work  will  begin  very 
soon.  Great  joy.  Ditto  seizes  mother's  hand  and  Kath- 
erine's  and  dances  a  ring  around  David. 
As  the  jollification  subsides,  David  inquires  for  his  uncle, 
Reene.  He  must  approve  the  plans,  for  he  was  a  great  ar- 
chitect in  his  day.  His  mother  informs  him  that  the  uncle 
went  for  a  ride  with  Doctor  Wangren.) 
David.  How  is  he  feeling  today? 

Mrs.  Brice.  Not  quite  so  well.  In  fact,  I  never  saw  him  so 
despondent. 

David.  He  must  not  look  at  it  that  way.  We  all  have  our  little 
troubles.  (To  Katherine.)  Don't  we? 

{They  go  toward  piano.  Exit  Mrs.  Brice,  L.,  taking  Ditto 

with  her. 
In  a  short  scene  at  the  piano,  during  which  Katherine  plays 
diminuendo,  the  fact  is  revealed  that  her  father  opposes 
the  match  between  her  and  David;  not  because  he  does  not 
like  David  but  for  reasons  which  he  has  not  divulged  to  his 
daughter.   This  cloud  passes  by  quickly,  however.) 

THE  CONSULTATION 

The  persons  of  the  play 

Marian, 

Katherine. 

Dr.  Thomas  Wells. 

Dr.  Benjamin  Crawford. 

The  scene  represents  a  sitting  room  in  Marianas  home.  It  is  very 
cheaply  furnished.  There  is  a  door  at  back  centre,  and  also  ore  at 
R.  At  upper  left  is  a  curtained  window,  not  practicable.  In  the  centre 
is  a  table,  on  which  is  a  UgJded  lamp.  Near  the  window  is  a  couch. 
There  are  chairs  about  the  room,  and  a  few  cheap  pictures  on  the  walls. 
It  is  evening,  and  the  room  is  dimly  lighted. 

[Diagram] 

When  the  curtain  rises,  there  is  no  one  in  the  room,  but  in  a  moment 
the  door  at  rear  opens,  and  Katherine  enters  noiselessly.    She  is  a 


SCENARIOS  467 

pleasant  looking  woman  of  30.    She  is  followed  by  Dr.  Wells,  who 
closes  the  door  behind  him  very  softly,    lie  is  a  young  man,  with  a 
Van  Dyke  heard.   The  tiro  go  to  right  of  table,  and  Katherine  looks  at 
doctor  inquiringly.   He  speaks  with  some  hesitation. 
Dr.  Wells.   Ymi  want  t lie  truth? 
Katherine.  Of  course. 

Dr.  Wells.  I  think  he's  dying.  This  is  the  crisis,  and  the  chances 
are  a  thousand  to  one  against  him. 

Katherine.  I  in  afraid  my  sister  can't  bear  the  shock.  She  loves 
her  husband  more  than  I  can  tell  you,  Doctor. 

(They  are  discussing  the  case  when  Marian  enters  from  the 
rear.  She  lingers  a  moment  and  looks  back  into  the  other 
room,.  Then  she  sloivly  closes  the  door,  and  advances  to- 
wards the  otliers.  She  is  a  pretty  woman,  about  25,  but 
she  looks  pale  and  anxious. 
Dr.  Wells  and  Katherine  stop  talking  when  she  comes  near 
and  watch  her.  She  turns  to  the  Doctor  and  asks  for  his 
verdict.  He  doesn't  reply,  but  looks  inquiringly  at  Kath- 
erine. After  a  moment,  she  says  he'd  better  tell  her.  Very 
I  gently  he  breaks  the  news,  and  informs  her  that  her  hus- 

band will  probably  die.  The  disease  is  vicious  and  can't  be 
checked.) 
Marian.  (Anxiously.)  You  mean  my  husband  will  die? 
Dr.  Wells.  I  fear  so. 
Marian.  Don't  say  that,  Doctor.    It  will  kill  me.    You  don't 
know  what  John  means  to  me. 

(The  Doctor  assures  her  that  he  has  done  his  best,  and  the 

patient  is  now  in  the  hands  of  God.  He's  sorry  but  in  all 

honesty  he  believes  the  man  will  die. 

Marian  refuses  to  believe,  and  maintains  that  her  husband 

will  not  die.   No  doubt  he's  a  very  sick  man,  but  he  will 

live.   She  declares  she  has  sent  for  a  man  who  can  save 

him.) 

Marian.  You've  been  good,  Doctor,  and  God  will  bless  you. 

But  you  won't  blame  me  for  saying  that  perhaps  some  one  else 

might  look  at  the  case  differently.    You  don't  feel  hurt?    Don't 

blame  me,  but  I've  sent  for  Dr.  Crawford,  so  you  can  have  —  what 

do  you  call  it?  —  a  consultation.  I  know  he  can  save  my  husband's 

life. 

Dr.  Wells.  (Surprised.)  You  mean  Dr.  William  Crawford,  the 
famous  specialist? 


468  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Marian.  Yes.  Oh,  Doctor,  he's  so  wonderful! 

Dr.  Wells.  (Enthusiastically.)  Wonderful?  I  should  say  so.  He's 
one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  in  the  profession.  If  there's  any 
one  in  the  world  who  can  save  your  husband's  life,  he  is  the  man. 
(Doubtfully.)  But  can  you  pay  his  fee? 

SCENARIO 
THE  WINNING  OF  GENERAL  JANE 

(A  farce  of  three  persons,  a  dog,  and  a  gun  "that  wasn't  loaded") 

Cast 

Jane,  about  twenty. 

Aunt  Sophy,  her  maiden  aunt,  about  45. 

Bobby  Holloway,  a  lodger,  about  23. 

Place,  Jane's  bedroom.   Time  about  11  at  night 

SETTING.  Lower  left  a  closet,  door  opening  inward.  Upper  left 
a  door  leading  to  Aunt  Sophy's  room,  opening  inward.  Rear  centre, 
double-windows  set  in  a  shallow  alcove.  The  curtains  are  draped  to 
right  and  left.  Right,  up  stage,  a  fireplace  without  a  fire.  Left,  down 
stage,  a  dressing-table  with  mirror.  A  low  stool  stands  before  it.  Against 
rear  wall  to  left  a  washstand  half-hidden  by  a  Japanese  screen, 
shoulder  height.  Against  right  wall  and  about  halfway  down  stage  a 
bed.  It  is  low  and  preferably  wooden. 

[Diagram  of  Setting] 

At  rise  Jane  is  discovered  at  dressing-table  occupied  in  braiding 
her  hair.  Enter  Aunt  Sophy.  She  asks  Jane  if  Mr.  Holloway,  their 
single  lodger,  is  in  for  the  night.  Jane  replies  with  some  petulance  that 
she  does  not  know.  A  dissection  of  that  gentleman's  character  ensues 
in  which  Jane  anathematizes  him,  while  Aunt  Sophy,  despite  her 
avowed  dislike  for  all  things  masculine,  champions  his  cause.  At  last 
Jane  intimates  tJiat  in  all  probability  Mr.  Holloway  will  propose  to 
Aunt  Sophy  at  a  very  early  date.  The  latter  cannot  conceal  her  delight. 
She  is  not  content  with  Jane's  assurance  on  this  point  but  must  know 
how  she  discovered  the  state  of  Bobby's  affections.  Jane  finally  admits 
that  she  bases  her  deduction  upon  the  fact  that  he  "proposes  to  every- 
body, in  season  and  out!"  —  that  he  has  proposed  to  her,  Jane,  no 
less  than  237  times. 

Aunt  Sophy  is  hurt  and  shocked  at  this  revelation  of  perfidy  and 


SCENARIOS  469 

immediate!?/  sides  with  Jane,  declaring  that  she  will  oust  Mr.  Hollo- 
on  the  following  morning.  Jane  however  does  not  want  to  be  sided 
with .  1 1  'ith  true  fern  in  ine  variability  she  shifts  her  attitude  as  completely 
I  nit  Sophy  has  hers,  and  pleads  with  the  outraged  old  maid  to 
'se  her  decision.   She  shows  that  she  really  cares  for  Bobby  more 
than  at  first  appeared.  Aunt  Sophy  however  is  obdurate,  and  departs, 
y  Jane  almost  dissolved  in  tears. 
At  this  juncture  a  racket  arises  outside  Jane's  window.  It  is  a  mix- 
ture of  blasphemous  English,  growls  and  hurried  footsteps.    Jane 
starts  to  investigate,  but  seeing  an  arm  and  a  leg  thrust  hastily  over  the 
sill,  retreats  to  the  door  in  alarm.  Immediately  Bobby  climbs  in,  and  a 
smothered  exclamation  from  Jane  identifies  him.   He  glances  about 
hurriedly,  and  not  perceiving  her,  turns  his  attention  to  the  dog  who 
still  groivls  below.   He  epitomizes  him  with  surprising  fluency,  until 
.1      \  unable  to  stand  more,  interrupts.    This  precipitates  a  profuse 
apology  for  the  intrusion  and  other  things,  an  explanation,  and  later  a 
prop< 

Jane  is  angered  beyond  measure  not  only  at  this  invasion  of  her 
privacy  but  also  at  Bobby's  attitude  towards  the  whole  affair.    She 
orders  him  to  leave.  He  attempts  to  do  so  by  way  of  the  door. 
Jane.  (Frightened.)  W-w-where  are  you  going? 
Bobby.  (Shrugging.)  Hump!  —  to  heaven  —  eventually! 
Jane.  (Barring  way.)  N-n-not  through  Aunt  Sophy's  room! 

(She  informs  him  that  he  must  depart  the  way  he  came.   He 
consents  but  only  in  a  very  half-liearted  manner.  Between 
Aunt  Sophy  and  Towser  he  is  in  a  quandary.  After  sev- 
eral unsuccessful  starts  he  flatly  refuses  to  descend,  and 
upbraids  Jane  for  her  cruelty.  He  dwells  at  length  on  the 
horrors  of  dog-bites,  hydrophobia,  madness,  and  death.) 
Bobby.  (Injured.)  As  if  I  had  not  already  been  chewed  up  so 
that  I  can  scarcely  sit  —  (hastily)  —  I  mean  walk. 
Jane.  (Relenting.)  Gracious!  Bobby,  did  he  bite  you? 
Bobby.  Did  he? 

Jane.  (Seizing  bottle  from  table.)  Heavens!  You  must  put  some- 
thing on  it!  Some  antiseptic!  Bobby  come  here! 
Bobby.  Oh,  no,  no!  No,  it's  not  serious! 
Jane.  Come  here  this  instant! 
Bobby.  (Flatly.)  I  won't  do  it! 

(He  succeeds  so  well  in  working  upon  her  sympathies  that 
even  a  knock  at  Aunt  Sophy's  door  is  not  enough  to  make 
her  cliange  her  attitude.  She  now  as  obstinately  refuses  to 


47©  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

let  him  descend  to  certain  death  as  previously  he  had  re- 
fused to  do  it.  The  knocks  are  continued.  Jane  is  rapidly 
losing  her  head  when  it  suddenly  occurs  to  her  that  if  she 
stores  Bobby  away  under  the  bed  until  Towser  has  de- 
parted or  Aunt  Sophy  has  gone  to  sleep,  all  may  yet  be 
well.  While  Bobby  is  ensconcing  himself  in  this  new  posi- 
tion a  three  cornered  conversation  takes  place,  in  which 
Jane  becomes  more  and  more  involved.) 

Aunt  Sophy.  (Outside.)  Jane,  Jane,  are  you  ill? 

Jane.  111?  Oh,  oh!  I  don't  know! 

Aunt  Sophy.  Open  the  door  this  minute  or  I'll  break  it  down! 

Jane.  Break  it  down? 

Aunt  Sophy.  Yes,  this  instant! 

Jane.  Oh,  oh!  Don't  do  that!  It's  not  locked!  .  .  . 

It  may  be  interesting  to  compare  the  scenario  of  A  Doll's 
House  from  which  Ibsen  wrote  his  first  draft  with  his  orig- 
inal notes.  Here  is  perfect  illustration  of  the  difference  be- 
tween sketchy  notes  which  mean  much  to  the  writer  and  a 
scenario  which  at  least  broadly  will  convey  to  a  reader  the 
artistic  and  ethical  purposes  in  the  play  the  dramatist 
means  to  write. 

NOTES  FOR  THE  MODERN  TRAGEDY 

Rome,  19.  10,  78. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  spiritual  law,  two  kinds  of  conscience, 
one  in  man  and  another,  altogether  different,  in  woman.  They  do 
not  understand  each  other;  but  in  practical  life  the  woman  is 
judged  by  man's  law,  as  though  she  were  not  a  woman  but  a  man. 

The  wife  in  the  play  ends  by  having  no  idea  of  what  is  right  or 
wrong;  natural  feeling  on  the  one  hand  and  belief  in  authority  on 
the  other  have  altogether  bewildered  her. 

A  woman  cannot  be  herself  in  the  society  of  the  present  day, 
which  is  an  exclusively  masculine  society,  with  laws  framed  by 
men  and  with  a  judicial  system  that  judges  feminine  conduct 
from  a  masculine  point  of  view. 

She  has  committed  forgery,  and  she  is  proud  of  it;  for  she  did  it 
out  of  love  for  her  husband,  to  save  his  life.  But  this  husband, 
with  his  commonplace  principles  of  honour  is  on  the  side  of  the  law 
and  regards  the  question  with  masculine  eyes. 


SCENARIOS  471 

Spiritual  conflicts.  Oppressed  and  bewfldeved  by  the  belief  in 
authority,  she  losea  faith  in  her  moral  right  sad  ability  to  bring 
up  her  children.    Bitterness.    A  mother  m  modern  society,  Hke 

EUO  insects  who  go  away  and  die  wlu-n  the  lias  done  bet  duty 
in  the  propagation  of  the  race.1  Love  of  life,  of  home,  of  husband 
an. I  children  and  family.  Here  and  there  a  womanly  shaking-off 
of  her  thoughts.  Sudden  return  of  anxiety  and  terror.  She  must 
bear  it  all  alone.  The  catastrophe  approaches,  inexorably,  inevi- 
tably. Despair,  conflict,  and  destruction. 

(Krogstad  has  acted  dishonourably  and  thereby  become  well- 
to-do;  now  his  prosperity  does  not  help  him,  he  cannot  recover  his 
honour.)2  

Persons 

Stenborg,  a  Government  clerk. 

Nora,  his  wife. 

Miss  (Mrs.)  Linde  (a  widow). 

Attorney  Krogstad. 

Karen,  nurse  at  the  Stenborgs*. 

A  Parlour-Maid  at  the  Stenborgs'. 

A  Porter. 

The  Stenborgs'  three  little  children. 

Doctor  Hank. 


SCENARIO.    FIRST  ACT 


A  room  comfortably,  bid  not  showily,  furnished.  In  the  back,  on  the 
rigid,  a  door  leads  to  the  hall ;  on  the  left  another  door  leads  to  the 
room  or  office  of  the  master  of  the  house,  ichich  can  be  seen  when  the 
door  is  opened.   A  fire  in  the  stove.    Winter  day. 

She  enters  from  the  back,  humming  gaily  ;  she  is  in  outdoor  dress  and 
carries  several  parcels,  has  been  shopping.  As  she  opens  the  door, 
a  Porter  is  seen  in  the  hall,  carrying  a  Christmas-tree.  She :  Put  it 
down  there  for  the  present.  (Taking  out  her  purse.)  How  muchf 
Porter :  Fifty  ore.  She :  Here  is  a  croicn.  No,  keep  the  change.  The 
Porter  thanks  her  and  goes.  She  continues  humminp  and  smiling 
with  quiet  glee  as  she  opens  several  of  the  parcels  she  has  brought. 
Calls  off,  is  lie  at  home  t  Yes  I  At  first,  conversation  through  the  closed 
door ;  then  he  opens  it  and  goes  on  talking  to  her  while  continuing  to 
work  most  of  the  time,  standing  at  his  desk.  There  is  a  ring  at  the  hall- 

>  The  sentence  U  elliptical  in  the  oriRinnl. 

»  Ibsen's  Workshop,  pp.  91-9*.   Copyright,  1911,  by  Chas.  Scribner's  Sons.  New  York. 


