Dramatic Technique Part 63

_Oth.e.l.lo._ O, yes; and went between us very oft.

_Iago._ Indeed!

_Oth.e.l.lo._ Indeed! ay, indeed. Discern'st thou aught in that?

Is he not honest?

_Iago._ Honest, my lord?

_Oth.e.l.lo._ Honest, ay, honest.

_Iago._ My lord, for aught I know.

_Oth.e.l.lo._ What dost thou think?

_Iago._ Think, my lord?

_Oth.e.l.lo._ Think, my lord!

By heaven, he echoes me, As 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 Ca.s.sio 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 pa.s.sages 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 pa.s.sage 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 ma.s.s 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 unreveal'd and unrevenged pa.s.s, How should we term your dealings to be just If you unjustly deal with those that in your justice trust?[31]

If we remember what the play has already told us of Hieronimo: that having found his son hanging murdered in the 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 pa.s.sage begins to change. Put the feeling of the father into the voice as one reads, and lo, these lines are not a bad medium for expressing Hieronimo's grief. They may 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 adequately, 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. Unquestionably each of these would help the voice in the ill.u.s.trations just given from _Come Here, Oth.e.l.lo_, 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!"[32] it is not merely the intonation but the accompanying gesture in the sense of general bodily movement, and the facial expression, which make the condensed phrasing both natural and immensely effective.

When Frankford (_A Woman Killed With Kindness_, Act III, Scene 2)[33]

asks his old servant, Nicholas, for proof of Mrs. Frankford's 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 toward 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 phrasing 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 pa.s.sage from _The Revesby Sword Play_ is distinctly misleading because of the word, "looking-gla.s.s" 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-gla.s.s.

_Fool._ Let me see what I can see in this fine large looking-gla.s.s.

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 gla.s.s.[34]

A "looking-gla.s.s" with "a hole through it" seems nearly a contradiction in terms, but the word "gla.s.s" is synonymous 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 s.p.a.ce. This s.p.a.ce is often large enough for a man's head. The Fool has seen the dancers make such a nut. Holding it up, he asks Pickle Herring what it is. Pickle Herring, seeing the Fool's face through the opening and seizing his chance for a jest, calls the nut a "looking-gla.s.s." The Fool carries on the conceit. Looking through the hole he and Pickle Herring jibe at each other. The whole _Revesby Sword Play_ provides ill.u.s.tration after ill.u.s.tration of the inseparability of words and business in good dramatic dialogue.

By "business" is meant ordinarily either ill.u.s.trative action called for by a stage direction or clearly implied in the text. By "latent business" is meant the ill.u.s.trative action which a sympathetic and imaginative producer finds in lines either ordinarily left without business or treated with some conventional action. Mr. William Poel's historic revival 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 finger 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 immediate cry of Everyman,

O wretched caitiff, whither shall I flee, That I might scape this endless sorrow?[35]

The text did not call for this gesture: it belongs to the best type 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, gesture, and the general action of his characters may do for him. Which, after all, is the more touching, the cry of pleasure with which some child of the streets, at a charity Christmas 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 express 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 audience, sat near a table. It was her facial expression and, rarely, a slight movement of the arms or body which conveyed 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 pa.s.s-book.

(_Opens pa.s.s-book and takes pa.s.sed cheques out of side pocket of book. Music._)

_Ralston._ (_Aside._) He heard all! If she had told me, she would have saved me.

_Nina._ (_Looking at a cheque._) What is this cheque? I don't remember it. A cheque for five guineas in favor of Mrs. Chapstone.

I never gave her a cheque. Oh, I recollect, that same evening she bothered 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 pa.s.s-book down, and takes up cheque again, examines it; turns her head and looks at Ralston, observes his absorption, and after another look at him takes from drawer the letter which Percival 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 chair. Stop music on the word "James."_)[36]

The greatest recent instance of pantomime is undoubtedly the third scene of Act III of Mr. Galsworthy's _Justice_. Set in Falder's cell, it is meant to ill.u.s.trate the loneliness, the excitability, and even the brutishness of a prisoner's life. Many people, while admitting the effectiveness of this wordless scene, have declared it emotionally so overwhelming that they could not endure seeing it a second time.

_Falder's cell, a whitewashed s.p.a.ce thirteen feet broad by seven deep, and nine feet high, with a rounded ceiling. The floor is of shiny blackened bricks. The barred window of opaque gla.s.s 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 window, and another over the door.

Falder's work (a shirt to which he is putting b.u.t.ton holes) is hung to a nail on the wall over a small wooden table, on which the novel, "Lorna Doone,"[37] lies open. Low down in the corner by the door is a thick gla.s.s 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, Falder, 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 down; he does a st.i.tch or two, having the air of a man so lost in sadness that each st.i.tch 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, picking 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 intently 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 gla.s.s screen has been turned up. The cell is brightly lighted. Falder 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 were 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; Falder's hands are seen moving as if his spirit had already joined in this beating, and the sound swells till it seems to have entered the very cell._ _He suddenly raises his clenched fists. Panting violently, he flings himself at his door, and beats on it._

_The curtain falls_.[38]

Perhaps an even more interesting ill.u.s.tration of pantomime, because it gives us, instead of the heightening emotion of one person, the action of two characters upon each other, is found in Hugo von Hofmannsthal's _Die Frau im Fenster_.

_She 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 become distorted with the utmost anguish. Messer Braccio stands silent in the doorway. He wears a simple dark green dressing-gown, without weapons; low shoes. He is very tall and strong. His face has the quality that often shows itself in the old pictures of great lords and condottieri. He has an exceedingly large forehead, and little, dark eyes, thick black hair, short and curly, and a small beard round his face. Dianora wishes to speak, but can bring no sound from her throat.

Messer. Braccio motions for her to draw in the 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, notes that he has no dagger. Making an impatient movement of the lips he glances 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 firm, unhurried steps._

_Dianora looks after him continually; she cannot take her eyes from him. When the curtain falls behind him, she pa.s.ses her fingers over her cheeks and through her hair. Then she folds her hands and with wildly twitching lips silently prays. Then she throws her arms backward and grasps the stone coping with her fingers, a movement revealing 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 doorway, and then sits down opposite his wife. His expression has not changed. From time to time he lifts his right hand mechanically and regards the small wound in its palm._