Dramatic Technique Part 17

Here follow some fifteen speeches in which the arrangements are made.

Then:

SCENE 2

_Enter Elvira, in her chamber_

_Elvira._ He'll come, that's certain; young appet.i.tes 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 compa.s.sed my design,--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 father has given it a dose of church opium to lull it; well, for soothing sin, I'll say that for him, he's a chaplain for any court in Christendom.

_Enter Lorenzo and Dominic_

O 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.[9]

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 ill.u.s.trate what she now states in soliloquy just before the two men enter.

In the original last act[10] of Lillo's _George Barnwell_, the settings 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 Clod_, by Lewis Beach, a one-act success of the Washington Square Players, in its first draft showed a setting both upstairs and downstairs. This unsightly 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, 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 scene at Marion de Lorme's.

Do you mean to have no subst.i.tute 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 Mauprat [who figure in the interior scene]. Remember you wanted to have the packet absolutely given to Francois.[11]

Greek plays, because of the fixed backing, provide many ill.u.s.trations of interior scenes brought outdoors:

...The dramatic action was necessarily laid in the open air--usually before a palace or temple.... In general the dramatists displayed an amazing fertility of invention in this particular, as a few ill.u.s.trations 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).

Oedipus 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' _Oedipus Rex_, 6 f.). Karion is driven out of doors by the smoke of sacrifice upon the domestic altar (Aristophanes' _Plutus_, 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' _Thesmophoriazuae_, 67 f.). The love-lorn Phaedra teases for light and air (Euripides' _Hippolytus_, 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.).[12]

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 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 adapting _A Tale of Two Cities_, if he uses Jerry Cruncher, will probably 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 circ.u.mstances 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 transfer a group of people from the exact setting in which an occurrence took place to another which makes possible other important action. In Haraucourt's adaptation of _Les Oberle_, a dinner party at the Brausigs' is transferred to the home of Jean Oberle, with his father and mother as hosts. This change permits the adapter to follow the dinner party with episodes which must take place in Jean's home. This group of changes concerns, obviously, bringing to one place events which happened to the same persons at another place, and even at another time.

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

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

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

Finally, what happened to another person at another time, and at another place may at times be arranged so that it will happen to any desired figure. About midway in the novel _Les Oberle_, Jean and his uncle Ulrich hear the women at the autumn grape-picking sing the song of Alsace. In the play, in the first scene, Jean sings it as he pa.s.ses from the railway station to his house.[13] Shakespeare, in handling the original sources of _Macbeth_, also ill.u.s.trates successful combination around one person of incidents or details historically a.s.sociated with other persons, times, and even places.

Most of the story is taken from Holinshed's account [in the _Historie of Scotland_] of the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth (A.D. 1034-1057), but certain details are drawn from other parts of the chronicle. Thus several points in the a.s.sa.s.sination of Duncan, like the drugging of the grooms by Lady Macbeth, and the portents described in II, iv., are from the murder of Duncan's ancestor Duffe (A.D. 972); and the voice that called "Sleep no more!" seems to have been suggested by the troubled conscience of Duffe's brother Kenneth, who had poisoned his own nephew.[14]

Marlowe, in his _Edward II_,--a dramatization of a part of Holinshed's _History_,--proves that he perfectly understood all these devices for compacting his material.

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

councils.[15]

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

Evidently a dramatist must develop great ingenuity and skill in so re-working scenes originally conceived as occurring in widely separated places and times that they may be acted in a single set. As has been said, the audience of the public theatres in Shakespeare's day imaginatively shifted the scene at any hint from text, stage properties, or even signs. With the Restoration came elaborate scenery, a gift from earlier performances at the English court and from the continental theatres which the English n.o.bility had attended in their exile. By means of the "drawn scene" dramatists now changed rapidly from place to place. In _The Spanish Friar_, Scene 1 of Act II is "The Queen's ante-chamber." For Scene 2, "The scene draws, and shows the Queen sitting in state; Bertram standing next her; then Teresa, etc." These drawn scenes held the stage until very recently. Painted on flats which could be pulled off stage from left and right, these scenes could not be "drawn" without hurting theatrical illusion. If moved in any light, all illusion departed; if changed in darkness, but not instantaneously, they interfered with illusion. To overcome these objections there have been many inventions in recent years--Revolving, Wagon, Sinking Stages.[16]

Undoubtedly, these make changes of scene within the act well-nigh un.o.bjectionable. 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 un.o.bjectionable, it is wiser to keep to one setting to an act, unless the play will greatly suffer by so doing, or the change is one which may be made almost instantaneously when the lights are lowered or the curtain dropped.

On the other hand, recently dramatists have rather overdone reducing possible settings to the minimum. While a change of setting within the act always demands justification, forcing a play of three to five acts into one or two settings when, at a trifling additional cost, a pleasing variety to the eye and a change of place helpful to the dramatist might have been provided, is undesirable. Lately there have been signs that our audiences are growing weary of plays of only one set, especially when they suspect the play has been thus arranged by skill, rather than necessity. Certainly, the newer group of dramatists permit themselves changes of scene even within the act. Act II of _The Silver Box_,[17] by Galsworthy, shows as Scene 1, "The Jones's lodgings, Merthyr Street"; as Scene 2, "The Barthwicks' dining-room." In _Hindle Wakes_,[18] by Stanley Houghton, Scene 1, Act I, is the "Kitchen of the _Hawthorns'_ house"; Scene 2 is the "Breakfast room of the _Jeffcotes'_ house." To the preliminary statement of scenes the dramatist appended words which hint the underlying danger in all changes of setting,--disillusioning waits:

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

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

What exactly does this constantly repeated word "Scene" mean? In English theatrical usage today, and increasingly the world over, it signifies: "a change of setting." All that happens from one change of set to another change makes a scene. French usage, based on the Latin, till very recently always marked off a scene when any person more important than a servant or attendant entered or left the stage. For instance, in _Les Pet.i.ts 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:

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_

_Henriette, 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 goes out at right._)

SCENE 7. _Tiburce, then Francois_[19]

What this French use of the word "scene" leads to, when logically carried out so that even servants entering or leaving the stage create a scene, the following from Act IV of _George Barnwell_, will show:

SCENE 5. _To them a Servant_

_Thorowgood._ Order the groom to saddle the swiftest horse, and prepare himself to set out with speed!--An affair of life and death demands his diligence. (_Exit Servant._)