472  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

door ;  he  does  not  want  to  be  disturbed ;  shuts  himself  in.  The  maid  opens 
the  door  to  her  mistress's  friend,  just  arrived  in  town.  Happy  surprise. 
Mutual  explanation  of  the  position  of  affairs.  He  has  received  the  post 
of  manager  in  the  new  joint-stock  bank  and  is  to  enter  on  his  duties 
at  tlw  New  Year;  all  financial  worries  are  at  an  end.  The  friend  has 
come  to  town  to  look  for  some  small  employment  in  an  office  or  what- 
ever may  present  itself.  Mrs.  Stenborg  gives  her  good  hopes,  is  certain 
that  all  will  turn  out  well.  The  maid  opens  the  front  door  to  the  debt- 
collector.  Mrs.  Stenborg,  terrified ;  they  exchange  a  few  words ;  he  is 
shown  into  the  office.  Mrs.  Stenborg  and  her  friend;  the  circumstances 
of  the  debt-collector  are  touched  upon.  Stenborg  enters  in  his  overcoat; 
has  sent  the  collector  out  the  other  way.  Conversation  about  the  friend's 
affairs;  hesitation  on  his  part.  He  and  the  friend  go  out;  his  wife  fol- 
lows them  into  the  hall;  the  Nurse  enters  with  the  children.  Mother 
and  children  play.  The  collector  enters.  Mrs.  Stenborg  sends  the  chil- 
dren out  to  the  left.  Great  scene  between  her  and  him.  He  goes.  Sten- 
borg enters;  has  met  him  on  the  stairs;  displeased;  wants  to  know 
what  he  came  back  for  ?  Her  support  f  No  intrigues.  His  wife  cau- 
tiously tries  to  pump  him.  Strict  legal  answers.  Exit  to  his  room.  She 
(repeating  her  words  wlien  the  collector  went  out) :  But  that's  impossi- 
ble. Why,  I  did  it  from  love  I 

SCENARIO.   SECOND  ACT 

The  last  day  of  the  year.  Midday.  Nora  and  the  old  Nurse.  Nora, 
impelled  by  uneasiness,  is  putting  on  her  things  to  go  out.  Anxious 
random  questions  of  one  kind  and  another  give  a  hint  that  thoughts  of 
death  are  in  her  mind.  Tries  to  banish  these  thoughts,  to  turn  it  off, 
hopes  that  something  or  other  may  intervene.  But  what  f  The  Nurse 
goes  off  to  the  left.  —  Stenborg  enters  from  his  room.  Short  dialogue 
between  him  and  Nora.  —  The  Nurse  re-enters,  looking  for  Nora;  the 
youngest  child  is  crying.  Annoyance  and  questioning  on  Stenborg' s 
part;  exit  the  Nurse;  Stenborg  is  going  in  to  the  children.  —  Doctor 
Hank  enters.  Scene  between  him  and  Stenborg.  —  Nora  soon  re- 
enters; she  has  turned  back;  anxiety  has  driven  her  home  again.  Scene 
between  her,  the  Doctor  and  Stenborg.  Stenborg  goes  into  his  room.  — 
Scene  between  Nora  and  the  Doctor.  The  Doctor  goes  out.  —  Nora 
alone.  —  Mrs.  Linde  enters.  Short  scene  between  her  and  Nora.  — 
Krogstad  enters.  Short  scene  beticeen  him  and  Mrs.  Linde  and  Nora. 
Mrs.  Linde  goes  in  to  the  children.  —  Scene  between  Krogstad  and 
Nora. —  She  entreats  and  implores  him  for  the  sake  of  her  little  children; 


SCENARIOS  473 

in  vain.  Krogstad  goes  out.  The  letter  {3  seen  to  fall  from  outside  into 
the  lettvr-box.  —  Mrs.  Linde  re-enters  after  a  short  'pause.  Scene  be- 
'i  her  and  Nora.  Half  confession.  Mrs.  Linde  goes  out.  — 
Nora  alone.  —  Stenborg  enters.  Scene  between  him  and  Nora.  He 
wants  to  empty  the  letter-box.  Entreaties,  jests,  half  playful  persua- 
sion. He  promises  to  Id  business  wait  till  after  New  Year's  Day;  but 
at  12  o'clock  midnight  — !  Exit.  Nora  alone.  Nora  (looking  at  the 
clock):  It  is  fire  o'clock.  Fire;  —  seven  hours  till  midnight.  Twenty- 
four  hours  till  the  next  midnight.  Tweniy-four  and  seven  —  thirty- 
one.    Thirty-one  hours  to  live.  — 

THIRD  ACT 

A  muffled  sound  of  dance  music  is  heard  from  the  floor  above.  A 
lighted  lamp  on  the  table.  Mrs.  Linde  sits  in  an  armchair  and  ab- 
sently turns  the  pages  of  a  book,  tries  to  read,  but  seems  unable  to  fix 
her  attention;  once  or  twice  she  looks  at  her  watch.  Nora  comes  down 
from  the  dance;  uneasiness  has  driven  her;  surprise  at  finding  Mrs. 
Linde,  wlio  pretends  that  she  wanted  to  see  Nora  in  her  costume. 
H  timer,  displeased  at  her  going  away,  comes  to  fetch  her  back.  The 
Doctor  also  enters,  bid  to  say  good-bye.  Meanwhile  Mrs.  Linde  has 
gone  into  the  side  room  on  the  right.  Scene  between  the  Doctor,  Helmer, 
and  Nora.  He  is  going  to  bed,  he  says,  never  to  get  up  again;  they  are 
not  to  come  and  see  him;  there  is  ugliness  about  a  death-bed.  He  goes 
out.  Helmer  goes  upstairs  again  with  Nora,  after  the  latter  has  ex- 
changed a  few  words  of  farewell  with  Mrs.  Linde.  Mrs.  Linde  alone. 
Then  Krogstad.  Scene  and  explanation  between  them.  Both  go  out. 
Nora  and  the  children.  Then  she  alone.  Then  Helmer.  He  takes  the 
letters  out  of  the  letter-box.  Short  scene;  goodnight;  he  goes  into  his 
room.  Nora  in  despair  prepares  for  the  final  step;  is  already  at  the 
door  when  Helmer  enters  with  the  open  letter  in  his  hand.  Great  scene. 
A  ring.  Letter  to  Nora  from  Krogstad.  Final  scene.  Divorce.  Nora 
leaves  the  house.1 

Finally,  here  is  the  full  scenario  of  a  play  which  made 
a  great  success  both  in  England  and  the  United  States 
and  was  seen  by  practically  all  the  Continental  countries, 
namely,  Kismet.  Notice  how  well  it  fulfils  the  requirements 
for  a  good  scenario  stated  in  this  chapter,  not  because  Mr. 
Knobloch  had  these  rules  in  mind  as  he  composed  it,  but 

»  Ibten'$  Workthop,  pp.  93-95. 


474 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


because,  as  a  trained  dramatist,  he  instinctively  gave  these 
qualities  to  his  scenario.  Carefully  studied  in  relation  to  the 
essentials  of  scenario  writing  just  stated,  it  should  remove 
all  doubt  in  the  mind  of  a  student  as  to  what  a  good  scenario 
is  and  why  it  is  an  essential  preliminary  to  a  good  play. 

KISMET 

or 
HAJJI'S  DAY 

Scenario  for  a  play  in  three  acts,  by 
EDWARD  KNOBLOCH  « 


CHARACTERS 


(in  order 
Original  Names 


Hajji. 


A  Priest. 

Guide. 

Sheikh  of  the  Desert. 

Young  Beggar. 

Sultan. 

His  Vizier. 

Shopkeeper  I. 

Shopkeeper  II. 

Zira. 

Old  Woman  I. 

Officer  of  Guard. 

Executioner. 

His  Scribe. 

Old  Woman  II. 

Executioner's  Wife. 

Gaoler. 

Peasant.       \  Trial    scene 

Two  Wives.  )  Sultan*s. 

Dancers,  Soldiers,  Courtiers, 


of  their  appearance) 

Later  Names 

Hajj  (as  Hajji  is  Persian,  Hajj 
Arabian). 

Imam  Mahmud. 

Nasir. 

Jawan. 

Kasim. 

The  Caliph  Abdallah. 

Abu  Bakr. 

Amru. 

Fayd. 

Marsinah. 

Narjis. 

Captain  of  the  Watch. 

Mansur,  Chief  of  Police. 
C  Turned  into  two  characters: 
<  Kafur,  the  Sworder. 
(.  Afife,  the  Hunchback. 

Kut-Al-Kulub. 
Kutayt. 

■j  Cut  out  in  final  draft. 

Women,  the  People. 


*  Printed  by  permission  of  Mr.  Knobloch  from  his  own  manuscript. 


SCENARIOS  475 

ACT  I 

IM  later  introduced  before  the  curtain.] 
Scene  1.  A  Street  before  a  Mosque. 
Scene  2.  The  Bazaar. 
Scene  3.  Courtyard  of  a  Poor  Uouse. 
Scene  ±.  Courtyard  of  Executioner's  Uouse. 

ACT  n 

Scene  1.  Interior  Room  of  Executioner's  House. 

Scene  2.  Courtyard  of  a  Poor  House.  (Act  7,  Scene  3.) 

Scene  3.  The  Sultan's  Audience  Hall. 

Scene  4.  A  Dungeon. 

ACT  m 

Scene  1.  Courtyard  of  a  Poor  House  (Act  7,  Scene  3)  [cut  in  final 

version]. 
Scene  2.  The  Bath  of  the  Executioner's  House. 
Scene  3.  A  street  before  a  Mosque.  (Act  7,  Scene  1.) 

The  Scene  is  laid  in  Bagdad. 

The  action  takes  place  from  morning  to  night. 

ACT  I 
SCENE  1 

A  narrow  street  with  stone  steps  leading  up  to  a  Mosque  left.  (Small 
set.) 

The  sun  is  just  beginning  to  rise. 

Asleep  on  a  large  stone  which  juts  out  from  the  angle  of  the  wall  C. 
sits  Hajji  wrapped  in  his  beggar's  cloak.  On  the  minaret  of  the  Mosque 
appears  the  priest,  a  venerable  white  bearded  man.  He  calls  to  prayer. 
[See  alterations  in  actual  play.] 

The  crowd  begins  to  pass  into  the  Mosque  as  the  sun  rises.  Hajji 
wakes  up,  rubs  his  eyes,  and  has  a  drink  of  water  from  a  gourd  which 
he  draws  out  from  behind  his  seat.  He  begins  to  beg  from  the  pass- 
ers-by. 

An  Old  Man  (Jawan)  preceded  by  a  guide  (Nasir)  is  carried  across 
the  scene  in  a  litter.  He  fixes  his  gaze  on  Hajji  and  is  carried  off  into 
the  Mosque.  The  guide  remains  in  the  portico.  Hajji  follows  the  Old 
Man  on  his  knees  to  Hie  steps  of  the  Mosque,  begging. 


476  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

As  he  does  so  a  lean  Beggar  of  a  younger  cast  of  countenance  takes 
Hajji's  place. 

Hajji  returns  to  his  seat. 

Hajji.  Hajji  curses  young  Beggar. 

Explains  young  Beggar  must  be  stran- 
ger. 

Who  is  he  that  he  does  not  know  of 
Hajji? 

He  has  sat  on  this  seat  for  thirty  years. 
His  father  has  sat  there  before  him. 
His  grandfather  before  him. 
Great  pride  in  his  ancestry  of  beggardom. 
Young  Beggar.  (Kasim.)  The  young  Beggar  tries  to  retaliate. 

Hajji  tells  him  to  go  and  sit  on  a  seat 
round  the  corner  —  "where  other  swine 
have  sat  before  you." 
He  kicks  the  young  Beggar. 
The  Guide  (Nasir)  of  the  Old  Man  comes  down  to  interfere. 
The  Young  Beggar  (Kasim)  sulks  into  a  corner  nursing  his  kick. 
Hajji.  Hajji  and  Guide  get  into  conversation. 

The  Guide.  (Kasim.)       Guide  explains  Rich  Man  here  on  a  pil- 
grimage. 

Is  really  a  famous  old  Robber  Chief,  a 
Curd, 

One  of  the  Sheikhs  of  the  desert:  all  of 
whom  were  notorious  and  banished  by 
late  Sultan  (Caliph). 
Sheikh  old  and  dying. 
Come  to  pray  to  Allah  to  restore  his  son 
to  him  before  he  dies  (if  son  still  alive). 
[Sultan  is  used  through-  Sheikh  was  attacked  by  Sultan's  troops 

out   this    scenario  —  for  twenty-five  years  ago,  and  his  son,  then 

which,  in  play,  Caliph  is  four  years  old,  carried  off. 

substituted.      Caliph    is   Hajji  says  he  knows  what  that  means. 

correct,  as  being  Arabian.  Had  his  wife  carried  off  many  years  ago. 

The  title  Sultan  is  of  later  The  only  woman  he  ever  loved  —  really 

origin  and  of  Turkish  in-  loved. 

fluence.]  The  Guide:  "I  know,  Hajji,  and  I  pity 

you. 
I  have  a  proposition  to  make: 


SCENARIOS  477 

I  know  the  Sheikh  will  give  money  to 
charity  to  save  his  soul  just  before  dying. 
Now  if  you  could  predict  something  to 
him, — 

Say  that  he  will  find  his  son  again,  — 
The  Sheikh  will  give  you  money.'' 
And  for  this  advice  Guide  and  Hajji  are 
to  divide  money. 
Hajji  agrees  to  this. 

Prayers  are  over. 

The  crowd  disperses  coming  from  the  Mosque. 
Sheikh  is  carried  out  of  the  Mosque  in  his  litter. 
Hajji.  Hajji  throws  himself  in  front  of  litter. 

Crying  out:  "Listen  to  me. 
I  can  see  why  you  have  come. 
You  are  looking  for  some  one,  —  your 
son. 

You  shall  find  him.  Give  me  money." 
Sheikh  amazed  at  Hajji's  knowledge. 
Hajji  says  his  wits  have  been  sharpened 
through  grief  and  suffering. 
"I  had  a  wife  and  a  son. 
They  were  stolen  by  my  enemy. 
My  son  was  murdered, 
My  wife  carried  off. 

The  swine  of  a  beggar  who  sat  round  the 
corner  did  it. 

He  is  my  enemy.  The  curse  of  my  life." 
Sheikh  holds  out  purse,  chinking  it. 
Hajji  blesses  Sheikh. 
Sheikh  bursts  out  laughing. 
Reveals  himself  to  Hajji. 
He  (Sheikh)  is  his  enemy. 
He  ran  away  with  Hajji's  wife. 
And  became  a  robber  under  her  inspir- 
[Some  of  this  is  incor-  ing  influence.  One  of  a  band  of  robbers 
porated  in  the  scene  with  that  attacked  the  caravans. 

>.]  It  is  their  son  (by  Hajji's  wife)  that  the 

Sultan  captured  when  he  attacked  the 
robbers. 


478 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


Hajji.  (Alone.) 


Laughs  at  Hajji  for  blessing  him. 
Thanks  him  ironically. 
Throws  the  purse  and  is  carried  off  by 
his  men. 

Hajji  shouts  curses  after  him. 
And  kicks  away  the  money. 
He  is  torn  in  two  by  the  hatred  for  his 
enemy. 
Young  Beggar,  in  corner.  And  the  love  of  the  money. 

What  he  could  do  with  the  money. 
He  could  do  so  much  for  Zira   (the 
daughter), 

The  pride  of  his  heart,  the  consolation 
of  his  old  age, 

The  one  balm  to  his  fatherly  heart. 
But  his  enemy's  money? 
Never. 

But  Zira?  Trinkets  for  her.  Her  laugh- 
ter. 

Her  smile. 

But  the  Sheikh's  money  —  The  beast 
who  robbed  him  of  his  wife. 
Who  was  Zira's   mother?  No   one.  A 
dancing  girl,  a  passing  whim.  The  fancy 
of  a  late  spring. 

But  his  wife  —  the  one  that  the  Sheikh 
took  —  she  was  everything.  His  joy,  his 
pride,  the  first  finding  of  his  manhood. 
To  the  purse:  "I'll  not  touch  thee."  (He 
jpits  at  it.) 

He  sees  some  one  coming. 
He  quickly  pockets  the  purse. 


[This  was  cut  at  re- 
hearsals, as  halting  the 
action,] 


Hajji. 
Guide. 
Young 


The  Guide  reenters 

Guide  comes  to  claim  half  of  his  money. 

Hajji  does  not  know  anything  of  the 

bargain; 

"I  saw  no  purse." 

Guide  furious. 

Hajji  laughs  at  him. 

He  appeals  to  young  Beggar. 


SCENARIOS  479 

Was  there  a  purse  there! 

The  young  Beggar  sides  with  Hajji. 

Guide  off,  furious,  vowing  vengeance. 

Hajji  says,  "Go  thy  way  in  peace." 
Hojju 

Young  Beggar.  Young  Beggar:  "What  do  I  get  for  sid- 

ing with  you?" 

"What?" 

"I  saw  you  pick  up  the  purse. 

I  heard  the  agreement:  you  promised 

him  half." 

Hajji  says  the  money  was  given  him, 

not  by  the  Sheikh,  but  by  fate. 

We  all  have  a  day  in  life. 

This  is  Hajji's  day. 

There  is  a  future  before  him. 

The  Sheikh  rose  from  the  mud  to  power 

and  riches. 

Why  not  Hajji? 

Fortune  is  smiling  on  him  at  last. 

He  will  forsake  the  seat  he  has  sat  on 

these  thirty  years. 

Go  forth  into  the  world. 

What  shall  he  give  the  Young  Beggar? 

His  throne  and  his  beggar's  cloak. 
[Here  the  Priest  is  in-   (He  instates  him  in  his  seat  and  goes  off.) 
troduced  in  the  play  to 
heighten  the  effect  at  the 
end.  Also  to  make  him  a 
friend  of  Hajji's,  as  Hajji 

sends  his  daughter  to  him  Curtain 

at  the  end  of  the  Hareem 
scene.  Act  HI,  Scene  l.J 


480  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


SCENE  2 
The  Bazaar.  {Large  set) 

Shopkeeper  I  and  Shopkeeper  II  lying  outside  of  adjoining  shops. 
They  are  very  friendly. 

Crowd. 

Young  Sultan  (Caliph)  rides  through  the  bazaar  on  a  white  donkey. 
His  Vizier  (Abu  Bakr)  follows  him.   Also  guards. 

Hajji  appears.  Political  discussion. 

Shopkeeper  I.  Young  Sultan  just  come  through  bazaar. 

Shopkeeper  II.  Hajji  regrets  he  missed  seeing  him. 

