Part 31 (1/2)
Watch, then, the beginning and the ending of scenes and acts, lest an unconscious and undesired emphasis result.
An important means of emphasis is contrast--in character, situation, and even dialogue. Melodrama has always rested, in large part, for its definite emotional appeals on sharply contrasted characters--the spotless hero, the double-dyed villain, the adventuress, and the heroine so innocent of the world as to provide unlimited dramatic situations.
Recall the impetuous Julia and the gentle Sylvia of _The Two Gentlemen of Verona_. If it be said that such direct contrasting of dissimilar figures belongs more to the earlier plays of dramatists, this is not true. In _The Gay Lord Quex_,[32] contrast of the old and the young roues, Quex and Bastling, helps to make clear and to emphasize the point of the play. _The Princess and the b.u.t.terfly_[33] largely depends upon contrast,--among the restless women of Act I, the restless men of Act II, between the Princess and Sir George, between the love of Fay Zuliani for Sir George and that of Edward for the Princess.
Contrast in situation was a great reliance with the Elizabethans and, even when very crudely used, remains popular with the American public today. So much pleasure did the Elizabethan derive from contrasted situation that he was willing to have it worked up as a separate sub-plot, at times very slightly connected with the main plot. Take _The Changeling_ of Middleton: the t.i.tular part, written for comic value, deals with scenes in a madhouse; the other intensely tragic plot of De Flores and Beatrice-Joanna is but slightly connected with it. Think of the grave-diggers in _Hamlet_, just before the burial of Ophelia, and, above all, consider in _Macbeth_ the consummate use of a contrasting scene, in the porter at the gate just after the murder of Duncan.
It is a sense of the value of contrasting situation which produces the best dramatic irony. When in Scene 2, Act I, of _Hindle Wakes_, we listen to Alan Jeffcote's father and mother planning for his marriage, the fine dramatic irony comes from the contrast we feel with the facts of his conduct, known to us from the preceding scene, which may make his marriage impossible. Dramatic irony depends on a preceding planting in the minds of the auditors of information which makes what is true contrast sharply with what the characters of the particular scene suppose to be true. Contrast, then, underlies dramatic irony. An audience, feeling the dramatic irony of a scene, is put into a state of suspense as to how and when the blow they antic.i.p.ate will fall.
Evidently, then, emphasis by means of contrast, when it results in dramatic irony, makes for dramatic suspense.
Contrast may be used effectively in dialogue. The modern dramatist sometimes overdoes this use. Because he has observed that the greatest suffering of the strongest natures rarely finds expression in rich or varied speech, he tries to discover words which in their feebleness, their inappositeness, or their unexpected commonplaceness, contrast sharply with what a hearer feels is the intensity of the emotion behind them. This has given us in recent drama some dialogue unnatural in its tameness. This kind of contrast, however, when handled with real understanding, is extremely effective. In the parting of Laurie and the heroine in _Iris_,[34] the very commonplaceness of the details of which they talk shows that they do not dare to speak of what is really in their minds, and makes the best preparation for the sudden loosing of emotion by Iris in what would be ordinarily a simple request: ”Close the jalousies!”
Except in our recent revival of Moralities for the delectation of moral Broadway, we are growing away dramatically from mere contrasting of types of character and from plays in which a serious and a comic plot are but loosely connected. Yet dramatists will always find contrast highly useful in emphasizing points of characterization and important values in the story. Moreover, any trained dramatist knows that when his audience has been somewhat exhausted by laughter or tears, a scene of contrasting emotional value is of the highest importance. By changing the focus of interest, it renews the power of response exhausted in the just preceding scene. As has been pointed out again and again, though it may be true that the drunken porter in _Macbeth_ was funnier for an Elizabethan public than he is today, nevertheless his coming breaks the tension of the terrible murder scene and makes it possible even now to turn to fresh horrors with surer responsiveness. There is no s.p.a.ce here to go into any satisfactory a.n.a.lysis of the basal relations between the serious and the comic, but every competent actor knows that frequently, if the full desired comic values are to appear, it is necessary to play a part, or all the parts, with great seriousness, even in a piece meant to be broadly comic for the audience. This is true not merely in some of Shaw's plays,--_Man and Superman_, _You Never Can Tell_, etc., but in many old farces and even in burlesque. In the contrast the audience makes between the seriousness of the characters in what they do and say and the att.i.tude the dramatist creates toward them lie the real comic values. Often it is only on the flint of the serious that one may strike the most brilliant spark of the comic.
