Part 18 (2/2)

Mr. Sealand, I congratulate, on this occasion, our mutual happiness.[24]

The inexperienced dramatist sending a servant out for wraps, brings him back so speedily that, apparently, in a well-ordered Fifth Avenue or Newport residence, garments lie all about the house or replace tapestries upon the walls. The speed with which servants upon the stage do errands shows that they have been trained in a basic principle of drama: ”Waste no time.” A more experienced dramatist, realizing that such speed destroys illusion, writes a brief scene which seems to allow time for the errand.

The telephone and the automobile have been G.o.dsends to the young dramatist. By use of the first, a lover can telephone from the drug-store just around the corner, run all the way in his eagerness, take an elevator, and be on the scene with a speed that saves the young dramatist any long Cover Scene. Of course, if said lover be rich or extravagant enough to own an automobile, the distance from which he may telephone increases as the square of the horse-power of his machine. In the old days, and even today, if the truth be regarded, something must be taking place on the stage sufficient to allow time for a lover, however ardent, to cover the distance between the telephone booth and the house.

Here, however, a dramatist meets his Scylla and Charybdis. He yields to Scylla, if he does not write any such scene; to Charybdis, if he writes such a scene but does not advance his play by it--that is, if he merely marks time. In a recent play, whenever a time s.p.a.ce was to be covered, a group of citizens talked. What they said was not uninteresting. The characters were well sketched in. But the scene did not advance the story at all. Bulwer-Lytton faced this difficulty in writing _Money_:

I think in the first 3 acts you will find little to alter. But in Act 4--the 2 scenes with Lady B. & Clara--and Joke & the Tradesman don't help on the Plot much--they were wanted, however, especially the last to give time for change of dress & smooth the lapse of the theme from money to dinner; you will see if this part requires any amendment.[25]

The principle here is this: Whatever is written to cover a time s.p.a.ce, long or short, must help the movement of the play to its climax. It may be said that the fourth act of neither _Macbeth_ nor _Hamlet_ complies with this statement; but more careful thought will show that in each case the act is very important to the whole story. The t.i.tle of each play, and present-day interest in its characterization rather than its story, make us miss greatly the leading figure, wholly absent in the act. Therefore we hasten to declare, not recognizing that story was of first importance in Shakespeare's day, that because this act is not focused on Macbeth or Hamlet the act in question clogs the general movement.

Otway, in _Venice Preserved_, handles pa.s.sage of time admirably. Toward the end of the first act, Pierre makes an appointment with Jaffier to meet him that night on the Rialto at twelve. Exit Pierre. Immediately Belvidera enters to Jaffier. Their talk, only about four pages in length, is so pa.s.sionately pathetic that a hearer loses all accurate sense of time. There is an _entr'acte_, and then a scene between Pierre and Aquilina. Again it is brief, only three and a half pages, but it is dramatic, and complicates the story. Consequently, when Jaffier does meet Pierre on the Rialto, we are quite ready to believe that considerable time has pa.s.sed and it is now twelve o'clock. Otway has used three devices to cover a time s.p.a.ce: an absorbing emotional scene, an _entr'acte_, and a Cover Scene.[26]

All the methods just described have had to do with representing time on stage. When time necessary for the telling of a story may be treated as pa.s.sing off stage, other devices may be used. Most of them gather about a dropping of the curtain. Recently there has been much use of the curtain to denote, without change of set, the pa.s.sing of some relatively brief time. When a group of people leave the stage for dinner, the curtain is dropped, to rise again as the group, returning from dinner, take up the action of the play. Just this occurs in Act I of Pinero's _Iris_.[27] Mr. Belasco, in _The Woman_, dropped the curtain at the beginning of a cross examination, to raise it for the next act as the examination nears its climax. In _The Silver Box_,[28] dropping the curtain twice in Act I makes it possible to see the Barthwicks'

dining-room ”just after midnight,” ”at eight-thirty A.M.,” and at ”the breakfast hour of Mr. and Mrs. Barthwick.” Such curtains, though justifiable, have one serious objection. They bring us back with a jolt from absorbed following of the play to the disturbing truth that we are not looking at life, but at life selectively presented under obvious limitations of the stage. Scene 1 of _The Silver Box_, which began ”just after midnight,” lasts only a few minutes; yet when the curtain ”rises again at once,” we are to understand that eight hours have elapsed.