Sultan  only  been  Sultan  ten  days. 

[Read  Caliph  for  Sultan.]  Nephew  of  old  Sultan  now  dead. 

Young  Sultan  brought  up  in  a  mon- 
astery, 

[In  the  play,  the  shop-    Said  to  be  a  dreamer  and  a  poet, 
keepers  have  a  scene  of  The  real  ruler  said  to  be  the  Executioner, 
explanation  before  Hajj  A  favourite  of  late  Sultan, 
enters,  —  altered     when  Young  man,  too,  but  very  strong, 
writing  play.]  Very  cruel  and  selfish. 

Young  Sultan  does  not  see  much  of 
Executioner  (Mansur). 
Supposed  to  disappear  on  nightly  ex- 
peditions, 

To  get  to  know  his  people, 
To  have  some  love  adventures. 
Has  been  brought  up  strictly  in  monas- 
tery. 

Has   never  yet,  they  say,  tested  the 
"  charm  of  his  beard." 

[This  altered.  See  note  Hajji  listens  to  all  this  humbly, 
above.   In  the  play  Hajj   Sitting  almost  under  the  counter, 
enters  here.]  Then  begins  to  finger  stuffs. 

The  shopkeeper  is  going  to  drive  him 

off. 

But  Hajji  is  in  earnest. 

Shows  his  purse.  He  means  to  buy. 

Clothes  are  forthcoming. 

He  selects  some. 


SCENARIOS 


481 


Shopkeeper  No.  I. 

and 
Shopkeeper  No.  II 


[Here  Nasir  the  Guide 
is  introduced  to  give  away 
Hajj.  This  was  done 
when  the  play  was  revised 
for  production.] 


Once  he  has  gone  to  the  bath  and  the 

barber    he    will    be    resplendent  —  as 

noble  as  the  noblest. 

Hajji  asks  the  price. 

It  is  very  high. 

He  begins  to  bargain. 

Shopkeeper  No.  II  chimes  in. 

Hajji   pits   Shopkeeper  No.  I  against 

No.  n. 

They  quarrel. 

Hajji  fans  the  quarrel  into  flame. 
They  almost  come  to  blows. 
Hajji  escapes  with  his  clothes. 

The  shopkeepers  notice  his  escape. 
They  combine  at  once  against  the  com- 
mon  enemy. 

Shopkeeper  I  will  go  for  the  guard, 
And  have  Hajji  followed  and  caught. 
Shopkeeper  H  to  meet  him  at  the  Ex- 
ecutioner's to  witness  against  Hajji. 


Curtain 


SCENE  3 

(For  "Zira"  read  "Marsinah.") 

Zira's  home.    Small  courtyard  of  a  poor  house.    On  right  side  a 
large  gate  backing  to  street.  Fountain  in  courtyard. 


Old  Woman. 

Zira,  the  daughter  of 
Hajji. 

[Marsinah  works.  This 
was  altered  when  writing 
play,  because  of  Arabian 
embroidery  frame  seen 
in  the  Museum  of  Tunis.] 


Old  woman  is  spinning. 

Zira  is  lazily  hanging  her  hand  into 

fountain.  (She  works  instead.) 

Old    Woman    reprimands  her  for    not 

working. 

She  has  changed  in  last  three  days. 

Zira,  who   hides   her   wools,  says   her 

thread  has  given  out. 


482  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Old  Woman  will  go  to  bazaar  for  thread. 

Locks  door  carefully,  going  out. 
Zira  springs  up  and  goes  to  the  casement  in  Courtyard  and 
then,  plucking  a  rose,  throws  it  out.  She  then  unlocks  case- 
ment and  goes  back  to  the  fountain. 

Young  Sultan  appears  in  simple  clothes,  climbing  in. 
Zira.  Love  scene. 

Young  Sultan.  His  madness  to  come  at  daytime. 

Since  he  saw  her  first  three  nights  ago 

from  neighboring  roof-tops  cannot  rest. 

She  asks  who  he  is. 

He  is  so  different  from  her  father. 

His  hands  so  beautiful. 

He  has  love  scene, 

In  which  they  exchange  rhymed  couplets 

In  Arabian  Nights  fashion. 

He  puts  a  question  (line  one  and  two 

rhyming) 

She  caps  it  (line  three  not  rhyming,  but 

line  four  rhyming  with  one  and  two). 

The  girl  is  witty  but  natural. 

This  charms  the  Sultan  beyond  measure. 

All  the  women  he  has  had  presented  to 

him  are  so  stupid. 

She  says:  "'All  the  women'!'*    Who  is 

he? 

He  says  a  simple  scribe  —  brought  up 

in  a  monastery.    His  uncle  wishes  him 

to  marry. 

He  has  never  loved  before, 

Till  meeting  Zira. 

They  embrace. 
Noise  of  key  in  gate.  They  hear  noise. 

They   separate  —  He  will   come    back 

after  sundown  to  see  her.  She  gives  him 

a  rose.   Then  he  will  tell  her  something 

which  will  surprise  her. 

He  escapes  through  the  window. 
Zira  back  to  fountain,  (to  her  work). 


SCENARIOS  483 

Old  Woman  reenters  breathless. 

Old  Woman.  Old  Woman  says  Zira's  father  is  coming. 

Zira.  Thing  lie  has  never  done  during  daytime. 

Luckily  she  saw  him  as  she  returned 
from  bazaar. 

He  was  coming  out  of  Public  Bath, 
Beautifully  dressed. 
They  pretend  to  be  busy  working. 

Noise  of  key. 
Hajji  arrives,  dressed  in  good  clothes,  curls  trimmed  and 
beard  combed. 
Hajji.  Greetings. 

Zira.  Zira  admires  her  father. 

Old  Woman.  Old  Woman  sent  off  to  get  meal  ready. 

Hajji.  Hajji  has  great  plans  for  his  daughter. 

Zira.  His  affection  for  her  profound. 

He  plans  for  her  future. 

She  is  very  charming  to  him, 

As  she  naturally  wishes  to  hide  her  love 

affair,  and  get  into  his  good  graces. 

She  takes  out  her  guitar. 

Begins  to  sing  to  him. 

He  sways  before  her  admiringly  on  his 


Says  she  is  beautiful. 
[This    altered    in    the  Her  mother  was  not  beautiful, 
writing  of  play.]  Not  like  his  wife  that  he  loved 

Not  like  his  son  now  dead. 
But  she  is  more  beautiful  than  all, 
The  light  of  his  eyes. 
She  laughs  and  sings. 
He  claps  his  hands  in  ecstasy 
He  has  great  ambitions  for  her. 

A  knock  on  the  door. 
Zira  is  sent  by  her  father  into  the  inner 
house. 

The  Old  Woman  comes  out  of  house  and 
says  it  will  be  some  pedlar  at  door. 
She  opens. 


484  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

The  Officer  of  the  Guard  and  Guard  enter  with  the  Shopkeeper  I 

Hajji.  Shopkeeper   accuses   Hajji   of  stealing 

Shopkeeper.  garments  he  has  on. 

Officer.  Hajji  denies  it. 

Shopkeeper  will  have  him  taken  before 
the  Executioner  (Mansur). 
Hajji  protests. 

He  is  taken  off  in  spite  of  his  assurances 
that  the  Shopkeeper  is  a  madman. 
[Re-introduction  of  Na- 
sir,   saying,    "I   saw   no 
purse!"     Change    made 
during  rehearsals]  Curtain 

SCENE  4 

Hall  in  Executioner's  House  {large  set).   A  colonnade  at  hack, 
showing  courtyard. 

Executioner  (Mansur).  Executioner  very  discontented. 
His  Scribe  (Afife),  an  Young  Sultan  means  to  curtail  Execu* 
old  man.  tioner's  prerogatives. 

[Kafur  his  Sworder,  —  Executioner  was  old  Sultan's  favorite, 
added    when    play    was  Scribe  and  Executioner  plan  to  assas- 
written.    This  first  scene  sinate  Sultan, 
is  enlarged  in  play  by  a  They  need  a  clever  man. 
letter  from  the  Caliph.   Whom  shall  they  get? 
See  play.] 

Hajji  is  brought  by  the  Guard,  followed  by  Shopkeeper  and 
a  Crowd,  in  which  is  the  Guide  of  Scene  1. 
Hajji.  Hajji  accused  by  Shopkeeper  I. 

Executioner.  Shopkeeper  II  bearing  No.  I  witness. 

Scribe.  Hajji  protests. 

Guide.  Meant   to   pay  —  Excitement   of  new 

Shopkeeper  I.  clothes  made  him  forget. 

Shopkeeper  II.  Produces  money. 

Crowd.  Where  did  he  get  his  money? 

Sheikh  of  desert. 
They  all  laugh. 

Sheikh  of  desert  does  not  give  money. 
Sheikhs  are  outlaws,  robbers. 


SCENARIOS  485 

Not  allowed  in  town. 

Hajji  says  he  is  in  town. 

Notices  Guide  (Nasir)  in  crowd. 

Appeals  to  Guide  — 

Guide  says  it  is  true  that  Sheikh  is  in 

town. 

Then,  says  Executioner,  Sheikh  must  be 

taken  before  Sultan. 

All  Curds  banished  by  old  Sultan. 

Sultan  has  an  audience  this  afternoon. 

Sheikh  an  exile  (by  old  Sultan). 

Executioner  cannot  allow  the  word  of  the 

deceased  monarch  to  be  disregarded. 

Sends  Guide  off  to  show  the  Guard  the 

caravansary  at  which  Sheikh  is  stopping. 

Hajji  interrupts. 

One  word. 

He  asks  Guide  did  he,  the  Sheikh,  not 

throw  Hajji  a  purse. 

Guide  repeating  Hajji's  words  (Scene  1) 

"I  saw  no  purse." 

All  laugh. 

Guide  off  with  the  Guard. 
[Afterwards,  "his  hand  Executioner  orders  Hajji  to  have  his 
cut  off,"  as  this  is  the  law  ears  cut  off. 
of  the  Koran.     Change  Hajji  discourses  on  Fate,  Kismet, 
made  when  writing  play.]   Is  very  witty. 

Executioner  becomes  interested  in  Haj- 
ji's brilliancy. 

Hajji  is  pardoned  suddenly  by  Execu- 
tioner. 

Executioner  does  more. 

He  takes  Hajji  into  his  household 

Into  his  personal  guard. 

A  sword  is  sent  for. 

Hajji  kneels  in  gratitude  at  the  Execu- 
tioner's feet. 

"His  servant  always." 

The  sword  is  brought  in. 

Executioner  takes  it  and  hands  it  to 

Hajji. 


486  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

"Rise,  Hajji,  and  learn  to  use  this  sword 
in  my  service." 
Hajji  rises. 

He  begs  he  may  begin  his  career  by  an 
act  of  clemency. 
Executioner  grants  permission. 
Hajji  makes  the  Shopkeepers  kneel,  for- 
gives them  for  daring  to  accuse  a  serv- 
ant of  the  Executioner's  of  stealing  — 
tickles  their  beards  with  his  sword  and 
orders  them  to  pay  a  fine  to  the  Exe- 
cutioner. 

They  leave  more  dead  than  alive. 
Hajji  turns  to  Executioner. 
B.  "Have  I  begun  well?" 
E.  "The  beginning  is  nothing.  Go  now 
and  the  Captain  will   instruct  you  in 
your  duties." 

H.  {with  enormous  swagger)  "Captain?" 
He  goes  out,  the  rest  following  him. 

The  Scribe.  Is  amazed  at  Executioner's  clemency. 

Executioner.  E.  "  Don't  you  see  why  I  have  pardoned 

him?" 

S.  "No,  Master." 
E.  "This  man  shall  do  the  deed." 
S.  "The  deed?" 
E.  "Murder  the  Sultan  for  me." 
S.  "I  see." 
(They  both  turn  and  look  after  Hajji  who  is  seen  tra* 
versing  the  courtyard  at  the  back  and  twirling  his  mous- 
taches, the  servants  all  bowing  low  to  him.) 

Curtain 


SCENARIOS 


487 


ACT  II 

An  inner  chamber  in  Executioner* a  Rouse.  Door  leading  to  Hareem. 
[This  is  the  same  hall  as  at  the  end  of  Act  I,  only  that  curtains 
are  drawn  to  hide  the  courtyard.] 


BajjL 

■ut  i  oner. 

[Coffee  and  smoking 
suppressed,  as  both  were 
found  to  be  anachronisms. 

[This  altered.  Eastern 
men  do  not  speak  of  their 
wives  to  strangers.] 


[See  play.  All  of  this 
scene  was  split  in  half, 
and  Mansur  does  not  now 
suggest  the  assassination 
till  at  the  end  of  the 
second  half.  The  reason 
is  clear:  Hajj  could  not 
have  a  love  scene  (as  he 
does  now)  if  he  were 
brooding  about  the  as- 
sassination. This  was  al- 
tered in  rehearsal  at  the 
ition  of  Mr.  Grim- 
wood,  who  played  Man- 
sur in  England.] 


Executioner    and    Scribe  seated   on  a 

platform  drinking  coffee  and  smoking. 

Hajji  seated  below  them  entertaining 

them  with  amorous  stories. 

They  are  all  laughing. 

Hajji  finishes  a  story. 

Executioner  says  it  reminds  him  of  his 

principal  wife. 

A  slight  pause. 

The  Executioner  gives  Scribe  a  look  as 

if  to  say  "To  business." 

He  says  to  Hajji  — 

How  would  Hajji  like  to  become  a  great 

power  in  the  state? 

He  broaches  plan  of  assassinating  the 

Sultan. 

Hajji  hesitates. 

Executioner  unfolds  scheme. 

There  is  an  audience  in  half  an  hour. 

Hajji  can  come  as  a  Fakir. 

Has  told  Executioner  he  could  juggle  — 

used  to  play  tricks  at  his  corner  when 

begging. 

Hajji  could  get  close  to  Sultan  and  kill 

him. 

No  danger  to  Hajji, 

As  the  Guards  are  under  command  of 

Executioner 

Executioner  will  be  there. 

But,  of  course,  Hajji  must  under  no 

condition  recognize  the  Executioner. 

Hajji  feels  doubts. 

Executioner  fills  him  full  of  promises. 

Executioner  will  be  made  Sultan. 

Hajji  shall  become  Executioner. 


488  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Executioner  off  to  put  on  his  armour  for 

audience. 

Scribe  goes  with  him. 

Executioner:  "Think  it  over.     If  you 

don't  like  it  —  there  is  always  room  for 

a  strangled  body  in  the  river." 

Hajji  (Alone).  "So  this  is  why  I  was  pardoned  this 

morning? 

Oh,  Hajji!   What  a  fool  you  are! 
And  you  thought  your  personal  charm 
did  it  all." 
Hajji.  Door   of  Hareem    opens.   Old  Woman 

Old  Woman  No  II.        No.  II  appears  with  a  note,  gives  it  to 
[Changed  to  young  Hajji. 

slave  Miskah.    The  note  Hajji  reads  it,  smiles  and  nods, 
becomes  a  message,  with  Old  Woman  disappears, 
dialogue    between    Hajj 
and  Miskah] 

Hajji  (Alone).  "After  all  I  cannot  be  so  utterly  with- 

out charm,  if  this  can  happen  to  me." 
He  twirls,  his  moustaches  up  and  looks 
at  himself  in  the  blade  of  his  sword. 

Old   Woman  No.   II  reenters   with  veiled  woman   (Executioner's 
Wife).  Old  Woman  stands  guard. 

Hajji.  The  Wife  has  seen  him  from  her  window. 

Wife.  As  he  crossed  the  courtyard  at  noon,  she 

lost  her  heart  to  him. 

Her  husband  neglects  her. 

She  comes  to  Hajji  for  sympathy. 

Hajji  makes  love  to  her. 

She  refuses  to  unveil,  —  at  least,  at  once. 

She  makes  appointment  with  him. 

To  meet  him  in  the  Executioner's  Bath 

at  moonrise. 

All  the  women  bathe  then. 

She  will  leave  a  little  screen  unlatched 

that  leads  to  the  furnaces  under  the 

baths. 


SCENARIOS 


489 


Executioner. 

Hajji. 

Scribe. 


These  furnaces  reached  also  from  rum's 

quarters  through  the  door  in  the  Court. 

(She  points  it  out  to  him.) 

He  can  come  and  see  her  there  in  Bath, 

when  the  other  women  are  back  in  the 

Hareem. 

The  Executioner  never  returns  from  the 

Sultan  till  after  supper. 

They  hear  a  noise. 

She  withdraws. 

'Hajji  struts  about  in  great  glee. 
He  hears  Executioner  coming 
He  throws  himself  on  his  knees  and 
prays. 

Executioner  returns  armed. 
What  has  Hajji  decided? 
Hajji   says  he  has  been  wrestling  in 
prayer. 

He  cannot  make  up  his  mind  to  kill  Sul- 
tan, a  descendant  of  the  Prophet. 
Executioner  says  he  also  is  a  descendant 
of  Prophet. 

Hajji  is  accused  of  cowardice. 
He  denies  it. 

He  says  he  has  ties  that  bind  him. 
The  risk  is  too  great  because  of  his 
daughter,  his  daughter,  Zira. 
He  tells  about  her. 

Finally  he  consents  to  kill  Sultan  on  one 
condition. 

No  matter  what  happens  to  him  the 
Executioner  must  marry  the  daughter. 
The  Executioner  consents. 
Hajji  is  overjoyed. 

