Dramatic Technique Part 57

The thesis play or the problem play, which have been so current in the last few years, have brought into special prominence 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 pa.s.sages 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 G.o.d 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 inheritance 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.

Does 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 ill.u.s.tration, from _George Barnwell_, the colorlessness 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. Now, it would give me pleasure great as my love, to see on whom you 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 happiness 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 a.s.serted your authority, and insisted on a parent's right to be obey'd, I had submitted and to my duty sacrificed my peace.

_Thor._ From your perfect obedience in every other instance, I fear'd as much; and therefore wou'd leave you without a bya.s.s in an affair wherein your happiness is so immediately concern'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 t.i.tles 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 n.o.ble 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 me act contrary to my duty. Sir, I have your permission to retire?

_Thor._ I'll see you to your chamber. (_Exeunt_.)[11]

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_, _Endymion_[12] (1579-1590)--we find in the more serious portions both action and characterization subordinated 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 ill.u.s.tration 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![13]

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!

Dryden makes Almahide describe her own emotional condition and, as is proper at any critical moment in Heroic Drama, drop into simile.

Almanzor, too, confidently diagnoses his own condition and apostrophizes fate. All this was quite correct in its own day, not for real life, but for the people of the myth land conjured up by the dramatic theories of the _litterati_. Did people under such circ.u.mstances speak in this way?

Surely not.

This scene from _George Barnwell_, 1731, ill.u.s.trates the same subst.i.tution of an author's idea of what is effective because "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 pa.s.s 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 pistol 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 dearest nephew; forgive my murderer, and take my fleeting soul to endless mercy!

(_Barnwell throws off his mask, runs to him, and, kneeling by him, raises and chafes him._)

_Barn._ Expiring saint! Oh, murder'd, martyr'd uncle! Lift up your dying eyes, and view your nephew in your murderer! O, do not look so tenderly upon me! Let indignation lighten from your 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, p.r.o.nounce my pardon then--and take me with you!--He wou'd, but cannot. O why with such fond affection do you press my murdering 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 murders, 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 Act_.[14]

Have you noticed that people under stress of strong emotion stop to depict their emotional condition, to a.n.a.lyze it, or neatly to apostrophize fate or Providence? The more real the emotion the more compact and connotative, usually, is its expression. People under high emotional strain who can tell you just what they ought to feel, or who describe elaborately what they are feeling are usually "indeed exceeding calm." Dryden's Lyndaraxa builded better than she knew when she said:

By my own experience I can tell Those who love truly do not argue well.

Bulwer-Lytton was thinking of the weakness of self-descriptive woe when he wrote Macready, while composing _Richelieu_, "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'--"

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 what 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 absolutely 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 emotion seems to arise from the fact that I have to do with characters absolutely strange to me. I experience sometimes, and then personally, 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.[15]

Allowing a character to express itself exactly raises inevitably the question of dialect. On the one hand it must be 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 characteristic 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 permit 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 Gurton's Needle_, the famous sixteenth-century Interlude, was supposed to represent dialect of its time in the neighborhood of Cambridge, England. Recently philologists 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 approximately 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 particular locality, but by the use of words and phrases heard among such people to make the characterization vivid and convincing. Here, in Mr. Sheldon's play, _The n.i.g.g.e.r_, is care to reproduce phonetically the speech of negroes:

_Jinny._ (_Wearily._) I speck yo' right. Hev yo' got suthin' fo' me t'night? Seems lak I might take it down wif me t' de cabin.

_Simms._ (_Grumbling._) Fo' dat young good-fo'-nuffin hawg-grubbah t'

swallow w'en he done come home? Laws me, w'y Ma.r.s.e Phil 'lows his fried chicken en' co'n-braid t' feed dat wo'thles rap-scallion, I jes'

cain't see! Clar out o' heah, yo' ern'ry yallah gal!

_Jinny._ (_Crushingly._) Yallah gal--! Sho'! I was livin' heah fo' yo'

was bawn! Don' fo'get dat, yo' imperent, low-down li'tle n.i.g.g.ah yo'!