The simplest method of handling time off stage is to treat it as having elapsed between acts or on the dropping of a curtain within an act.[29]

In how many, many plays--for instance, Sir Arthur Pinero's early _Lady Bountiful_--has the hero, in whatever length of time between the fourth and fifth acts the dramatist has preferred, become the regenerated figure of the last act! All that is needed in _The Man Who Came Back_, as produced, to change the dope-ridden, degenerating youth into a firm character, even into a landed proprietor, is a sea voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu--and an _entr'acte_! What takes place between acts is far too often--medicinally, morally, dare we say dramatically?--more significant than what we see. Yet why deride this refuge of the dramatist? Such use is merely an extension of what we permit any dramatist who, writing two plays on the same subject or person, implies or states that very many years have elapsed between the two parts. No one seriously objects when thousands of years are supposed to elapse between the _Prometheus Bound_ and the _Prometheus Unbound_ of aeschylus.[30] Surely, it is logical to treat s.p.a.ces between acts like s.p.a.ces between plays on related subjects. The trouble lies, not in the time supposed to have elapsed, but in the changes of character said to have taken place. As long as our drama was primarily story, and not, as it has come to be increasingly, a revealer of character, we were content, if each act contained a thrilling dramatic incident, to be told that this or that had happened between the acts. The early drama did this by the Dumb Show and the Chorus.

ACT II

PROLOGUE

_Flourish. Enter Chorus_

_Chorus._ Now all the youth of England are on fire, And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.

Now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought Reigns solely in the breast of every man.

They sell the pasture now to buy the horse, Following the mirror of all Christian kings, With winged heels, as English Mercuries.

For now sits Expectation in the air, And hides a sword from hilts unto the point With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets, Promis'd to Harry and his followers.

The French, advis'd by good intelligence Of this most dreadful preparation, Shake in their fear, and with pale policy Seek to divert the English purposes.

O England! model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a mighty heart, What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do, Were all thy children kind and natural!

But see thy fault! France hath in thee found out A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills With treacherous crowns; and three corrupted men, One, Richard Earl of Cambridge, and the second, Henry Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third, Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland, Have, for the gilt of France,--O guilt indeed!-- Confirm'd conspiracy with fearful France; And by their hands this grace of kings must die, If h.e.l.l and treason hold their promises, Ere he take s.h.i.+p for France, and in Southampton.

Linger your patience on, and we'll digest The abuse of distance, force a play.

The sum is paid; the traitors are agreed; The King is set from London; and the scene Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton.

There is the playhouse now, there must you sit; And thence to France shall we convey you safe, And bring you back, charming the narrow seas To give you gentle pa.s.s; for, if we may, We'll not offend one stomach with our play.

But, till the King come forth, and not till then, Unto Southampton do we s.h.i.+ft our scene. (_Exit._) _Henry V._

As audiences, becoming more interested in characterization and less in mere story, grew to expect that each act would show the central figure growing out of the preceding act and into the next, they balked more and more at hearing of changes instead of seeing them. They insisted that the effective forces must work before their eyes. Hence the disappearance of Dumb Show and Chorus. With _Lady Bountiful_[31] the public did not object strongly to what was supposed to happen between the fourth and fifth acts, because it took the whole play as a mere story. But in _Iris_, when the author asked it to accept all the important stages in the moral breakdown of Iris as taking place between the fourth and fifth acts, there was considerable dissent. Contrast the greater satisfactoriness when an auditor can watch important changes, as he may with Sophy Fullgarney in the third act of the _Gay Lord Quex_,[32] or with Mrs. Dane in the fourth act of _Mrs. Dane's Defence_.

To a.s.sume that a lapse of time stated to have pa.s.sed in a just preceding _entr'acte_, and a change of environment there, have produced marked difference in character is not today enough. A dramatist may a.s.sume that only as much time has pa.s.sed between acts as he makes entirely plausible by the happenings and characterization of the next act. For any needed statement of what has happened since the close of a preceding act he must depend only on deft exposition within the act in question.

Recent usage no longer insists that acts may not somewhat overlap.

”Toward the end of Act II of Eugene Walter's _Paid in Full_, Emma Brooks is disclosed making an appointment with Captain Williams over a telephone. In the next act we are transferred to Captain Williams's quarters, and the dramatic clock has, in the meanwhile, been turned back some fifteen minutes, for presently the telephone bell rings, and the same appointment is made over again. In other words, Act II partly overlaps Act I in time, but the scene is different.”[33] There is a similar use in _Under Cover_. At the beginning of the last act, a group, sleepily at cards, is startled by the burglar alarm. The climax of the preceding act was that same alarm.

The most difficult kind of off-stage time to treat comes not within or between the acts. It is the time before the play begins in which events took place which must be known as soon as the play opens, if auditors are to follow the play understandingly. Every dramatist, as he turns from his story to his plot, faces the problem: How plant in the mind of the audience past events and facts concerning the characters which are fundamental in understanding the play. The Chorus and the Dumb Show again were, among early dramatists, the clumsy solution of this problem.

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