He  quite  forgets  his  own  danger  when  he 
thinks  his  daughter  will  be  the  Sultana. 
He  will  hurry  off  to  his  daughter's  house, 
And  have  her  conveyed  to  Executioner's 
house  after  sun-down. 
Too  beautiful  to  pass  through  the  streets 
at  day  time. 


49o 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


[When  the  play  was 
written,  the  mid-after- 
noon call  to  prayer  was 
introduced  here  as  a 
Curtain.] 


Begs  for  a  guard  to  convey  her. 

Once  he  has  arranged  with  her  he  will 

come  on  to  young  Sultan's  palace,  — 

"The  Sultan  who  will  be  dead.    Who 

is  dead!" 

He  hurries  off  in  great  exultation. 


Curtain 


SCENE  2 

ZMs  home.  Same  scene  as  Scene  3,  Act  I.    Small  courtyard. 
Zira  sits  with  her  guitar  singing  a  love  song. 


Zira. 

Old  Woman. 
[Cut  when  play  was 
written.] 


Hajji. 

Zira. 

Old  Woman, 


[Altered  during  rehear- 
sal. The  guard,  —  eu- 
nuchs of  Mansur  —  take 
the  daughter  away  at 
once.  Hajj  remains  on 
the  scene,  smiling  in  a 
self-satisfied  fashion.] 


Zira  tries  to  get  the  Old  Woman  to  go 

out  that  night. 

Old  Woman  suspicious. 

Zira  calms  her  fears. 

Coaxes  her,  pets  her. 

Hajji  arrives. 

Hajji  has  come  to  break  news  to  Zira. 

Great  news! 

He  is  going  to  give  her  to  Executioner 

as  wife. 

Zira  dumb  with  horror. 

Violent  scene  of  cursing  and  cajoling. 

Finally  she  rebels. 

The   Old   Woman   agrees   with   Hajji 

whenever  he  appeals  to  her. 

He  finally  calls  in  the  Guard,  and  makes 

them  guard  door. 

At  sundown  they  are  to  take  the  girl  to 

Executioner's  house. 

Ungrateful  child! 

Zira  in  tears.  Hajji  off. 


Curtain 


SCENARIOS  '491 

SCENE  3 

The  Sultan* s  Audience  Hall  (The  Caliph's  Diwan).  (Large  set.) 

Sultan  if  rated  on  a  Divan. 

His  Vizier  by  his  side. 

Dances  of  Women. 

Sultan  melancholy.  He  says  to  Vizier  thai  all  these  dances  are 
not fiing  to  the  faded  rose  in  his  hand. 

Hour  for  audience  strikes. 

The  women  dismissed. 

The  gales  are  opened  to  the  crowd. 

The  various  dignitaries  enter. 

The  Executioner  and  tlie  Guard  come  and  kneel  to  the  Sultan. 

Different  cases  for  trial  called. 

First  of  all  the  old  Sheikh  is  called. 

His  whereabouts  have  been  ascertained  through  the  Guide. 

The  Sheikh  is  carried  in  on  his  litter  and  with  greatest  difficulty 
descends  to  do  obeisance  to  the  Sultan. 

Sultan.  Sultan  asks  him  how  he,  an  exile,  dare 

Sheikh.  enter  the  city,  defying  the  decree  of  his 

Executioner.  late  uncle. 

Crowd,  etc.  Sheikh  says  he  came  on  peaceful  mission, 

not  to  rob. 

He  is  old;  one  of  many  robbers.  No 
longer  of  consequence. 
Came  to  pray  at  shrine  and  give  alms, 
the  shrine  where  he  had  prayed  in  his 
youth. 

Invokes  protection  of  High  Priest. 
Sultan  says  Sheikh  must  be  imprisoned. 
If  High  Priest  proves  that  Sheikh  came 
to  give  alms  and  to  repent,  he  shall  be 
released  forthwith. 

Meanwhile,  for  his  many  sins,  a  short 
repentance  in  prison  will  not  be  harm- 
ful to  his  soul. 
The  Goaler  comes  forward  and  with  two  guards  drags  the 
lame  man  off.  The  Sheikh  goes,  blessing  the  Sultan  for  his 
wisdom  and  justice.   The  Sultan  says : "  Send  to  the  High 
Priest  at  once  to  see  if  this  old  man  spoke  true.** 


492 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


Sultan. 

A   Peasant    with    Two 
Wives. 

[This  scene  was  cut  at  re- 
hearsal, as  having  noth- 
ing to  do  with  the  story. 
Instead  of  which,  Hajj 
was  introduced  by  a 
speech  of  Mansur's.  See 
play.] 


This 'should  be  some  comic  trial  with 
a  difficult  question  to  solve.  Such  as: 
"Should  a  man  honour  his  first  wife 
more  —  who  is  old  and  ugly,  but  de- 
voted —  or  his  second  wife  whom  he 
mistrusts  but  adores  for  her  beauty?" 
Or  something  of  the  kind  drawn  from 
Arabian  Nights. 


The  Sultan  is  puzzled. 

He  has  no  answer. 

Who  can  solve  the  riddle  ? 


Hajji. 

Sultan. 

Others 


[Cut:] 


I  tat 

|Pr< 

is, 

I  of 


Hajji,  pushing  through  the  crowd,  —  "Let  me,  oh  Sire/**  —  throws 
himself  before  Sultan. 

Hajji  decides  in  a  witty,  whimsical  way. 
The  Sultan  amused  by  him.  Who  is  he? 
Hajji  says  he  is  a  Fakir. 
He  plays  some  tricks. 
'While  doing  one,  addresses  the  Execu- 
tioner as  a  slave,  asking  him  to  bring  a 
table. 

Pretends  not  to  know  who  Executioner 
and  begs  his  pardon  when  he  is  told 
his  rank. 
He  then  gets  near  the  Sultan. 
Does  a  trick  with  a  sword. 
Tries  suddenly  to  stab  the  Sultan. 
The  Sultan  wears  a  coat  of  mail. 
The  assassination  has  failed. 
Hajji  is  surrounded  at  once. 
He  is  to  be  cut  to  pieces. 
The  Sultan  says  "Stay! 
This  man  shall  be  made  an  example  of. 
I  have  heard  there  are  rumours  of  sedi- 
tion, and  conspiracies  against  my  person. 
Therefore  I  wear  this  coat  of  mail. 
I  shall  have  this  man  burnt  in  my  pleas- 
ure gardens  tomorrow  and  the  public 
shall  be  admitted  to  the  spectacle. 


SCENARIOS  493 

This  shall  show  conspirators  I  am  in 
earnest;  mean  to  uphold  my  uncle's 
policy. 

Take  this  man  away." 
Hajji  appeals,  he  turns  to  the  Execu- 
tioner. 

The  Executioner  says  he  does  not  know 
him. 

Hajji  says  he  does. 

He  can  prove  it.  He  was  in  the  house 
of  the  Executioner.  In  his  pay. 
Executioner:  "The  man  is  mad." 
The  Sultan  fixes  Executioner  with  his 
eye. 

Sultan  says  he  will  sift  matter  to  bottom. 
Hajji  shall  be  tortured 
The  truth  shall  be  wrung  from  him. 
[Hajj  is  gagged  here:]     "At  once?"  asks  the  Gaoler. 

Sultan:  "No  —  let  him  starve  the  night 
first." 

Tonight  (smelling  the  rose)  Sultan  has 
other  affairs  of  import  to  tend  to. 
Tomorrow  (with  a  meaning  look)  he  ex- 
pects the  Executioner  to  carry  out  the 
tortures  himself. 
The  Executioner  bows. 
(ToGoaler)  "Take  the  man  away!" 
Hajji  is  dragged  off,  screaming. 
The  Sultan  to  his  Vizier:  "Oh  Mesrur! 
Mesrur!    (Abu  Bakr)   When  does  the 
sun  set?" 

"Another  half  an  hour,  sire." 
"Half  an  hour!  Oh,  would  it  were  that 
now! 

Why  can  I  not  make  the  sun  set  —  I  — 
the  Sultan? 
Bring  forward  the  next  case." 

Curtain. 


494  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

SCENE  4 

A  Dungeon.  A  massive  door  at  the  back  leads  to  an  endless  flight 
of  shallow  steps.  It  is  dark :  Hardly  any  light  except  from  one  barred 
window  high  up:  through  this  come  the  rays  of  the  setting  sun. 

The  Sheikh  is  alone  in  one  corner  saying  his  prayers.  He  then  Ues 
down  and  goes  to  sleep. 

The  Gaoler  opens  the  door. 

Hajji  is  thrown  in  and  chained. 

Hajji  alone.  Repentance. 

Curses  every  one. 
Raves. 

If  only  he  hadn't  received  money  that 
morning,  he  would  not  have  been  tempted 
to  steal. 

If  he  had  not  stolen,  he  would  not  have 
been  taken  to  the  Executioner. 
If  he  hadn't  been  taken  to  the  Execu- 
tioner, he  would  not  have  been  driven 
to  kill  the  Sultan. 

The  Sheikh  is  the  cause  of  all  his  mis- 
fortunes. 
He  stole  his  wife. 
He  killed  his  son. 
Now  he  is  killing  him. 
Cursed  be  the  Sheikh! 

The   Sheikh  from  the  "Who  uses  my  name  in  vain?" 
corner : 

Hajji.  Hajji  recognizes  him. 

Sheikh.  What  is  he  doing  there? 

Sheikh  says  he  is  condemned  to  prison 

by  Sultan. 

Hajji  delighted. 

Says  this  is  his  only  consolation  in  his 

trouble. 

Never  a  sorrow  without  a  grain  of  joy. 

Joy  to  see  his  enemy  suffer. 

He  could  almost  feel  friendly  towards 

Sheikh,  when  he  thinks  how  they  will  be 

executed  together. 


SCENARIOS 


495 


[Sheikh's  story  of  the  How  strangely  their  lives  have  been 
bfloken  coin  and  his  lost   interwoven, 
son  introduced  here.  See  They  talk  of  the  dead  woman  they  have 


play. 

Allusions  to  wife  were 
cut  as  unnecessary  to  the 
story.] 


shared. 

She  is  dead  now. 

Better  so.  She  would  have  been  old  and 

ugly  now. 

Sheikh  says:   "She  developed  a   bad 

temper." 

Hajji  furiously:  "That  was  your  fault. 

She  was  the  sweetest  tempered  creature 

when  she  was  mine.    You  ruined  her, 

body  and  soul. 

You  fiend  you  —  but  no  matter.    You 

will  be  tortured  tomorrow." 

He  shrieks  with  delight. 
Gaoler  reenters  with  a  decree  and  a  soldier  carrying  some 
instruments  of  torture. 
Gaoler.  Gaoler  says  that  it  has  been  found  that 

Sheikh.  Sheikh  did  come  on  a  pilgrimage. 

Hajji.  The  High  Priest  has  testified  in  his 

favor. 
Soldier.  Therefore  the  Sultan  forgives  him. 

He  is  free,  but  must  leave  the  city  at 

once  and  never  return. 

Sheikh  asks  Gaoler  to  thank  Sultan. 

Would  go  —  but  his  limbs  are  too  weak. 

Could  Gaoler  send  for  his  litter? 

Gaoler  says  he  fears  Sheikh's  litter  gone, 

but  could  procure  him   a  chair  out  of 

Sultan's   palace    used    to    convey  the 
[Changed  to  a  stretcher  lesser  women  of  the  Hareem  when  Sul- 
used  to  "carry  away  the  tan  travels, 
dead."    Alteration  made  Sheikh  gives  Gaoler  money, 
when  play  was  written.]  Gaoler  now  turns  to  Hajji. 

Says  he  is  to  come  to  him. 

Makes  him  kneel  down. 

Hajji:  "I  am  free  too,  am  I?" 

Gaoler:  "Free?    Here!  (turns  to  Soldier 

and  takes  a  casket  from  him  and  is  about 
[The  torture  was  cut  to  put  it  on  Hajji' s  head).  Sometimes 


496 


DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 


as  too  long  and  too  ugly. 
Altered  during  rehearsal. ] 


[All  this  cut.  Instead 
of  which,  the  Gaoler 
strikes  Hajj  with  his  key 
which  makes  Hajj  faint.] 


Hajji. 
Sheikh. 


[When  the  play  was 


these  head  screws  and  thumb  screws 
don't  fit.  There  must  be  no  hitch  in  the 
performance  tomorrow." 
"Head  screw?"  says  Hajji,  trembling. 
Gaoler   tears   off   Hajji's   turban   and 
tries  on  the  torture  helmet. 
Gaoler:  "Does  it  feel  comfortable?" 
Hajji:  "Comfortable!" 
Gaoler:  "It  ought  to.     It's  just  as  if 
it  had  been  made  for  your  Highness." 
(Takes  it  off,  laughing  loudly ;  the  soldier 
joins  politely.) 

Gaoler  (to  Sheikh):  "I'll  see  to  your 
Excellency's  chair." 
Gaoler  and  Soldier  off  with  instruments. 
Hajji  is  on  the  floor,  more  dead  than 
alive. 

Hajji  bemoans  his  fate. 
Why    should    he  have  to  suffer,  and 
Sheikh  be  pardoned,  when  Sheikh  is  the 
cause  of  all  of  Hajji's  woe? 
Here  is  Sheikh,  an  old  robber  chief, 
forgiven. 

Here  is  Hajji,  a  simple,  honest  beggar, 
to  be  tortured  and  burnt. 
Who  is  dependent  on  the  Sheikh? 
He  has  lost  his  son  —  has  never  found 
him  again  —  he  may  be  dead. 
No  one  dependent  on  Sheikh. 
But  Hajji  has  a  daughter  dependent  on 
him. 

A  daughter!  And  the  sun  is  setting. 
And  at  this  hour  she  is  being  takeu  to 
the  Executioner! 

The  Executioner  who  has  so  cruelly  for- 
saken Hajji. 

His  daughter  going  to  him,  with  Hajji 
powerless  —  and  the  Sheikh  to  live. 
It  is  unjust,  cruel,  not  to  be  borne. 
"It  shan't  be  borne  —  it  —  " 
He  gives  the  Sheikh  an  awful  look. 


SCENARIOS  497 

written,  the  Snaking  of  The  Sheikh  realizes  his  thoughts  and 

the    chains    was    intro-  draws  his  knife. 

duced  here.]  Hajji  springs  at  him,  overpowers  him, 

and  cuts  his  throat. 

The  Sheikh's  last  words:  "My  son!  My 

son!" 

A     moment's     thought  —  then     Hajji 

wipes  the  knife  on  his  own  turban  (torn 

off  by  Gaoler). 

Quickly  he  exchanges  clothes  with  the 

dead  man. 

Puts  on  his  turban 

Then  rifles  pockets. 

Finds  round  the  dead  man's  throat  a 

chain  with  the  broken  half  of  a  coin. 

Slips  it  over  his  own  neck. 

He  puts  the  dead  body  into  the  corner 

where  he  (Hajji)  lay  when  the  Gaoler 

left  the  dungeon. 

He  hears  the  tread  on  the  steps. 

He  assumes  the  old  man's  attitude. 

The  sunlight  has  died  out:  the  scene 

grows  quite  dark. 
The  Gaoler  reenters  with  the  Soldier  and  a  cliair  borne  by 
two  porters.    They  lift  Hajji  into  the  chair.    Then  take 
up  the  chair  and  carry  it  up  the  broad  stone  stairs. 
Gaoler.  (Turning  to  the  dead  body.)  "Why  not  laugh  tonight, 
Hajji?  Tomorrow  morning  will  be  time  enough  to  weep,  when  you 
are  tortured  in  the  Pleasure  Gardens  of  the  Prophet's  descendant." 
(He  kicks  the  body,  then  goes  out  laughing,  and  locks  the  door.) 

Curtain. 

ACTHI 
SCENE  1 

[This  scene  (suggested  by  a  friend)  was  entirely  cut  before 
rehearsals  began.] 

Zira's  house.  Same  scene  as  Act  7,  Scene  3.  Small  courtyard. 
The  sun  has  just  set.  It  is  dusk. 
The  gate  is  opened  from  the  street. 


498  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Old  Woman  I  (Narjis)  enters,  locks  the  gate,  and  lights  a  lamp. 

Knocking  at  the  gate. 

Old  Woman  I  opens  the  gate. 

The  two  porters  bring  in  the  chair. 

Hajji  gets  ovt,  bent  double,  and  trembling. 

He  pays  the  porters:  they  withdraw. 

The  Old  Woman  says:  "  Who  are  you  f  " 

Hajji.  Hajji  throws  back  the  shawl. 

He  reveals  himself,  asks  for  food  and 

his  daughter. 

Old  Woman  I.  'Hajji!  " 

Hajji  explains  that  he  must  escape: 

Leave  the  city  at  once. 

Too  long  to  explain. 

He  can  never  come  to  Bagdad  again. 

Old  Woman  to  bring  his  daughter  at  once, 

Old  Woman  says  she  has  just  taken 

daughter  to  Executioner's  house. 

Hajji:  "I  said  not  before  sundown" 

"  It  is  sundown." 

Hajji  curses  Old  Woman. 

Says  that  it  is  her  fault  that  he  took 

his  daughter  to  Executioner. 

"My  fault?"  says  she. 

"Yes!  You  urged  me  on. 

You  agreed  with  me. 

If  I  have  lost  her,  you  are  to  blame. 

But  I  can't  lose  her. 

I  must  risk  everything. 

