Dramatic Technique Part 76

_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 of the room, three doors curtained with tapestry. On left, beside the door 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, 1429._

_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 m.u.f.fled 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 a.s.sertive, reach the tapestried doorway. The click of metal, probably that of a sword, accompanying the steps, echoes in the hush of the room._

_The arras parts, and a young man blinking from dark into sudden light, stumbles into the room. (As the tapestry closes behind the youth, a dark pa.s.sageway and shadowy flight of stairs beyond are visible.)_

_Another pause ensues, during which the young man and the old man continue to gaze at one another._

_"Pray step in," begins the old man; "I have been expecting you all the evening."_

_The youth shivers slightly, hesitating for speech. Finally he manages to answer...._

MISTRESS BEATRICE COPE

ACT III. SCENE 1

_Next day, White Oaks. Late twilight. Night falls 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 and Eliza discovered in a flutter over the news of the war. Scotch raids are threatened from over the border. There are terrible tales of the lootings by the King's soldiers of places suspected of Jacobitry. Dame Pettigrew, 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 has sent for Beatrice to stay with her, who is momentarily expected. At height 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 terror, no one dares go to the window. The procession reaches the end of the lane and pa.s.ses. Sudden sharp rapping at door.

Frightened parley with spirits, as maids think. Beatrice forces them to open, and appears. The pipes are the funeral train of a Jacobite killed on the neighboring border and now on the way to Goodrest for a final ma.s.s. 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 a message for Crowe Hall. When Joyce has departed wonderingly, it appears that all day Beatrice has been trying to warn Cope at Goodrest that they were watched the day before, but has been unable till as she rode over with Jessie she met Bill Lampeter on the road. Dropping behind, she wrote hastily on her tablets a warning, and dropping them into Bill's hands made him fly to Goodrest, he to report his success at once. A knock at the big door softly. Raymond's voice. When she opens to him, a pa.s.sionate scene follows. She is at first full of affection, mingled with dread of what he may know. He is fighting suspicion, pa.s.sion for her, and inability to believe her guilty. Seeking her at Crowe Hall, he has followed her thither. At first she is too sincere to play with him. He is too anxious to be able to diplomatize. He shows his fears--that she is intriguing with another, with the Pretender. She is maddeningly incomprehensible--swears she knows no Pretender, but will not say yes or no as to meeting 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. Seeing 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 appeal 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 G.o.d. 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 renegade and unworthy her name and race. He goes. As she stands murmuring: "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 door opens and Joyce enters in great excitement to say, "Bill has come, but in bad plight." She fetches the boy, his clothes torn, his hands bleeding where ropes have cut the wrists. He has been taken shortly after leaving Beatrice and searched. He s.n.a.t.c.hed 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'll be starting by now from the Maid in the 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. "I am going to Goodrest." "Alone? To-night, with these rake-h.e.l.l soldiers abroad?" Beatrice's only answer is to find her whip and pa.s.s 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 h.e.l.l!"_

_Quick Curtain_

If it is clear that ill.u.s.trative 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 following 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 chair, upper right, Helene embroidering in window-seat, Suzanne on sofa, trying to sew. Suzanne gets into trouble and Helene helps her. Then grandmother offers to tell her a story. Suzanne says that her stories are so sad, always about her dead parents. Helene represses her. Enter grandfather, the Colonel, rear. Suzanne starts to show him her sewing and is repulsed. Colonel denounces the Dreyfus situation; Madame trying to interfere when he begins on the American att.i.tude, finally gets Helene and Suzanne from room. Then Colonel learns that George Williams, an American, loves Helene. He is overcome. Enter George rear. Embarra.s.sing situation; finally George gets up courage and asks for Helene's hand, is refused, but goes away undaunted. Enter Helene, side. Colonel says, "I will have no friend of traitors place his foot in my house." Scene. Exit Helene 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. Madame has Suzanne play with fishing rod; dismisses Marie from room. Suzanne hears Helene's sobs. Asks if she is sick. Says she will comfort her.

Madame feels guilty and leaves. Suzanne persuades Helene to come out and watch her fish. Catches some imaginary ones. Discovers George. He sends up notes like fish. Later Helene furnishes bait. Then she fishes him up. Suzanne is dismissed with candy, and he persuades Helene to elope. Suzanne comes and says the cab is there. Steps heard. George goes down rope. Marie tells of the cab. Helene rushes into packing.

Leaves note for mother with Suzanne, who wins a promise for a speedy return from her. Exit Helene 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 Helene; reminds Colonel of their parents' political differences. Suzanne tells how Helene thought 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 Helene; Helene 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_

AN ENCORE

_Adapted from a Story by Margaret Deland_

_Time: About 1830, in June.

Place: Little town of Old Chester.

Between the first and second act three weeks elapse._

_Dramatis Personae_

_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: Sprightly, 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 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 into 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, another big chair. Ha.s.socks; and a knit shawl on almost every chair. The only ornament on the shelf is a stuffed bird in a gla.s.s case._

ACT I

_Miss North is discovered in a very much starched gown, big ap.r.o.n, dusting-cap, and gloves; arranging the chairs more evenly and dusting.

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 explains 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 a.s.sistance in fixing up the house and begins to gossip about the fact that her 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 calash 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 excitement, 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 harmonica 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 left, in 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.