Part 63 (1/2)

_Oth.e.l.lo._ O, yes; and went between us very oft.

_Iago._ Indeed!

_Oth.e.l.lo._ Indeed! ay, indeed. Discern'st thou aught in that?

Is he not honest?

_Iago._ Honest, my lord?

_Oth.e.l.lo._ Honest, ay, honest.

_Iago._ My lord, for aught I know.

_Oth.e.l.lo._ What dost thou think?

_Iago._ Think, my lord?

_Oth.e.l.lo._ Think, my lord!

By heaven, he echoes me, As if there were some monster in his thought Too hideous to be shown.--Thou dost mean something.

I heard thee say even now, thou lik'st not that, When Ca.s.sio left my wife. What didst not like?

And when I told thee he was of my counsel, Of my whole course of wooing, thou criedst, ”Indeed!”

And didst contract and purse thy brow together, As if thou then hadst shut up in thy brain Some horrible conceit. If thou dost love me, Show me thy thought.

Even pa.s.sages in a play which look very unpromising should not be finally judged till a flexible, well-trained voice has done its best to bring out any emotion latent in the words. If they were originally chosen by an author writing in full sympathetic understanding of his figures, they will, properly spoken, reveal unexpected emotional values.

Here is a pa.s.sage from Kyd's _Spanish Tragedy_ at which many a critic has poked fun. At first sight it undoubtedly seems merely ”words, words, words.”

_Hieronimo._ O eyes! no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears: O life! no life but lively form of death: O world! no world but ma.s.s of public wrongs, Confus'd and fill'd with murder and misdeeds: O sacred heav'ns! if this unhallow'd deed, If this inhuman and barbarous attempt; If this incomparable murder thus, Of mine, but now no more my son, Should unreveal'd and unrevenged pa.s.s, How should we term your dealings to be just If you unjustly deal with those that in your justice trust?[31]

If we remember what the play has already told us of Hieronimo: that having found his son hanging murdered in the arbor, he enters in a perfect ecstasy of grief; and if we recall that the Elizabethan loved a style as ornate as this, feeling it no barrier between him and the thought behind it; the look of the pa.s.sage begins to change. Put the feeling of the father into the voice as one reads, and lo, these lines are not a bad medium for expressing Hieronimo's grief. They may lack the simplicity we demand today, but strong, clear feeling may be brought out from behind them for any audience. For an Elizabethan audience it came forth in a style delightful in itself. The fact is, time cannot wholly spoil the value even of lines phrased according to the standards of some literary vogue of the moment if the author originally wrote them with an imagination kindled to accuracy of feeling by complete sympathy with his characters. Never judge the dialogue of a play only by the eye. Hear it adequately, interpretively spoken. Then, and then only, judge it finally.

It is almost impossible, also, to separate the voice from gesture and facial expression as aids in dramatic dialogue. Unquestionably each of these would help the voice in the ill.u.s.trations just given from _Come Here, Oth.e.l.lo_, and the _Spanish Tragedy_. When Antony, absorbed in Cleopatra, and therefore unwilling to listen to the messenger bearing tidings of the utmost importance from Rome, cries, ”Grates me: the sum!”[32] it is not merely the intonation but the accompanying gesture in the sense of general bodily movement, and the facial expression, which make the condensed phrasing both natural and immensely effective.

When Frankford (_A Woman Killed With Kindness_, Act III, Scene 2)[33]

asks his old servant, Nicholas, for proof of Mrs. Frankford's unfaithfulness the answer is not, ”I saw her,” or ”I saw her and her lover with my eyes,” but simply ”Eyes, eyes.” The last are what rightly, in dramatic dialogue, may be called ”gesture words,” words demanding for their full effect not only the right intonation, but facial expression and all that pantomime may mean. The old man lifts his head, and, though unwillingly, looks his master straight in the face as he speaks. Perhaps he even emphasizes by lifting his hand toward his eyes. With the concomitants of action and voice, the words take on finality and equal: ”What greater proof could I have? I saw the lovers with these eyes.”

So close, indeed, is the relation between action and phrasing that often we cannot tell whether dialogue is good or bad till we have made sure of the ”business” implied by it, or to be found in it by an imaginative worker. The following pa.s.sage from _The Revesby Sword Play_ is distinctly misleading because of the word, ”looking-gla.s.s” unless one studies the context closely for implied business, and above all, understands the sword dances of the period in which the play was written.

_Fool._ Well, what dost thou call this very pretty thing?

_Pickle Herring._ Why, I call it a fine large looking-gla.s.s.

_Fool._ Let me see what I can see in this fine large looking-gla.s.s.

Here's a hole through it, I see. I see, and I see!

_Pickle Herring._ You see and you see, and what do you see?

_Fool._ Marry, e'en a fool,--just like thee!

_Pickle Herring._ It is only your own face in the gla.s.s.[34]