I  must  get  her  out  of  his  clutches." 

WTiere  did  Old  Woman  leave  her? 

With  principal  wife. 

An  idea! 

He  had  appointment  with  wife  in  bath 

at  moon  rise  — 

He  will  go. 

If  it  costs  him  his  life,  he  must  try  to 

get  his  daughter. 

He  goes  to  door;  as  he  does  so,  there  is 

Joiocking  at  door  from  without. 


SCENARIOS 


499 


They  have  found  him. 

What  shall  he  do? 

Old  Woman  opens  lattice  in  Courtyard. 

"Escape  that  way! 

When  I  was  young  many  a  time  my 

lover  came  through  that  window." 

Haj  ,i  off  through  window. 

More  knocking  at  door. 
Old  Woman  opens. 
Sultan.  Sultan  enters,  splendidly  attired. 

Vizier  Has  come  to  claim  his  bride. 

and  a  Guard,  Old  Woman  amazed. 

Old  Woman*  Is  he  not  the  Sultan? 

She  has  seen  him  the  day  of  his  entry 

into  the  town. 

Sultan:  "You    have   guessed.       Bring 

forth  Zira!" 

Alas!  Zira  not  here. 

At  Executioner's  house. 

Her  father  has  destined  her  for  Execu- 
tioner. 

Sultan  furious. 

When  was  she  taken  there? 

Not  an  hour  ago. 

Sultan  will  go  to  Executioner's  house. 

The  Old  Woman  I  is  to  lead  the  way  and 

show  the  entrance  she  took  the  girl  to. 

Curlain. 

SCENE  2 
[In  the  play  Act  EQ  begins  here.] 

The  Bath  in  the  Executioner's  house.  {Large  set.) 

Up  five  marble  steps  {almost  fifteen  feet  up  stage)  a  colonnade.  Be- 
yond it  a  courtyard,  with  a  large  swimming  bath.  The  front  part  of 
the  stage,  couches  and  pierced  screens.  Door  right  to  women's  apart- 
ments, door  left  to  men's  apartments. 

Early  moonlight  in  the  courtyard  beyond  the  columns.  Hanging 
lamps  in  the  front  part  of  the  bath. 

Women  are  robing  and  disrobing.  Some  are  swimming  in  the  tank. 
Laughter  and  chatter. 


500  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Principal  Wife.  Wife  at  her  toilet. 

Old  Woman  II  (Miskah.)  Old  Woman  helping. 

Has  Hajji  not  come  back  yet? 
"No  sign,"  says  Old  Woman. 
Has  been  to  outer  gate  twice. 
Only  person  there  a  young  woman 
Guarded  by  two  soldiers  (eunuchs). 
Weeping  this  last  half  hour. 
They  say  she  has  been  brought  by  Ex- 
ecutioner's orders. 
"Another  woman? 
Have  her  brought  here!" 
Old  Woman  takes  order  to  doorkeeper 
.    at  door  L. 
Principal  Wife  goes  to  top  of  steps  and  orders  the  other 

women  to  dress  and  retire. 
The  women  swim  to  the  right  end  of  the  bath.    The  talk  is 

silenced. 
Zira  is  brought  in  by  the  slave  doorkeeper,  followed  by  the 
Old  Woman  II. 
Wife.  Wife :  "  What  have  we  here?  " 

Zira.  She  abuses  girl. 

Old  Woman  II.  Ill  treats  her. 

[This    scene    enlarged  Leads  off  into  inner  chamber  of  slaves, 
during  rehearsal.   Marsi-   Zira  in  tears  goes  off  by  colonnade  right 
nah  (Zira)  does  not  leave  with  the  Old  Woman, 
the  stage,  but  veils.   See 
play.] 

Wife.  "I'll  soon  break  your  spirit!" 

The  door  left  opens. 

The  Executioner  enters  in  a  bad  humour 

Executioner.  Wife:  "This  is  an  unexpected  delipht! 

Wife.  So  early?  Did  the  Sultan  not  keep  you 

to  supper?" 

Executioner:  "What  are  you  doing  in 
the  bath  at  this  time  of  night?  " 
W.  "I  was  but  waiting  for  you  to  ask 
what  you  wish  done  with  the  new  slave." 
E.  "What  new  slave?" 
W.  "The  woman  who  has  just  arrived, 
guarded  by  two  of  your  men." 


SCENARIOS 


5oi 


[This  altered.    Marsi- 
nah  has  not  left  the 
stage.   See  note  above.] 


The  Doorkeeper.  "The   men   you   dis- 
patched with  Hajji,  sir,  this  afternoon." 
E.  "Oh,  that  woman!" 
I  shall  have  her  strangled." 
Wife  agrees. 
Says  girl  a  slut. 

Executioner  finds  his  wife  agrees  with 
him  to  such  an  extent  that  he  thinks  the 
girl  must  be  beautiful. 
Rings  a  bell. 

Old  Woman  II  comes  from  Colonnade. 
He  orders  her  to  bring  Zira. 
The  wife  tries  to  interfere. 
Executioner  angry. 

Wife  wonders  why  he  is  in  such  an  angry 
mood. 

Because  he  may  lose  his  head  any  mo- 
ment. 

"Lose  his  head?"  she  asks. 
"Yes.  This  new  Sultan—  " 

Zira  is  brougJU  in  from  R.  on  steps  by  Old  Woman.  Zira  is  veiled. 

Executioner.  Executioner  orders  her  to  unveil. 

Zira.  She  hesitates. 

Wife.  He  tears  the  veil  from  her  face. 

Old  Woman.  He  sees  she  is  beautiful. 

Says  to  his  wife  that  she  has  lied. 

"Go,  get  the  girl  ready. 

I  will  come  to  her  as  soon  as  I  have  had 

my  bath. 

Until  tomorrow,  at  least,  I  shall  enjoy 

life. 

After  that  —  who  knows?  " 

He  goes  off  up  the  Colonnade  to  left. 

Wife  orders  Old  Woman  to  take  the  girl  away  with  her  again. 

Zira  goes  off  by  small  door  right  with  Old  Woman. 

There  is  a  tapping  sound  on  a  screen  on  the  right  side. 

Wife.  "Hajji!" 

Wife  goes  and  opens  screen  in  the  wall  right.  Hajji  enters. 
Wife.  Wife  tells  him  to  be  quiet. 

Hajji.  Executioner  near  at  hand. 


502  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Expects  an  amorous  embrace. 

Hajji  says  there  is  no  time  for  love 

making. 

He  has  come  about  his  daughter. 

W.  "Your  daughter?" 

H.  "Yes.  Zira  —  She  came  here  for  the 

Executioner.    Has  he  seen  her?  Has  he 

gone  in  to  her?" 

W.  "So  she's  your  daughter? 

I  have  you  to  thank  for  this  creature, 

Another  rival." 

Hajji  wants  to  know  where  the  girl  is. 

Can't  Wife  bring  her  out  here  and  let 

the  girl  escape  with  him. 

W.  "Escape?" 

H.  "In  that  way  you  can  get  rid  of  a 

rival." 

W.  "And  be  strangled  myself?" 

He  urges  her. 

If  she  won't  let  the  girl  escape,  at  least 

won't  she  take  the  girl  to  a  sanctuary? 

Sanctuary?  What  for? 

To  get  her  out  of  the  way  —  away 

from  Executioner. 

Why  not  take  her  to  the  Mosque? 

The  Mosque  of  the  Carpenters,  where 

the  venerable  priest  is? 

He  entreats  Wife  by  the  love  she  has  for 

him. 

Points  out  the  dangerous  charm  of  his 

daughter. 

She  will  prove  a  great  rival. 

Wife  is  torn  between  jealousy  and  fear 

for  her  own  life. 

H.  "You  can  say  you  took  her  to  the 

Sanctuary  for  purification  —  Take  her 

there!" 

They  are  interrupted. 
The  Executioner  appears  in  a  thin  robe  in  the  colonnade 
with  two  slaves.  Wife  escapes  rapidly  into  inner  room  to 
right.  Haffis  escape  is  cut  off.  He  grovels  on  the  floor. 


SCENARIOS 


5°3 


Hajji. 

ttioner. 


[All  this  much  more  di- 
rect and  brutal  in  play. 
Change  made  when  play, 
was  written.] 


Executioner  sees  Hajji  and  dismisses  the 
slaves. 

Amazed  at  Hajji's  presence. 
Hajji  says  he  has  done  everything  to  get 
back  to  Executioner.  Bribed  the  Sul- 
tan's Gaoler,  faced  untold  dangers. 
Grovels  and  at  the  same  time  tries  to 
find  out  the  Executioner's  position  in 
regard  to  the  Sultan. 


Has  he  lost  his  power? 
What  has  Sultan  done  to  Executioner? 
Executioner  in  a  boundless  rage. 
How  dare  Hajji  come  and  ask  him  ques- 
tions? 

How  dare  he  break  into  the  women's 
quarters  and  then  ask  for  mercy? 
How  dare  he  appeal  to  the  Executioner, 
after  betraying  him  to  the  Sultan? 
Who  was  Hajji  before  the  Executioner 
looked  with  favor  on  him? 
A  swine,  an  abomination  picked  out  of 
the  gutter. 
A  cur,  a  dog,  —  a  — 
He  approaches  Hajji. 
Hajji  hurries  up  the  steps. 
The  Executioner  is  too  quick,  gets  up 
after  him  and  takes  Hajji  by  the  throat. 
Doing  so,  he  catches  hold  of  the  chain 
with  the  coin   that   Hajji   stole  from 
Sheikh  (Act  n,  Scene  4.) 
Where  did  Hajji  get  this? 
Hajji  lies,  saying  it  is  his. 
It  has  always  been  his. 
Executioner  produces  the  other  half  on 
a  massive  gold  chain. 
Miraculous! 

Hajji  must  be  Executioner's  father. 
H.  "You  — my  son?" 
E.  "Don't  you  remember?" 
[This  was  altered  so  Executioner  tells   how  he  can  just  re- 


504  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

that  Hajji  tells  the  Ex-  member  his  father  breaking  a  coin  when 
ecutioner    all    this.    See  they  were  being  attacked  in  the  desert, 
Act  II,  Scene   4,  where  before  he,  the  boy,  was  carried  away  by 
the   Sheikh  gives   Hajji  the  Sultan's  troops, 
the  facts.]  H.  "You  mean  when  I  was — Sheikh?" 

E.  "Were  you  Sheikh  or  just  a  robber, 
then?" 

H.  "Just  a  robber  at  the  time  —  just 
a  robber  —  And  your  mother  —  do  you 
remember  her?" 

E.  "I  have  tried  to  often  —  Her  name 
escapes  me." 

H.  Mentions  name  of  first  wife: 
"Zcenab  —  whom   I   loved   above   all 
things." 

"Zcenab!  That  was  her  name!" 
H.  "She  had  eyes  like  stars;  and  tall, 
she  was  tall  like  a  poplar. 
How  wonderful  is  fate! 
So  you  are  her  son!" 
E.  "Your  son." 
Eajji,  slowly  eyeing  him  and  taking  the  Executioner's  chain. 
H.  "And  the  halves  fit!  What  a  splen- 
did chain!  What  a  heavy  chain!  Hea- 
vier than  mine.  You  have  prospered  in 
life,  my  son — " 
E.  "My  father— " 

H.  "Your  father,  yes.  I  am  your 
father  —  Come  to  my  arms." 
With  that  he  takes  the  gold  chain  round 
the  Executioner's  neck  and  twists  it 
till  the  Executioner  chokes.  Forces  him 
down  on  his  knees. 

Then  he  pushes  him  backward  into  the 
bath.  Holds  him  under  the  water  and 
drowns  him.  "I  killed  the  old  rat!  I'll 
kill  his  spawn!  Blessed  be  Allah  for  this 
day  of  days."  He  laughs  wildly  and 
exultantly. 
There  is  one  more  splash,  then  silence  in  the  bath. 
Knocking  on  the  door  left. 


SCENARIOS  505 

Afore  knocking. 
Then  the  door  is  broken  open. 

The  Sultan  enters  with  his  Guard  and  Torchbearers,  the 
old  Woman  No.  I.  following. 
The  Sultan.  "When  is  the  woman?  Where  is  Zira? 

Search  the  Hareem!" 

Some  of  the  Soldiers  cross  into  door 

right. 
Sultan.  Sultan  turns  and  see  Hajji  on  the  steps 

Hajji.  by  the  bath. 

"You?" 

H.  "Yes."  Allah  allowed  him  to  escape 

in  order  to  serve  the  Sultan. 

S.  "Cut  him  down!" 

H.  "Stop!   Look  first  whether  I  am 

not  a  good  servant. 

Look  in  the  bath!" 

The  Sultan  looks. 

S.  "The  Executioner!" 

H.  "It  was  all  his  fault. 

He  drove  me  to  attempt  your  life." 

Soldiers  reenter,  bringing  in  Wife.   Other  women  of  the 
Hareem  follow. 

Wife.  Soldier  says  Zira  not  there. 

Sultan.  Wife    confesses   she    has   sent    her   to 

Hajji.  Sanctuary. 

Old  Woman  No.  I,         Hajji  begged  her  to  do  so. 

S.  "Hajji!    Ever  Hajji!    Why  should 
he  have  any  say  in  regard  to  Zira?" 
H.  "She  is  my  daughter." 
S.  "Yours!" 

H.  "Now  say  I  am  not  a  good  servant 
when  I  serve  you  with  such  a  daughter. 
Will  you  stilfkill  me?" 
Old  Woman  No.  I  testifies  he  is  speak- 
ing the  truth,  is  Zira's  father. 
S.  "You  have  attempted  my  life. 
WTiat  would  my  piety  be  if  I  pardoned 
the  dagger  that  tried  to  kill  the  de- 
scendant of  the  Prophet? 


5o6  DRAMATIC  TECHNIOUE 

Taking  the  law  into  your  own  hands 

(points  to  bath)  does  not  wipe  out  your 

crime. 

But  you  are  the  father  of  Zira, 

The  woman  whom  I  mean  to  make  my 

Sultana. 

Her  father's  blood  must  not  be  shed  by 

me. 

Go,  then,  be  banished,  forgotten! 

Your  life  is  spared  —  but  only  under  one 

condition. 

Henceforth  you  shall  be  as  dead  to  me 

—  to  your  daughter." 

H.  "To  my  daughter?  Never  to  speak 

to  her  again,  to  feel  her  cheek  against 

mine?   Never? 

S.  "I  have  spoken." 

Hajji  tears  his  clothes,  strews  ashes  on 

his  head  from  the  brazier  by  his  side  and 

goes  out,  staggering,  by  door  left. 

The  Sultan  will  go  the  Mosque  to  beg 

the  High  Priest  to  release  Zira  from  the 

Sanctuary. 

Curtain 


LAST  SCENE 

The  same  as  the  first  scene,  Act  I.  Before  the  Mosque,  moonlight. 
Young  Beggar  of  Act  I  is  seated  on  the 
seat  on  which  Hajji  installed  him. 
Hajji  enters  staggering  down  the  street. 
He  stands  at  the  Mosque  a  moment. 


Wants   to    enter,  then    turns  away  in 

despair. 

Comes  to  his  accustomed  seat. 

Young  Beggar  is  there. 
was  written.]    [The  scene  As  Hajji  approaches,  the  Young  Beggar 
with  the  Young  Beggar  begins  to  beg  of  him. 
is   postponed  until  after  Hajji  kicks  him  off  the  seat  and  resumes 
the  Caliph  and  Marsinah  his  old  place. 


[Here  was  introduced  a 
scene  with  the  Priest. 
Meccah  is  to  be  Hajj's 
goal.   Altered  when  play. 


SCENARIOS  507 

leave.    Altered  when  the   Young  Beggar  alinks  away. 

play  was  written.!  Scarcely  is  Hajji  seated  when  the  Sultan 

enters  on  his  white  donkey  with  a  torch- 

light  procession. 

The  Sultan  dismounts  and  knocks  at  the 

Mosque. 

The  Mosque  is  opened  by  the  Priest. 

The  Priest,  when  he  learns  it  is  the  Sultan, 

brings  out  Zira  to  him. 

The  Sultan  reveals  himself  in  a  verse  to 

Zira. 

Zira  replies  in  a  rhyme. 

The  Sultan  conducts  Zira  to  a  litter. 

He  re-mounts  his  donkey. 

The  procession  moves  past  Hajji. 

Hajji  stretches  out  his  hand  for  alms, 

veiling  his  face. 

The  procession  disappears.     The  street 

grows  dark  again. 

The  Mosque  is  shut. 

Hajji  is  left  alone  in  the  moonlight. 

He  draws  out  the  old  gourd  from  behind 

the  stone  seat. 

A  line  of  philosophy  summing  up  his  day. 

Something,  perhaps,  on  "life  and  water.** 

He  drinks  his  Jill,  puts  the  gourd  away, 

leans  back,  and  goes  to  sleep,  breathing 

regularly. 

Curtain  l 

Does  not  this  careful  scenario  make  very  clear  what  are 
the  steps  in  good  scenario  writing?  First  comes  structure,  — 
ordering  for  clearness  and  correct  emphasis  in  the  story-tell- 
ing. Then,  with  the  scenario  kept  flexible  and  subject  to 
change  till  the  last  possible  moment,  come  many  changes 
big  and  little,  for  better  characterization  and  more  atmos- 
phere —  see  pp.  461-463. 

»  For  the  play  see  Kimet,  Methuen  &  Co..  Ltd.,  London. 