Emphasis is needed not only to keep clear the development of the story and its thesis, if there be any, but also to determine and maintain the dramatic form in which it is cast--farce, comedy, melodrama, and tragedy. If an audience is kept long in the dark as to whether the dramatist is thinking of his material seriously or with amus.e.m.e.nt, or if they feel at the end that the story has been told with no coordinating emphasis to determine whether it is farce or comedy or tragedy, they are confused and likely to hold back part of their proper responsiveness. As has been pointed out, it is more than doubtful whether the scene of the attempted suicide in what is otherwise a genuine comedy of character, _The Girl with the Green Eyes_,[35] did not seriously hurt the effectiveness of the play for a great many people.
Here, again, beginnings and endings are of the utmost consequence.
Notice the extreme care of Maeterlinck, at the outset of _Pelleas and Melisande_[36] to create a mood for his play. One is prepared for the tragic and the mysterious by the opening scene of the handmaidens was.h.i.+ng the mysterious stain from the palace steps. An auditor has not heard ten speeches of Synge's _Riders to the Sea_[37] before he knows that the dramatist is dealing seriously with grim matters, that, in all probability, the play is a tragedy. Look at Rostand's _The Romancers_.[38] It is to be a graceful telling of a jest played upon two sentimental children by two fond fathers. The author must make clear early in the play that what may be tragic enough for the young people is to be fantastic comedy for any hearers. Could anything be better than the opening: these two children, on the wall between their homes, so reading _Romeo and Juliet_ together that it is obvious that they are in love with being in love, nothing more? There is the perfect emphasis which establishes early the att.i.tude of the dramatist toward his material, in this case making the play poetic comedy. Can any one feel much doubt what form of drama is _The Importance of Being Earnest_?[39]
The first few pages show that dialogue is to count heavily as such.
Evidently the mood is comic. As evidently, there is exaggeration. Thus we move from initial farce to the more broadly farcical mourning for the death of the supposit.i.tious Earnest and to the fateful black handbag. If the ending of _The Romancers_ be played as it was in London, with the speakers of the last lines gradually fading from sight in the dimming lights, surely that emphasis must mean to the audience that it has been seeing a fantasy.[40]
However, as has been said, danger lurks in these places of easy emphasis, the beginning and the ending, for at times something effective in itself swings the emphasis the wrong way. In _Masks and Faces_,[41]
two generations have shed tears over the woes of Triplet as meant for ”real life,” only to be somewhat rebuffed when, just before the final curtain, all the characters step out of the play for the ”Epilogue,” and so stamp it as ”only a story after all.”
In brief, unless some special purpose is subserved thereby, an audience should not long be left in the dark as to the form in which the dramatist thinks he has cast his play. He who treats his material in many different moods runs the chance of confusing his hearers. Only by sure and well-placed emphasis can he keep his chosen form clear.
Particularly is this true in the mixed forms, tragi-comedy and farce-comedy. Only well-placed emphasis will carry an audience through these with just the result desired by the dramatist.
How decide what to emphasize? Tom Taylor, despising the intelligence of audiences of his day, used to say, ”When you have something to say to an audience, tell them you are going to say it. Tell them you 're saying it. Tell them you've said it. Then, perhaps, they'll understand it.”
Truth probably lies between this and the statement of a dramatist of today, ”I am re-writing a play originally composed some ten years ago.
Do you know what I am doing? I am cutting and condensing, because the intervening years have taught me that I may suggest where I thought I must explain in full, and state but once what I thought I must repeat.
Audiences are far quicker than ten years ago I supposed them to be.”
