Part 18 (1/2)

SCENE 6. _Thorowgood, Trueman, and Lucy_

_Thorowgood._ For you, whose behavior on this occasion I have no time to commend as it deserves, I must ingage your farther a.s.sistance.

Return and observe this Millwood till I come. I have your directions, and will follow you as soon as possible. (_Exit Lucy._)

SCENE 7. _Thorowgood and Trueman_

_Thorowgood._ Trueman, you I am sure would not be idle on this occasion. (_Exit_.)

SCENE 8.

_Trueman._ He only who is a friend can judge of my distress.

(_Exit._)[20]

This French division of scenes is, of course, made for the convenience of the dramatist as he composes and for the reader, not for the actor or the audience. Though somewhat copied in the past by English authors, it is now rejected by most stages. Even French dramatists are breaking away from it. Memory of this French usage, however, still affects popular speech: when we speak of any part of an act in which two or more people are on stage, we are very likely to call it their ”scene” no matter whether they have come on in a changed setting or not. Obviously if _scene_ is to correspond with _setting_, we need another word for what in our practice is the same as the older French _scene_.

Not only do necessary changes in setting make proportioning material into acts and within acts difficult, but the time question also raises many problems. It may be troublesome within the act, between the acts, and at the opening of the play. In the final soliloquy of _Faustus_ (p.

35), an hour is supposed to elapse in some thirty lines. Though the Elizabethan, in a case like this, was ready to a.s.sist the dramatist, today we are so conscious of time s.p.a.ces that practically all stage clocks are temporarily out of order, lest they mark too distinctly the discrepancy between pretended and real time.[21] The novelist, in a few lines, tells us of many happenings in a considerable s.p.a.ce of time, or writes: ”Thus, in idle talk, a full hour pa.s.sed,” and we do not query the supposed pa.s.sage of time. On the stage, however, when one gossip says to another: ”I must be off. I meant to stop a minute, and I have gossiped an hour,” auditors who recognize perfectly that the two people have not talked ten minutes are likely to laugh derisively. As has been pointed out,[22] this time difficulty has made it practically impossible to dramatize satisfactorily Stevenson's _The Sire de Maletroit's Door_. The swiftly-moving simple story demands the one-act form, but certain marked changes in feeling, convincing enough when they are said to come after ten or twelve hours of strong emotion, become, when they are seen to occur after twenty minutes to an hour, unconvincing. The central situation may be used, but for success on the stage the story must be so re-told that the marked changes in feeling are convincing even when seen. A dilemma results: lapses of time are handled more easily in three or four acts than in one act; the moment _The Sire de Maletroit's Door_ is re-cast into three or four acts, it needs so much padding as to lose nearly all its original values.

When a dramatist faces the need to represent on stage, a pa.s.sage of time which could not in real life be coincident with the action of the scene, he must (_a_) hypnotize an audience by a long scene of complicated and absorbing emotion into thinking that the required time has pa.s.sed; or (_b_) must discover some motive sufficiently strong to account for a swift change in feeling; (_c_) or must get his person or persons off stage and write what is known as a ”Cover Scene.”

An audience led through an intense emotional experience does not mark accurately the pa.s.sage of time. Make the emotional experience protracted, as well as absorbing, and you may imply or even state that any reasonable length of time has pa.s.sed. The fearful agony of _Faustus_ so grips an audience that it loses track of the time necessary for the speech, or would, were it not for the unfortunate emphasis on the actual time: ”Ah, half the hour is pa.s.sed; 'twill all be pa.s.sed anon”; ”The clock strikes twelve.” In _Hamlet_, the fourth act takes place during the absence of Hamlet in England. By its many intensely moving happenings, it makes an auditor willing to believe that Hamlet has been absent for a long time, when in reality he has been on the stage within a half hour. Such time fillings may, of course, be a portion of a scene, a whole scene, or even a whole act. In most cases, it is quite impossible that the time really requisite and the time of action should coincide. The business of the dramatist is to make the audience feel as if the time had pa.s.sed--to create an illusion of time.

The second method of meeting the time difficulty, finding motivation of some marked change in character or circ.u.mstances which permits it to be as swift as it is on the stage, is best treated in the next chapter.

In _The Russian Honeymoon_,[23] a play once very popular with amateurs, there is bad handling of a time difficulty. The hero, going out in his peasant costume, must return after a few speeches, in full regimentals.

A lightning change of costume is, therefore, necessary. More than once this lack of a proper Cover Scene has caused an awkward wait at this point in the play. Mark the absurdly short time Steele, in his _Conscious Lovers_ allows Isabella for bringing Bevil Junior on stage.

Apparently, the latter and all his group must have been waiting at the end of the corridor.

_Isabella._ But here's a claim more tender yet--your Indiana, sir, your long lost daughter.

_Mr. Sealand._ O my child! my child!

_Indiana._ All-gracious Heaven! Is it possible? Do I embrace my father?

_Mr. Sealand._ And I do hold thee--These pa.s.sions are too strong for utterance--Rise, rise, my child, and give my tears their way--O my sister! (_Embracing her_)

_Isabella._ Now, dearest niece, my groundless fears, my painful cares no more shall vex thee. If I have wronged thy n.o.ble lover with too hard suspicions, my just concern for thee, I hope, will plead my pardon.

_Mr. Sealand._ O! make him then the full amends, and be yourself the messenger of joy: Fly this instant!--Tell him all these wondrous turns of Providence in his favour! Tell him I have now a daughter to bestow, which he no longer will decline: that this day he still shall be a bridegroom: nor shall a fortune, the merit which his father seeks, be wanting: tell him the reward of all his virtues waits on his acceptance. (_Exit Isabella._) My dearest Indiana!

(_Turns and embraces her._)

_Indiana._ Have I then at last a father's sanction on my love? His bounteous hand to give, and make my heart a present worthy of Bevil's generosity?

_Mr. Sealand._ O my child, how are our sorrows past o'erpaid by such a meeting! Though I have lost so many years of soft paternal dalliance with thee, yet, in one day, to find thee thus, and thus bestow thee, in such perfect happiness! is ample! ample reparation! And yet again the merit of thy lover--

_Indiana._ O! had I spirits left to tell you of his actions! how strongly filial duty has suppressed his love; and how concealment still has doubled all his obligations; the pride, the joy of his alliance, sir, would warm your heart, as he has conquered mine.

_Mr. Sealand._ How laudable is love, when born of virtue! I burn to embrace him--

_Indiana._ See, sir, my aunt already has succeeded, and brought him to your wishes.

(_Enter Isabella, with Sir John Bevil, Bevil Junior, Mrs. Sealand, Cimberton, Myrtle, and Lucinda._)

_Sir John Bevil._ (_Entering._) Where! where's this scene of wonder!