508  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

Finally,  more  than  anything  else,  as  the  author  puts  last 
touches  to  his  scenario,  or  revises  the  play  he  has  written 
from  it,  he  scans  its  details  in  relation  to  the  probable  atti- 
tude toward  them  of  his  public.  In  the  relation  of  that  pub- 
lic to  his  subject  and  his  treatment  of  it  lie  the  most  difficult 
problems  of  the  dramatist.  Solving  them  means  the  differ- 
ence between  the  will  to  conquer  and  victory. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  DRAMATIST  AND  HIS  PUBLIC 

Probably  most  dramatists  have  found  that  any  play, 
either  as  a  scenario  or  a  completed  manuscript,  is  not  a  mat- 
ter of  writing  but  of  frequent  re-writing.  Study  From  Ibsen* s 
Worksliop  or  most  of  the  cases  cited  by  Binet  and  Passy,1 
and  it  becomes  evident  that  the  first  draft  of  a  scenario  or 
play  is  usually  made  mainly  for  clearness.  That  will  be 
gained  by  good  construction  and  correct  emphasis.  There 
follows  a  re-writing  in  which  characterization  improves 
greatly  and  dialogue  becomes  characterizing  and  attractive 
in  itself.  Either  in  this  or  possible  later  re-writings,  the 
dramatist  shapes  his  material  more  and  more  in  relation 
to  the  public  he  wishes  to  address,  for  a  dramatist  is,  after 
all,  a  sort  of  public  speaker.  Unlike  the  platform  orator, 
however,  he  speaks  indirectly  to  his  audience  —  through 
people  and  under  conditions  he  cannot  wholly  control.  None 
the  less,  much  if  not  all  that  concerns  the  persuasion  of  pub- 
lic argumentation  concerns  the  dramatist.  This  does  not  in 
any  sense  mean  that  an  author  must  truckle  to  his  audience. 
Far  from  it.  Yet  no  dramatist  can  work  care  free  in  regard 
to  his  audience.  He  must  consider  their  natural  likes  and  dis- 
likes, interests  and  indifferences,  their  probable  knowledge 
of  his  subject  as  well  as  their  probable  approach  to  it.  As 
Mr.  Archer  has  pointed  out :  "  The  moment  aplaywright  con- 
fines his  work  within  the  two  or  three  hours*  limit  prescribed 
by  Western  custom  for  a  theatrical  performance,  he  is  curry- 
ing favour  with  an  audience.  That  limit  is  imposed  simply 
by  the  physical  endurance  and  power  of  sustained  attention 

»  U Annie  Ptycholofique,  1894. 


510  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

that  can  be  demanded  of  Western  human  beings  assembled 
in  a  theatre.  Doubtless  an  author  could  express  himself  more 
fully  and  more  subtly  if  he  ignored  these  limitations;  the 
moment  he  submits  to  them,  he  renounces  the  pretence  that 
mere  self-expression  is  his  aim."  * 

Once  for  all,  what  is  "truckling  to  an  audience"?  When 
an  author,  believing  that  the  end  of  his  play  should  be  tragic, 
so  plans  his  work  that  until  the  last  act  or  even  the  middle 
of  that  act,  a  tragic  ending  is  the  logical  conclusion,  and 
then  because  he  is  told  or  believes  that  an  audience  will 
quit  the  theatre  much  more  contented  if  the  ending  be  happy, 
he  forces  a  pleasant  ending  on  his  play,  he  is  untrue  to  him- 
self, dishonest  with  his  art,  and  truckles  to  his  public.  A 
very  large  part  of  American  audiences  and  many  producers 
believe  that  any  play  is  only  mere  entertainment  and  conse- 
quently may  and  should  be  so  manipulated  as  to  please 
the  public  even  in  its  most  unthinking  mood.  No  man  who 
does  that  is  a  dramatist.  He  is  merely  a  hack  playwright, 
bribed  by  the  hope  of  immediate  gain  into  slavish  obedience 
to  the  most  unthinking  part  of  the  public. 

On  the  other  hand,  an  author  is  very  foolish  if  he  does  not 
remember  certain  fundamental  principles  about  audiences 
in  a  theatre.  First,  no  matter  what  in  his  material  at- 
tracts him,  people  rather  than  ideas  arouse  the  interest  of 
the  general  public.  Secondly,  even  yet  action  far  more  than 
characterization  wins  and  holds  the  attention  of  the  great 
majority.  These  facts  do  not  mean,  however,  that  a  drama- 
tist must  busy  himself  only  with  plays  of  action  or  char- 
acterization, foregoing  all  problems  or  thesis  material.  They 
do  mean  that  if  he  is  to  write  a  play  of  ideas  he  must  recog- 
nize that  his  task  is  the  more  difficult  because  of  his  public 
and  that  he  must  so  handle  it  through  the  characterization 
and  the  action  as  to  make  his  ideas  widely  interesting.  In 

1  Play-Making,  p.  14.  William  Archer.   Small,  Maynard  &  Co. 


DRAMATIST  AND  PUBLIC  511 

brief,  insisting  on  saying  what  he  wishes  to  say,  he  must 
loam  to  sj)eak  in  terms  his  audience  will  readily  understand. 

More  than  once  a  play  good  in  itself  has  gone  astray 
because  written  too  much  unto  the  author's  self,  in  the 
o  that  certain  figures  have  interested  him  more  than 
others  and  he  has  forgotten  that  they  are  not  likely  to  be  in- 
teresting to  the  public  at  large  and  must  be  made  so.  For  in- 
stanee,  a  would-be  adapter  believed  that  the  hero  of  the 
tale  he  was  dramatizing  would  remain  on  the  stage  the 
hero  still,  but  in  action  another  character,  with  his  songs 
and  rough  humor,  and  his  constant  action,  in  sharp  con- 
tract with  the  quiet  speech  and  restrained  movement  of 
the  central  figure  of  the  story,  ran  off  with  the  interest. 
Consequently  this  adaptation,  though  unusually  well  done 
in  all  other  respects,  went  awry. 

Another  aspect  of  the  same  difficulty  is  that  an  author  for- 
gets to  consider  carefully  whether  something  he  finds  comic 
or  tragic  will  naturally  be  the  same  for  his  audiences.  In  a 
prize  play  produced  some  years  ago  in  Germany,  Belinda, 
the  author  found  much  comedy  in  the  following  situation. 
A  rather  addle-pated  man  has  for  some  years  been  paying 
large  sums  to  a  correspondent,  a  woman  as  he  believes,  who 
has  been  painting  his  portrait  again  and  again  from  photo- 
graphs he  has  sent  her.  Little  by  little  he  has  fallen  in  love 
with  this  correspondent.  The  day  comes  when  he  is  awaiting 
a  visit  from  her  with  the  utmost  delight.  A  servant,  who 
knows  that  the  woman  is  expected,  enters  looking  utterly 
bewildered,  and  announces  her  arrival.  There  walks  into 
the  room  a  wizened  Jewish  picture  dealer,  who  has  all  these 
years  been  playing  on  the  vanity  of  the  younger  man  for  his 
own  gain.  Unfortunately  the  author  forgot  that  an  off-stage 
figure  must  be  made  very  attractive  if  sympathy  is  to  go 
with  it  rather  than  with  a  figure  seen  and  known,  or  that 
the  on-stage  figure  must  be  very  unattractive  if  sympathy 


512  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

I 

is  not  to  go  with  it  in  contrast  to  a  figure  unseen.  Conse- 
quently, when  the  Jew  walked  on  he  was  greeted,  not  as  the 
author  expected  with  shouts  of  laughter,  but  with  an  aghast 
silence  and  obvious  sympathy  for  the  deceived  man.  Just  at 
that  point  the  play  began  to  go  to  pieces  because  the  author 
had  misjudged,  or  not  at  all  considered,  the  relation  of  the 
public  to  his  material. 

Where,  perhaps,  authors  fail  with  their  public  more  than 
anywhere  else  is  in  motivation  of  the  conduct  of  their  char- 
acters.1 Too  frequently  a  play  slips  because  conduct  as  ex- 
plained in  it,  though  wholly  convincing  to  the  dramatist, 
does  not  similarly  affect  his  public.  It  is  useless  for  him  to 
say  stoutly  that  he  knows  the  incident  happened  just  in  this 
way,  or  that  the  audience  ought  to  know  better  than  to 
think  it  could  happen  differently.  As  it  is  hopeless  in  life 
merely  to  protest  that  you  are  telling  the  truth  when  every- 
body is  convinced  that  you  are  lying,  it  is  wasted  time  for 
a  dramatist  to  stand  his  ground  in  a  matter  of  motivation  if 
he  has  not  succeeded  in  making  that  motivation  convincing. 
For  instance,  there  suddenly  appears  in  the  office  of  the  hero 
of  a  play  a  former  acquaintance  of  his,  an  actress.  She  has 
come  to  see  him,  if  you  please,  even  as  her  act  in  the  theatre 
is  playing.  That  is,  simply  because  she  so  wished  she  has 
left  the  theatre  during  the  performance.  Now  the  dramatist 
may  have  known  of  such  a  case  and  people  unacquainted 
with  life  behind  the  curtain  may  accept  the  situation,  but 
people  of  the  slightest  experience  in  the  theatre  will  know 
that  no  actor  or  actress  playing  an  important  role  is  allowed 
to  leave  during  the  performance.  Instantly  the  scene  be- 
comes improbable  for  those  people  —  and  they  are  many. 
It  must  be  so  motivated  as  to  be  a  probable  exception  in 
conduct,  or  the  whole  situation  must  be  changed. 

If  it  be  clear  that,  though  a  dramatist  should  never  truckle 

1  See  pp.  248-276. 


DRAMATIST  AND  PUBLIC  513 

to  his  audience,  he  cannot  hope  to  write  successfully  unless  at 
some  time  in  his  composition  he  revises  his  material  with  a 
view  to  the  general  intelligence,  natural  interests,  and  prej- 
udices of  his  audience  so  far  as  his  special  subject  is  con- 
cerned, it  is  equally  true  that  publics  change  greatly  in  their 
tastes.  A  young  dramatist  may  learn  much  as  to  such  shift- 
in  public  taste  by  watching  the  revivals  of  plays  once 
very  successful.  In  Shakespeare's  day,  for  instance,  the 
public  would  accept  a  mingling  of  the  real  and  unreal  with 
equanimity.  Today  it  takes  all  the  genius  of  Shakespeare  to 
make  the  scenes  of  the  ghost  of  Hamlet's  father  convincing. 
In  reading  Chapman's  Bussy  d'Ambois,  with  its  strange 
commingling  of  real  figures  and  ghosts,  we  today  draw  back 
disappointed  because  we  feel  that  what  has  seemed  real  be- 
comes with  the  entrance  of  the  ghost  only  melodrama  sub- 
limated by  some  excellent  characterization  and  fine  poetry. 
As  has  already  been  pointed  out,  in  Elizabethan  days  the 
public  found  cause  for  mirth  in  much  which  today  is  painful. 
Watch  in  performance  the  scene  of  Twelfth  Night  in  which 
Toby,  the  Fool,  and  Maria  deride  Malvolio  until  they  almost 
make  him  believe  himself  mad,  and  you  have  an  admir- 
able instance  of  changed  taste.  When  first  produced,  it  prob- 
ably went  with  shouts  of  laughter.  Because  of  sympathy  for 
Malvolio  it  never  goes  well  today.  The  public  no  longer 
finds  madness  unquestionably  comic;  it  has  its  hesitations 
on  practical  jokes;  it  has  lost  a  very  little  its  sure  enjoyment 
of  drunkenness,  especially  in  women.  The  day  may  conceiv- 
ably come  of  which  no  one  could  say,  as  of  the  stage  of 
our  time :  "  The  single  expletive  *  Damn '  has  saved  many  a 
would-be  comic  situation." 

The  attitude  of  a  playwright  should  not  be,  "  If  my  public 
ordinarily  does  not  feel  about  this  as  I  do,  I  will  cut  it  out 
or  make  it  conform  to  their  usual  tastes,"  but  "Knowing 
perfectly  what  the  attitude  of  the  public  is  toward  my  ma- 


5H  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

terial,  I  will  not  cut  it  out  until  I  have  proved  that  it  is  not 
in  my  power  to  make  the  audience  feel  it  as  I  do."  Just  here 
lies  the  worst  temptation  of  the  playwright.  He  who  keeps 
his  eye  more  on  the  money  box  than  artistic  self-respect  will 
little  by  little  limit  his  choice  of  subjects  and  conventional- 
ize his  treatment  of  them  because  he  is  told  or  believes  that 
the  public  will  not  stand  for  this  or  that.  Is  it  not,  however, 
a  little  strange  that  almost  everything  which  leading  play- 
placers,  managers,  and  actors  have  in  the  past  twenty-five 
years  declared  the  public  would  unwillingly  accept  or  would 
not  accept  at  all  has  since  become  not  only  acceptable  but 
often  popular.  Some  years  ago  it  was  a  truism  among  readers 
of  manuscript  plays  that  college  life  was  too  limited  in  inter- 
est to  appeal  to  the  general  theatre  public.  Then  Mr.  Ade's 
The  College  Widow  proved  these  prophets  wrong.  After  this 
play  trailed  Brown  of  Harvard  and  a  half-dozen  other  college 
plays  which,  whether  good,  bad,  or  indifferent  artistically, 
were  all  warmly  received  by  the  public.  Another  statement 
once  accepted  in  the  theatrical  world  of  New  York  was  that 
American  audiences  no  longer  cared  for  farce,  but  Seven 
Days,  followed  by  a  crowding  group  of  successes,  changed 
all  that.  All  this  was  not  the  result  of  any  sudden  revulsion 
on  the  part  of  the  public,  but  came  because  some  intelligent 
and  clever  workman,  determining  to  make  his  interests  and 
his  sense  of  values  the  public's,  labored  until  he  accom- 
plished the  task.  Forthwith  a  delighted  public  begged  for 
more  and  what  was  declared  impossible  became  the  vogue. 
Just  at  present  there  is  a  troublesome  convention  that  the 
American  public  will  not  accept  anything  but  farce  or 
comedy.  This  means  only  that  at  the  moment  our  writers 
of  serious  plays  are  not  adept  enough  to  win  away  large 
audiences  from  farce  and  comedy  or  to  build  up  special  au- 
diences for  their  plays.  Nevertheless,  sooner  or  later,  they 
or  their  sucessors  will  conquer  such  a  public. 


DRAMATIST  AND  PUBLIC  515 

In  curious  contradiction  to  the  existing  attitude  that  au- 
diences will  like  only  what  they  at  present  like,  much  advice 
is  given  as  to  novelty.  "Find  something  new  in  substance  or 
form  and  your  fortune  is  made"  is  the  implication.  Wherein 
lies  novelty  of  plot  has  already  been  explained.1  Certainly 
the  large  amount  of  experimentation  which  has  been  going 
on  in  recent  years  in  one-act  plays,  two-act  plays,  or  groups 
of  one-act  pieces  bound  together  by  a  prologue  and  an  epi- 
logue, has  all  been  well  worth  while,  making  as  it  does  for 
greater  flexibility  of  dramatic  form.  Yet  it  is  unfortunately 
true  at  the  present  moment  that  most  audiences  prefer  a 
three-  or  four-act  play  to  something  in  two  acts  because  the 
uninterrupted  attention  demanded  by  the  last  form  asks  too 
much  from  them.  They  prefer  the  three-act  or  four-act  divi- 
sion to  a  group  of  one-act  plays  tied  together  by  a  prologue 
and  an  epilogue,  because  mere  difference  of  form  has  no  par- 
ticular attraction  for  them  and  they  do  not  willingly  shift 
their  interest  as  frequently  as  a  group  of  one-act  plays  re- 
quires. Nevertheless  there  is  nothing  completely  deterrent 
for  a  dramatist  in  any  of  these  circumstances;  merely  cause 
why,  in  every  case,  after  thinking  of  the  subject  in  relation 
to  himself,  he  should  ultimately  consider  it  with  equal  care 
in  relation  to  the  audience  for  which  he  intends  it.  When, 
too,  he  is  selecting  his  form  he  should  observe  whether 
though  attractive  to  him,  it  may  not  be  so  difficult  or  re- 
pellent for  the  general  public  that  another  more  conven- 
tional form  is  desirable.  If  he  becomes  sure  that  he  cannot 
get  his  desired  effects  except  in  the  form  first  chosen  he 
must  work  until  he  makes  it  acceptable  to  the  public  or 
put  aside  his  subject.  The  final  test  is  not:  "What  ordi- 
narily do  the  public  like  in  a  subject  like  mine  and  in  what 
form  are  they  accustomed  to  see  my  subject  treated,"  but: 
"  Can  I  so  present  the  form  I  prefer  as  to  make  the  public 

1  See  pp.  62-67. 


ci6  DRAMATIC  TECHNIOUE 

like  equally  with  me  what  I  find  interesting  in  my  subject?" 
That  is,  though  presentation  of  a  chosen  subject  should  be 
flexible,  the  central  purposes,  human  and  artistic,  of  the 
play,  should  be  maintained  inflexibly. 