Till the training of the dramatist gives him a kind of sixth sense which tells him what in his plot needs emphasis for his public, he must depend on the comments of really intelligent hearers to whom he reads the ma.n.u.script and, above all, on retouching his play after the first performances.
It is not enough, however, by clearness and right emphasis to maintain interest: as the play develops, the interest should if possible be increased. Either to maintain or to increase interest means that a hearer must be led on from scene to scene, act to act, absorbed while the curtain is up and, between the acts, eager for it to rise again.
Such attention given a play means that it has a third essential quality, movement. The plays of tyro dramatists today are often sadly lacking in good movement.
Good movement rests, first of all, on clearness; secondly, on right emphasis; and thirdly, on something already mentioned in connection with both clearness and right emphasis,--suspense. This means a straining forward of interest, a compelling desire to know what will happen next.
Whether a hearer is totally at a loss to know what will happen, but eager to ascertain; partly guesses what will take place, but deeply desires to make sure; or almost holds back so greatly does he dread an antic.i.p.ated situation, he is in a state of suspense, for be it willingly or unwillingly on his part, on sweeps his interest.
There should be good movement within the scene, the act, and even the play as a whole. It is, however, easily checked. If scenes or characters not essential are allowed place within a play, it has been shown on pages 87-89 that this may interfere with either clearness or good emphasis. They will hurt the movement of the play. Closely related as a possible danger are necessary scenes not well placed. Often s.h.i.+fting part of a scene or act makes all the difference between sustained and interrupted suspense. For example, a young man, after some quarrelsome words, threatens to shoot his sister. As they stand facing each other, steps are heard outside. A group which enters brings about an amusing scene. Good as it is, it may kill the suspense created by those two tense figures, if it switches interest wholly or in large part from them. If it does, any effective picking up the scene between the angry brother and sister, when the visitors go out, may be impossible. On the other hand, so write the scene that the audience, never diverted in its attention to those two figures, feels that the moment the visitors leave the quarrel will be resumed with greater intensity just because of the interruption: then there will be no loss of tension. Just here lies the important point: suspense once created must never be allowed to lapse so long as to be lost. A scene for contrast or to renew the power of desired emotional response in the audience or to develop part of a correlated story may be introduced, but always what is put between something which makes the audience strain forward and its goal should leave it as eager, and preferably more eager for the solution.
A s.h.i.+ft in order may do much to increase suspense. When Ibsen transferred Rosmer's confession, which is very necessary to the play, from Act II to the end of Act I, he greatly added to the suspense created by the first act. To put it differently, he greatly accelerated the movement of the play. An audience, knowing that Rosmer is ”an apostate from the faith of his fathers,” eagerly desires to see what will happen to him in such surroundings as those made clear in Act I. In the earlier version, a reader learns that there are mysteries which the play will probably solve, but has nothing on which to focus his attention as a compelling element of suspense.
Any one knows that when an actor fails to come on at the right moment, unless quick-witted actors invent dialogue or action, the stage ”waits”
for the actor. There is something which exactly corresponds to this in the text of plays. Henry Le Barren comes to call on Madge Ellsworth.
The maid, after showing him into the library, goes to find her mistress.
”_Meanwhile Henry looks idly at the books on the table till Madge enters._” Unless Madge, perfectly sure that Henry would call at this hour, is waiting just outside the door, some action is needed on the stage to cover the time s.p.a.ce until she can enter naturally. It is true that looking at the books fills the time for Henry, but it does not sustain for the audience interest already created in him or the story.
When nothing is taking place on the stage, something is taking place in the audience which greatly concerns the dramatist: it is slipping away from him because it is losing interest. For contrast, suppose that Henry sits restlessly only a moment, then with a sigh picks up a book, tries to read, falls to dreaming, and holds the book so that we may see he is reading it upside down. He tries another book in vain. He starts three or four times, thinking that the door is about to open. He absent-mindedly examines a piece of bric-a-brac. He starts forward eagerly the moment Madge enters. Now we are interested, because he is either exhibiting emotions the cause of which we understand, emotions which lead us to expect an interesting scene between him and Madge, or his conduct sets us guessing as to what can lie ahead between the two.