Part 17 (1/2)

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 relations.h.i.+p 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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.