Bearing  the  audience  in  mind  as  one  writes  may  affect 
the  whole  play,  but  more  often  it  affects  details  —  particu- 
larly order.  The  scenario  of  Kismet l  has  been  printed  in 
full  chiefly  that  the  many  changes  it  underwent  in  shaping 
it  for  final  presentation  might  be  clear.  Among  the  many 
instances  note,  in  Act  II,  that  in  the  original  form  the  love 
passage  of  Hajji  followed  plotting  for  the  murder.  When  the 
play  was  in  rehearsal,  both  actor  and  author  felt  at  once  that 
the  sympathy  it  was  necessary  to  maintain  in  the  audience 
for  Hajji  would  be  lost  if  he  turned  immediately  from 
such  bloody  plotting  to  the  love  scene.  For  this  reason  the 
order  was  changed.  Surely  there  is  no  harm  in  such  a  shift- 
ing, for  the  story  develops  just  as  well  and  the  characteriza- 
tion is  as  humanly  true.  This  is  a  perfect  illustration  of  per- 
suasive arrangement.  Take  now  the  case  of  the  torturing 
of  Hajji,  of  which  much  was,  made  in  the  original  scenario. 
It  is  changed  to  the  blow  with  the  key  because  the  horror 
of  the  scene  when  acted  was  too  great  and  everything  neces- 
sary is  accomplished  with  the  key.  Here  is  a  change  made 
not  to  please  the  author  but  to  make  the  material  as  treated 
produce  in  the  audience  the  desired  results,  yet  the  change  in 
no  way  interferes  with  any  of  the  purposes  of  the  dramatist. 
An  illustration  of  the  way  in  which  a  dramatist  standing  his 
ground  because  he  is  sure  of  the  Tightness  of  his  psychology 
may  win  over  his  public  is  found  in  La  Princesse  Georges  of 
Dumas  fils.  So  great  was  the  sympathy  of  the  audience  with 
Severine  in  her  mortified  wifehood  that  at  the  original  per- 
formance, when  she  forgave  her  husband  at  the  end,  there 
were  many  dissenting  cries.  Dumas  fils  had  foreseen  this, 

1  See  pp.  474-507. 


DRAMATIST  AND  PUBLIC  517 

but  believing  the  ending  truer  to  life  than  any  other  could 
be,  he  insisted  on  it.  Ultimately  the  ending  was  accepted  by 
the  public  as  made  necessary  by  the  rest  of  the  play. 

In  all  this  discussion  of  the  difference  between  truckling  to 
an  audience  and  necessary  regard  for  its  interests  and  prej- 
udices, of  changing  public  taste,  the  important  point  is  that 
until  a  dramatist  has  considered  his  material  in  relation  to 
the  public,  his  play  is  by  no  means  ready  for  production. 
Just  because  the  persuasive  side  of  dramatic  art  is  so  often 
neglected,  play  after  play  goes  on  the  boards  in  such  condi- 
tion that  it  must  be  greatly  changed  before  it  can  succeed. 
Often  before  these  ample  changes  can  be  made,  the  public 
has  lost  interest  in  the  piece.  If  a  general  principle  might  be 
laid  down  here  it  would  be  something  like  this.  "  If  you  wish, 
first  write  your  play  so  that  to  you  it  is  something  clear  and 
convincing  as  well  as  something  that  moves  to  laughter  or  to 
tears.  Before,  however,  it  is  tried  on  the  stage,  make  sure 
that  you  have  considered  it  in  all  details  in  so  detached  a 
way  that  you  have  a  right  to  believe  that,  as  a  result  of  your 
careful  revising,  it  will  produce  with  the  public  the  same 
interest,  and  the  same  emotions  to  the  same  degree  as  the 
original  version  did  with  you." 

Just  here  arises  the  ever  present  query,  "  Why  struggle  to 
write  what  the  public  does  not  readily  and  quickly  accept? 
Why  not  study  their  unthinking  likes  and  dislikes  and  give 
them  what  they  want?"  Certainly  write  in  that  way  if  it 
brings  contentment,  as  it  surely  will  bring  monetary  suc- 
cess if  the  play  thus  written  really  hits  popular  approval. 
However,  aiming  to  hit  popular  taste  is  like  shooting  at  a 
shifting  target  and  a  play  so  made  may  be  staged  just  as 
the  public  makes  one  of  its  swift  changes  in  theatrical  mood. 
Of  course,  too,  he  who  writes  in  this  way  is  in  no  sense  a 
leader  but  merely  the  slave  of  his  public.  In  any  case,  his 


518  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

play  is  but  an  imitation,  not  an  expression  of  the  author's 
individuality. 

Even  would-be  dramatists  who  do  not  hold  the  oppor- 
tunist ideas  just  considered  may  draw  back  after  reading 
what  has  been  stated  in  this  book,  saying:  "How  difficult 
and  painstaking  is  this  art  of  the  drama  which  I  have  thought 
so  fascinating  and  spontaneous."  Of  course,  it  is  a  difficult 
art.  A  good  many  years  ago  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  said  of  it: 

"  When  you  sit  in  your  stall  at  the  theatre  and  see  a  play 
moving  across  the  stage,  it  all  seems  so  easy  and  so  natural, 
you  feel  as  though  the  author  had  improvised  it.  The 
characters,  being,  let  us  hope,  ordinary  human  beings, 
say  nothing  very  remarkable,  nothing,  you  think  (thereby 
paying  the  author  the  highest  possible  compliment)  that 
might  not  quite  well  have  occurred  to  you.  When  you  take 
up  a  play-book  (if  you  ever  do  take  one  up)  it  strikes  you  as 
being  a  very  trifling  thing  —  a  mere  insubstantial  pamphlet 
beside  the  imposing  bulk  of  the  latest  six-shilling  novel. 
Little  do  you  guess  that  every  page  of  the  play  has  cost  more 
care,  severer  mental  tension,  if  not  more  actual  manual  labor, 
than  any  chapter  of  a  novel,  though  it  be  fifty  pages  long. 
It  is  the  height  of  the  author's  art,  according  to  the  old 
maxim,  that  the  ordinary  spectator  should  never  be  clearly 
conscious  of  the  skill  and  travail  that  have  gone  to  the  mak- 
ing of  the  finished  product.  But  the  artist  who  would  achieve 
a  like  feat  must  realize  that  no  ingots  are  to  be  got  out  of 
this  mine,  save  after  sleepless  nights,  days  of  gloom  and 
discouragement,  and  other  days,  again,  of  feverish  toil  the 
result  of  which  proves  in  the  end  to  be  misapplied  and  has 
to  be  thrown  to  the  winds." 

Nevertheless,  this  difficult  art  remains  fascinating;  and 
in  practice,  if  rightly  understood,  it  rapidly  grows  easier. 
In  the  understanding  of  any  art  there  must  be  two  stages. 
First  comes  the  spontaneous  doing  of  work  very  encourag- 


DRAMATIST  AND  PUBLIC  519 

ing  to  the  author  and  sufficiently  good  to  warrant  a  per- 
son more  experienced  in  encouraging  him  to  proceed. 
Then  begins  the  second  stage,  when  he  learns  what  can  be 
taught  him  of  technique  in  his  chosen  field.  It  is  bound  to  be 
a  time  when  consciousness  of  rules  first  learned  and  limita- 
tions first  perceived  make  writing  far  less  attractive  and 
often  so  irksome  that  the  worker  is  tempted  to  throw  his  task 
aside  for  good.  He  who  does  not  really  love  his  art  will  cast 
away  his  work.  He  who  really  cares  cannot  do  this.  He  may 
from  the  hampering  of  these  newly  recognized  rules  become 
irritable,  have  his  moments  of  self-doubt  and  despair,  but 
he  cannot  stop  practicing  his  art.  With  each  new  effort,  the 
rules  which  have  been  so  troublesome  will  become  more  and 
more  a  matter  of  habit.  Little  by  little  the  writer  will  gain 
a  curious  subconscious  power  of  using  almost  unthinkingly 
the  principles  he  needs,  giving  no  thought  to  those  net 
needed.  Then,  and  then  only,  will  he  write  with  the  art  that 
conceals  art;  and  it  is  only  when  he  has  attained  to  delight 
in  the  difficulties  of  the  art  he  practices  that  he  is  in  any  true 
sense  an  artist. 

What  ultimately  happens  is  probably  this.  The  critical 
attitude  is  strong  in  the  scenario  period,  perhaps  predomi- 
nant as  the  dramatist  works  out  construction,  emphasis,  pro- 
portion, etc.,  but  when,  with  the  scenario  before  him,  he 
takes  his  pen  in  hand,  he  lets  the  creative  impulse  swamp 
completely  the  critical  sense  and  loses  himself  in  his  task. 
Or  he  reverses  the  process.  He  writes  in  pure  creative  aban- 
don, until  at  least  an  act  of  a  play  lies  completed  before  him. 
Then,  with  his  critical  training  brought  to  the  front,  he  goes 
over  and  over  the  manuscript  until  what  was  a  pure  crea- 
tive effort  has  been  chastened  and  sublimated  by  his  trained 
critical  sense.  The  main  point  is:  Don't  stultify  your  crea- 
tive instincts  by  trying  to  use  critical  training  at  the  same 
time.    As  far  as  possible,  let  one  precede  the  other.   Write 


520  DRAMATIC  TECHNIQUE 

creatively.  Then  correct.  Or  write  with  the  critical  instinct 
strongly  to  the  front  until  all  plans  are  made.  Then  forget 
everything  except  the  spirit  of  creation.  Where  dramatists 
in  training  waste  their  nervous  energy  and  often  stultify 
their  best  desires  is  in  keeping  critical  tab  upon  themselves 
as  they  create.  Writing  something  with  pure  delight,  they 
are  suddenly  blocked  by  the  critical  spirit  saying:  "This  or 
that  is  bad.  You  cannot  keep  this  or  that  as  you  have  writ- 
ten it,"  and  presto!  no  more  creative  work  that  day.  Unless 
the  critical  and  creative  faculties  interwork  sympatheti- 
cally and  cooperatively,  keep  them  separate. 

Whoever  aims  to  write  plays  chiefly  or  wholly  because 
he  would  like  fame  or  money  or  because  he  wishes  to  show 
that  he  is  as  strong  in  one  fictional  art  as  another,  —  the 
story,  the  essay,  the  poem,  whatever  it  may  be,  —  in  fact 
he  who  writes  plays  for  any  other  reason  than  that  he  can- 
not be  happy  except  in  writing  plays,  better  give  over  such 
writing.  Play-making  is  an  exceedingly  difficult  art,  and  in 
so  far  as  it  is  in  any  sense  a  transcript  from  life  or  a  beauti- 
fied presentation  of  life  past,  present,  or  imagined,  it  grows 
more  difficult  as  the  years  pass  because  of  the  accumulating 
mass  of  dramatic  masterpieces.  Yet  for  him  who  cares  for 
dramatic  writing  more  than  any  form  of  self-expression,  no 
time  has  been  more  promising  than  the  present.  There  has 
been  more  good  drama  in  the  past  twenty-five  years  the 
world  over  than  at  any  time  in  the  history  of  the  stage.  It 
has  been  more  varied  in  subject  and  form,  more  individual 
in  treatment.  The  drama  is  today  more  flexible,  more  daring 
and  experimental,  than  ever  before.  It  is  in  closer  relation 
to  all  the  subtlest  and  most  advanced  of  man's  thinking. 
It  has  been  breaking  new  ways  for  itself,  and  it  has  new 
ways  yet  to  break.  All  that  has  been  said  in  this  book  con- 
cerns merely  the  historic  foundations  of  this  very  great  art. 
Accept  these  principles  as  stated  or  quarrel  with  most  of 


DRAMATIST  AND  PUBLIC  521 

them;  but  realize  that  any  principles,  whether  accepted  from 
others  or  self-taught,  should  be  but  the  beginning  of  a  life- 
long training  by  which  the  individual  will  pass  from  what  he 
shares  of  general  dramatic  experience  to  what  is  peculiarly 
his  own  expression. 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


jEscnylus,  155. 

Andreiev,  Leonid,  328. 

Archer.  William,  45,  50,  55,  61,  78, 

151,  214,  237,  260,  510. 
Augier,  Emile,  221. 

Baker,  Elizabeth,  223. 

Barker,  Granville,  278. 

Beach,  Lewis,  219. 

Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  281. 

Binet  and  Passy,  47,  49,  76,  78,  339. 

Brieux,  Eugene,  301. 

Browning,  Robert,  306,  391,  399. 

Brunetiere,  Ferdinand,  44. 

Buckingham,  George  Villiers,  Duke 

of,  170,  408. 
Bulwer-Lytton,     Edward     Robert, 

77,    90,   92,    125,   136,   211,   227, 

339,  344. 

Child,  C.  G.  (Editor),  16,  19. 
Congreve,  William,  396,  413. 
Corson,  Hiram,  390. 

Davis,  Richard  Harding,  164. 
Diderot,  Denis,  72,  74,  259. 
Dryden,  John,  123,  261,  336. 
Dumas  fils,  34,  49,  74,  94,  100,  259. 
Dunsany,  Lord,  49. 

Eaton,  W.  P.,  249. 
Echegaray,  Miguel,  385. 
Euripides,  282. 

Fitch,  Clyde,  61,  198,  283. 
Flickinger,  Roy  C,  125,  141. 

Galsworthy,  John,  66,  183,  191,  244, 

375. 
Gildon,  Charles,  249. 
Goldsmith.  Oliver,  323. 
Gregory,  Lady,  162. 


Hapgood,  Norman,  58,  243. 
Haraucourt,  Edmond,  83. 
Hart,  J.  A.,  48,  71. 
Hauptmann,  Gerhart,  164,  193. 
Hazlitt,  William,  243. 
Heijermans,  Herman,  218. 
Henderson,  A.,  462. 
Henley,  W.  E.,  27. 
Hervieu,  Paul,  192. 
Heywood,  Thomas,  345. 
Hobbes,  John  Oliver,  350. 
Hofmannsthal,  Hugo  von,  377,  380. 
Houghton,  Stanley,  324. 

Ibsen,  Henrik,  51, 151, 179, 181,  183, 

233,  259,  348,  349,  419,  421,  470. 

Irving,  Sir  Henry,  25,  197,  290,  362. 

Jones,  Henry  Arthur,  265,  279,  351, 

395. 
Jonson,  Ben,  235,  289. 

Kennedy,  Rann,  122. 
Knobloch,  Edward,  474. 
Kyd,  Thomas,  370. 

Labiche,  Eugene,  131,  173. 

Le  Clerc,  M.  E.,  352. 

Lessing,  Gotthold  Ephraim,  9,  68, 

114,  121,  212,  247,  255,  291. 
Lillo,  George,  131,  335,  337. 

Macleod,  Fiona,  65. 
Maeterlinck,  Maurice,  38. 
Marlowe,  Christopher,  35,  128. 
Matthews,  Brander,  19. 
Meredith,  George,  117. 
Middleton,  Thomas,  85,  284. 
Moody,  W.  V.,  379. 
Moreau,  Adrien,  163. 
Moulton,  R.  G.,  18, 154. 
Mushakoji.  J.,  316. 


524 


INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 


Ostrovsky,  Aleksander  Nikolaevich, 
86. 

Phillips,  Stephen,  222. 

Pinero,  Sir  Arthur,  6,  15,  106,  107, 

222,  255,  258,  291,  292,  378,  382, 

383. 
Pinski,  David,  330. 
Polti,  Georges,  63. 

Racine,  Jean,  168. 
Reade,  Charles,  393. 
Riddle,  George,  368. 
Robertson,  Thomas  William,  29. 
Rostand,  Edmond,  36,  225. 
Rowley,  William,  345. 

Sardou,  Victorien,  163. 

Savage,  Henry,  iii,  69. 

Selwyn,  Edgar,  81. 

Shakespeare,  William,  23,  31,  97, 
101,  139,  142,  166,  185,  215,  268, 
332,  358,  369,  385,  406.  409. 


Shaw,  George  Bernard,  299. 
Sheldon,  Edward,  341. 
Steele,  Richard,  134. 
Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  27. 
Sudermann,  Hermann,  226,  229. 
Synge,  John  Millington,  417. 


Taylor,  Tom,  220,  ! 
Tennyson,  Alfred, 

362. 
Terence,  170,  171. 
Thomas,  Augustus, 


Lord,  195,  290, 


189. 


Vanbrugh,  Sir  John,  297,  395. 
Voltaire,  Francois  Marie  Arouet  de, 
113. 

Webster,  John,  267,  285,  303,  384. 
Wilde,  Oscar,   187,  230,  231,  388, 
389,  402,  403,  404,  410. 

Young,  Charles,  374. 


INDEX  OF  QUOTATIONS 


Amazons,  The,  Act  in,  222. 

Ambassador,  The,  350. 

Ancient  Classical  Drama,  The,  18, 

154. 
Anne,  159. 

As  a  Man  Thinks,  Act  n,  189. 
At  the  New  Theatre,  249. 
At  the  Top  of  the  Tenement,  424. 
Auteurs  Dramatiques,  see  L'Annee 

Psychologique. 

Barbara  Frietchie,  61. 

Barnwell.  The  History  of  George,  see 

The  London  Merchant. 
Becket,  arranged  by  Henry  Irving, 

25,  197,  290,  362. 
Becket,  Tennyson,  195,  290,  362. 
Big  Drum,  The,  Preface,  258. 
Blind,  The,  38. 
Browning,     Introduction,     Corson, 

390. 

Captain,  The,  Scenario,  459. 

Case  of  Rebellious  Susan,  The,  Act 
i,  351. 

Chains,  Act  m,  223. 

Changeling,  The,  85. 

Chaste  Maid  in  Cheapside,  A,  284. 

Choephori,  The,  155. 

Clod,  The,  219. 

Colombe's  Birthday,  Act  rv,  Sc.  1, 
806. 

Come  Here,  George  Riddle's  Read- 
ings, 368. 

Concerning  Humour  in  Comedy, 
Congreve,  396. 

Coniston,  Scenario,  448. 

Conquest  of  Granada,  The,  336. 

Conscious  Lovers,  The,  134. 

Consultation,  The,  Scenario,  466. 

Coventry  Plays,  Ludus  Coventrise, 
327. 


Cradle,  The,  Act  i,  Sc.  9,  301. 
Crucifixion,  The,  York  Plays,  327. 
Cymbeline,  Act  I,  Sc.  1,  23. 

Debutante,  The,  Scenario,  216. 
De  la  Poesie  Dramatique,  72,  74. 
Development  of  the  Drama,   The, 

19. 
Devonshire  Hamlets,  The,  241,  318, 

344,  358,  398. 
Doll's  House,  A,  348,  349. 
Duchess  of  Malfi,  The,   267,   303, 

384. 

Early  Plays,  16,  373. 

Edward  II,  Introduction,  Marlowe, 
128. 

Electra,  Euripides,  Act  I,  282. 

Electra,  Hofmannsthal,  380. 

Encore,  An,  Scenario,  457. 

Epicoene,  289. 

Essay  on  Comedy,  Meredith,  117, 
513. 

Eternal  Triangle,  The,  Scenario,  425. 

Etudes  Critiques,  Brunetiere,  44. 

European  Dramatists,  462. 

Everyman,  373. 

Every  Man  in  His  Humour,  Induc- 
tion, 235. 

Eyes  of  the  Blind,  The,  Scenario,  428. 

Faustus,  Act  v,  35. 

Fishing  of  Suzanne,  The,  Scenario, 

455. 
Fortune  by  Land  and  Sea,  345. 
Foundations  of  a  National  Drama, 

395. 
Frau  im  Fenster,  Die,  377. 
Fritzschen,  226. 

Gabriel  Schilling's  Flight,  Introduc- 
tion, 193. 


526 


INDEX  OF  QUOTATIONS 


Galloper,  The,  164. 

George    Riddle's    Readings,    Come 

Here,  368. 
Good  Hope,  The,  218. 
Good  Natured  Man,  The,  Act  1,  323. 
Great  Divide,  The,  Act  1,  379. 
Great  Galeoto,  The,  385. 

Hamburg  Dramaturgy,  9,  68,  114, 

121,  212,  247,  255,  291. 
Hazlitt's  Dramatic  Essays,  243. 
Hegge    Plays    (Ludus    Coventrise), 

327. 
Henry  V,  Act  11,  139. 
Henry  VI,  Part  1,  97. 
Herod,  Act  11,  222. 
Hindle  Wakes,  Act  1,  Sc.  1,  324. 
Home,  29. 
House  of  Usna,  The  (Foreword),  65. 

Ibsen's  Workshop,  51, 179,  233,  348, 
470. 

Importance  of  Being  Earnest,  The, 
403,  410. 

Induction,  Every  Man  in  His  Hu- 
mour, 235. 

Influence  of  Local  Theatrical  Con- 
ditions upon  the  Drama  of  the 
Greeks,  125,  141. 

Introduction  to  Browning,  Corson, 
390. 

Iris,  291,  378. 

Jim,  The  Penman,  374. 

Journey  of   Papa   Perrichon,    The, 

Act  1,  173. 
Julius  Caesar,  Act  m,  Sc.  3,  332. 
Justice,  Act  in,  375. 

King  Argimenes,  49. 
King  John,  268. 
Kismet,  Scenario,  474. 

L'Annee  Psychologique. 

F.  de  Curel,  76,  78,  339. 

Dumas  fils,  49. 

Pailleron,  47. 
Lady  of  Andros,  The,  Act  1,  170. 

Act  in,  171. 


Lady  Windermere's  Fan,  187,  230, 

231,  388,  389,  402,  404. 
La  Princesse  Georges,  34. 
La  Princesse  Georges,  Au  Public,  74, 

94,  259. 
Legacy,  The,  Scenario,  464. 
Le  Supplice  d'une  Femme,  Preface, 

100. 
Les  36  Situations  Dramatiques,  63. 
Les  Oberle,  83. 
Les  Petits  Oiseaux,  131. 
Letters  of  Bulwer-Lytton  to  Mac- 
ready,  77,  90,  125,  136,  211,  227, 

339,  344. 
Letters  of  Henrik  Ibsen,  151,  183, 

259,  419,  421. 
Lettres  sur  les  Anglais,  Voltaire,  113. 
Life  of  Man,  328. 
Little  Stories  of  New  Plays,  422. 
London    Merchant,   The,    or    The 

History  of  George  Barnwell,  Act 

iv,  131. 

Act  1,  Sc.  1,  335. 

Act  in,  Sc.  7,  337. 

Lonely  Lives,  Act  iv,  164. 

Macaire,  Act  1,  Sc.  1,  27. 
Macbeth,  Act  1,  Sc.  5,  166. 

Introduction,  127. 
Mme.  Sans-G6ne,  163. 
Madras  House,  The,  278. 
Magda  (Heimat),  Act  iv,  229. 
Magistrate,  The,  106,  107. 
Maid's  Tragedy,  The,  Act  in,  Sc.  2, 

281. 
Masqueraders,  The,  265. 
Measure  for  Measure,  406. 
Miss  Julia,  Introduction,  118. 
Mistress  Beatrice  Cope,  352. 

Scenario,  453. 
Money  Spinner,  The,  383. 
Monsieur  Poirier's  Son-in-Law,  Act 

1,  221. 
Mrs.  Dane's  Defence,  Act  in,  279. 
My  Best  Play,  Edgar  Selwyn,  81. 

Nathan  Hale,  Act  iv,  Sc.  2,  198. 
New    Rehearsal,    A,    or    Bays    the 
Younger,  249. 


INDEX  OF  QUOTATIONS 


527 


[er,  The,  Act  I,  341. 

■  on  Act  Division  as  practiced 
in  the  Eurly  Elizabethan  Drama, 
151. 

Orchi.Is.  156. 

Othello,  Act  hi,  Sc.  3,  185. 

Act  in,  Sc.  3,  369. 

Act  11,  Sc.  1,  385. 

Act  in,  Sc.  3,  885. 

Phaedra,  Act  1,  169. 
Pierre  Patelin,  406. 
Plavboy  of  the  Western  World,  The, 

417. 
Play-Making,  45,  50,  55,  61,  78,  151, 

214,  237,  510. 
Princess  and  the  Butterfly,  The,  Act 

11,  292. 
Profligate,  The,  255. 
Provoked  Wife,  The,  Act  iv,  297. 
Act  ni,  395. 

Quem  Quaeritis,  trope,  16. 

Rehearsal,  The,  170,  408. 

Revesby  Sword  Play,  372. 

Richard  II,  101,  409. 

Richard  III,  Act  1,  Sc.  1,  143. 

Riddle's  (George)  Readings,  368. 

Ring  and  the  Book,  The,  391. 

Rising  of  the  Moon,  The,  162. 

Robert  Louis  Stevenson:  The  Dra- 
matist, 6,  15,  382. 

Romancers,  The,  Act  1,  Sc.  1,  36, 
225. 

Romeo  and  Juliet,  Act  1,  Sc.  1,  31. 

Rosmersholm,  Ibsen's  Prose  Dra- 
mas, 181. 

Rosmersholm,  Ibsen's  Workshop, 
179. 

Sardou  and  the  Sardou  Plays,  48, 
71. 


Selected  Dramas  of  John   Dryden, 

261. 
Servant  in  the  House,  The,  122. 
Sire    de    Maletroit's    Door,    The, 

Scenario,  450,  451,  452. 
Some  Platitudes  Concerning  Drama, 

66,  183,  2 11. 
Soul's  Tragedy,  A,  399. 
Spanish  Friar,  The,  Act   in,   Sc.    1 , 

123. 
Spanish  Tragedy,  The,  370. 
Squire  of  Alsatia,  The,  276. 
Stage  in  America,  The,  58,  243. 
Still  Waters  Run  Deep,  220. 
Storm,  The,  86. 
Strife,  191. 

Tartuffe,  Act  1,  280. 

Theatrical   World    for    1893,    The, 

260. 
Trail  of  the  Torch,  The,  192. 
Treasure,  The,  330. 
Troilus  and  Cressida,  142. 
Trope,  Quem  Quaeritis,  16. 
Troublesome  Raigne  of  King  Iohn, 

The,  Part  1,  215. 
Truth,  The,  283. 
Twelfth  Night,  Act  1,  Sc.  5,  409. 
Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona,  The,  253. 
Two  Hearts,  316. 
Two  Loves  and  a  Life,  Act  n,  Sc.  2, 

393. 

United  States  of  Playwrights,  The, 
iii,  69. 

Vittoria  Corombona,  Act  m,  Sc.  2, 
285. 

Way  of  the  World,  The,  413. 
Winning    of    General    Jane,    The, 
Scenario,  468. 

You  Never  Can  Tell,  Act  iv,  299. 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 


Act,  length  of  each,  148-153. 
Acts,  number  and  length,  117-120. 
Action,  16-16. 

de6ned,  27-42. 

by  physical  action,  27-33. 

by  revealing  mental  states,  36-41. 
Alternative  endings,  255-259. 
Artistic  unity,  111-112. 
Aside,  in  dialogue,  393-396. 

Barbara  Frietchie  — 

story  of,  57-58. 

plot  of,  59-61. 
Business,  stage,  definition  of,  372- 
373. 

Central  idea  — 

importance  in  play,  73-77. 

shifting  it,  77. 
Central  purpose,  value  of  in  selecting 

material,  87-89. 
Changing  tastes  in  public,  513. 
Character  drawing  and  psychology 

distinguished,  237. 
Characters  — 

prompt  identification  of,  154-161. 

devices     for     showing     relations 
among,  166-183. 

unnecessary,  294-296. 

test  for  number  of,  296. 
Characterization  — 

by  type,  234-237. 

by  intimate  knowledge  of  charac- 
ters, 239-247. 

in  historical  plays,  246. 

good  but  not  needed,  247. 

by  motivation,  248-276. 

bad  methods,  276-278. 

in  programs,  276-277. 

in  stage  directions,  277. 

by  soliloquy,  279-280. 

by  description,  280-283. 


by  illustrative  action,  283-286. 

good  methods,  286-287. 

by  exits  and  entrances,  287-294. 

three  illustrations  of   good,   297- 
308. 
Climax  — 

definition  of,  215. 

anticlimax,  illustrated,  215-233. 

and  movement,  215-233. 

and  surprise,  219-220. 

by  quiet  endings,  221-222,  224- 
225. 

by  irony,  222-225. 

anticipating,  227. 

selection  for,  228. 

postponing,  for,  229. 

essentials  of,  229. 
Contrast,  for  emphasis,  201-204. 
Critical  and  creative  faculties,  rela- 
tion of,  519. 

Delaved  exposition  and  movement, 

211. 
Detail,  contrasted  in  novel  and  play, 

352—357. 
Dialect,  use  of,  339-343. 
Dialogue  — 
essentials  of  clearness,  309. 
selection  in,  309-315. 
clearness    without    characteriza- 
tion not  sufficient,  314-322. 
in  character,  316-328,  334-336. 
emotion  in,  322-328. 
well  characterized,  324-327. 
secret  of  good,  (Emerson),  328. 
unassigned    and    assigned,    328- 

334. 
author  speaking  through  persons, 

334. 
style,  336-351,  409-419. 
style  and  emotion,  339,  344-350. 
sympathetic,  344-350. 


53° 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 


fitted  for  stage,  350. 

actors  aided  by  voice,  gesture  in, 

etc.,  351-357,  367-372. 
unnecessary  detail,  357-367. 
facial  expression  and  gesture,  367- 

372. 
dialogue    and    "stage    business," 

372-382. 
pantomime,  373-382. 
soliloquy,  382-390. 
aside,  393-396. 
incomplete,  397-398. 
block  dialogue,  398-405. 
difficult  to  speak,  405-407. 
essentials  of,  407-408. 
Differences,    fundamental    between 

novel  and  play,  4-14. 
Disregarding  public,  danger  of,  517. 
Dramatic  — 

definition  of,  43—45. 
distinguished  from  theatric,  45. 
Dramatic  technique,  usual  growth 

of,  518. 
Dramatist  — 

writing  to  himself,  511. 
and  motivation,  512. 
correct  attitude  toward  public,  513. 
Dramatization  of  a  novel,  suggestions 
for,  Edward  Knobloch,  13-14. 

Emotion  — 

essential  in  drama,  42-46. 

emotion  and  style,  339,  344-350. 
Emphasis  — 

in  plot,  183-207. 

defined,  183-194. 

lack  of,  184-186. 

good,  185-193. 

importance  of  in  beginnings  and 
endings,  194-201. 

by  contrast,  201-204. 

to  determine  dramatic  form,  204- 
206. 

on  what,  206-207. 
Epilogue,  145-148. 
Essentials  — 

chief,  in  drama,  16-27. 

of  motivation,  267. 

in  good  scenario,  426-462. 


Exits  and  entrances,  for  character- 
ization, 287-294. 
Exposition  — 

preliminary,  141-148,  166-183. 

devices  in,  167-173. 

distinction    between    preliminary 

and  later,  176-182. 
emphasis  in,  183. 

Facial    expression,    importance    of, 

367-372. 
Fact  vs.  fiction  in  drama,  67-68. 
Falsification  of  life  by  drama,  14-15. 

Gesture,  importance  of,  367-372. 

Holding  a  situation,  93-110. 

Identifying    promptly    persons    of 

play,  154-161. 
Illustrative  action,  82-88,  109. 
relation  of,  to  dramatic  selection, 

86-87. 
Importance    of    facial    expression, 

gesture  and  voice,  367-372. 
Inaction,  utter,  possibly  dramatic, 

41. 

Knowledge    of    theatre    necessary, 
68-70. 

Melodrama  and  tragedy,  268-276. 
Monologue,  391-393. 
Motivation,  248-276. 

and  literary  convention,  261-262. 

and  public  taste,  262-264. 

essentials  of,  267. 

obtrusive,  267. 
Movement  — 

and  suspense,  207-212. 

in  plot,  207-233. 

qualities  of,  207. 

where  needed,  207. 

in  interwoven  plots,  210. 

and  transitional  scenes,  210-211. 

and  delayed  exposition,  211. 

and  explanatory  last  act,  211. 

and  climax,  215-233. 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 


53' 


Novelist,  technique  of  vs.  dramatic 
technique,  5-14. 

Novelty  of  subject,  62-67. 

Number  of  characters,  test  for,  296. 

Number  of  possible  dramatic  sub- 
jects, 63-67. 

Obtrusive  motivation,  267. 
Older  and  suspense,  208-210. 

Pantomime,  373-382,  388-390. 
Physical  action,  27-33. 
Place,  unity  of,  120-130. 
Plausibility,  264-267. 
Plot  contrasted  with  story,  57-61. 
Program  characterization,  276-277. 
Prologue,  use  of,  142-148. 
Psychology  and  character  drawing 

distinguished,  237. 
Public,  changing  tastes  in,  513. 

Scene,  definition  of,  130-132. 
Scenario  — 

importance  of,  79-80. 

value  of,  420-421. 

summary  vs.  scenario,  421-426. 

real  character  of,  426-473. 

essentials  of  good,  426-462. 

dramatis  personam  in,  427-431. 

settings  in,  432-445. 

preliminary  exposition    in,     446- 
447. 

talky,  448-449. 

entrances  and  exits  in,  449-450. 

cardinal  principle  of,  449. 

emphasis  in,  455-461. 

flexibility  in,  461-463. 

proper  length,  461. 

no  one  form,  463-464. 

using  dialogue  in,  464-470. 
Settings,  122-130. 

value  of  in  placing  a  play,  161- 
166. 

in  scenario,  432^45. 
Situation,  holding  a,  93-110. 
Soliloquy,  382-390. 


Stage  direction  — 

bad,  276-278. 

good,  279. 
Stage  waits,  208-209. 
Starting  a  play,  47-54. 
Story  — 

as  starting  point,  52-54. 

essential  in  play,  55-57. 

misuse  of  word,  56-57. 

contrasted  with  plot,  57-61. 

unity  of  action  in,  111. 

amount  required,  112-116. 
Style,  in  dialogue,  409-419. 
Summary  vs.  scenario,  421-426. 
Surprise,  212-214. 

and  suspense,  distinction,  214. 
Suspense  — 

and  order,  208-210. 

vs.  surprise,  212. 

and  surprise,  distinction,  214. 

and  sympathy,  214-215. 

in  climax,  215-232. 

Technique  in  Drama  — 

definition  of,  1. 

three  kinds  of,  2-4. 
Technique  of  novelist  and  dramatis!: 

compared,  5-14. 
Theatric,    distinguished   from    dra- 
matic, 45. 
Time  — 

unity  of,  120-130. 

treatment  of  on  stage,  130-137. 

off  stage,  137. 

antecedent  to  play,  141-148. 

by  chorus,  142. 

by  soliloquy,  143. 

by  prologue,  144-148. 
Transitional  Scenes,  109-110. 
Truckling  to  an  audience,  definition, 
509. 

Unassigned  speeches,  S28-3S2. 
Unity  of  action,  110-111. 
Unity,  artistic,  111-112. 
Unnecessary  characters,  294-296. 


^36 


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