Front matter (continued 3)

A one-act play with a very good central situation came to nothing because its author had not grasped the principle just set forth. A young man and a girl, eloping, come to the station of a small settlement. They find no one about, but the door of the ticket office ajar as if the person in charge had stepped out for a moment. They fear that the father and mother of the girl and perhaps another admirer are on their trail. Partly from curiosity and partly from the desire not to be seen till the train comes, they step into the office, closing the door behind them. Then they discover that they are prisoners, for the door can be opened even from their side only by a person with the right key. Just at this point, the father and mother arrive, amazed at finding no trace of the fugitives. They too are puzzled by the absence of the ticket-seller. Just as they start out to find him he appears, apologetic for his absence. He is mildly interested in their story, but as he has seen no young persons, and as he expects the train shortly, he starts to go into his office. Then he discovers the closed door and admits that he went out to look for his key, which he must have dropped somewhere since he opened the station that morning. Here was of course a dramatic situation of large possibilities, but in the play it was treated almost as just stated. Of course the sensations of the two young people cooped up in the ticket office, expecting the parents, the station agent, and the train, should have given us a comic scene before any one else appeared. The effect of the discovery that they are prisoners upon the girl, the effect upon the young man, the way in which the resulting emotions of each affect the other, all this must be given if the potential comedy of the situation inside the ticket office is to be fully used. The arrival of the father and mother offers a chance not only for the individual emotions of each and their effect upon one another, but for the emotion of the concealed elopers as they hear the familiar voices and understand how enraged the parents are. There is opportunity for a good scene of some length here before the station master appears. When he does enter, he should be interesting, not simply for himself, but for the effect he has on father, mother, girl, and young man, and the new interplay of emotions he causes among them. Add the coming of the former admirer with evidence he has found that the elopers have been making for this station; and as the new complications developed by his coming take shape, let the train be heard far up the line. Surely here is a group of very promising situations.

In this play so crowded with dramatic opportunity, its author found only the most dramatic moments, rushing rapidly from one to the other. Result, a failure. Any dramatic situation made up of a congeries of minor situations is like a great desk the pigeon holes of which are crowded with letters and personal documents. The biographer sitting down before it first makes himself thoroughly conversant with all the data. Then he selects for use only what is of value for the biographical purpose he has in mind. The people in a situation are, for a dramatist, the human data he must study till he so completely understands them that he can differentiate clearly in what they offer between what is useful for his purposes and what is not.

Even Shakespeare, in his earliest work, had not grasped the importance of “holding a situation,” as a scene in the First Part of Henry VI shows. He knows how to inform his audience in Scene 2 of Act II why it is that Talbot visits the Countess of Auvergne; in the Whispers of the next to the last line of this scene he even prepares for the surprise Talbot springs upon the Countess in the next scene; but Scene 3 itself he treats merely for the broad situation and a few bits of rhetoric.

A Messenger come to the English camp has just asked which of the men before him is the famous Talbot.

Talbot. Here is the Talbot; who would speak with him?

Messenger. The virtuous lady, Countess of Auvergne, With modesty admiring thy renown, By me entreats, great lord, thou wouldst vouchsafe To visit her poor castle where she lies, That she may boast she hath beheld the man Whose glory fills the world with loud report.

Burgundy. Is it even so? Nay, then, I see our wars Will turn unto a peaceful comic sport, When ladies crave to be encount’red with. You may not, my lord, despise her gentle suit.

Tal. Ne’er trust me then; for what a world of men Could not prevail with all their oratory, Yet hath a woman’s kindness over-rul’d; And therefore tell her I return great thanks, And in submission will attend on her. Will not your honours bear me company?

Bedford. No, truly, ’tis more than manners will; And I have heard it said, unbidden guests Are often welcomest when they are gone.

Tal. Well, then, alone, since there’s no remedy, I mean to prove this lady’s courtesy. Come hither, captain. (Whispers.) You perceive my mind?

Captain. I do, my lord, and mean accordingly. (Exeunt.)

SCENE 3. The Countess’s castle

Enter the Countess and her porter

Countess. Porter, remember what I gave in charge; And when you have done so, bring the keys to me.

Porter. Madam, I will. (Exit.)

Countess. The plot is laid. If all things fall out right I shall as famous be by this exploit As Scythian Tomyris by Cyrus’ death. Great is the rumour of this dreadful knight, And his achievements of no less account; Fain would mine eyes be witness with mine ears, To give their censure of these rare reports.

Enter Messenger and Talbot

Messenger. Madam, According as your ladyship desir’d, By message crav’d, so is Lord Talbot come.

Countess. And he is welcome. What! is this the man?

Mess. Madam, it is.

Countess. Is this the scourge of France? Is this the Talbot, so much fear’d abroad That with his name the mothers still their babes? I see report is fabulous and false. I thought I should have seen some Hercules, A second Hector, for his grim aspect, And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs. Alas, this is a child, a silly dwarf! It cannot be this weak and writhled shrimp Should strike such terror to his enemies.

Tal. Madam, I have been bold to trouble you; But since your ladyship is not at leisure, I’ll sort some other time to visit you. (Going.)

Countess. What means he now? Go ask him whither he goes.

Mess. Stay, my Lord Talbot; for my lady craves To know the cause of your abrupt departure.

Tal. Marry, for that she’s in a wrong belief, I go to certify her Talbot’s here.

Reënter Porter with keys

Countess. If thou be he, then art thou prisoner.

Tal. Prisoner! To whom!

Countess. To me, blood-thirsty lord; And for that cause I train’d thee to my house. Long time, thy shadow hath been thrall to me, For in my gallery thy picture hangs; But now the substance shall endure the like, And I will chain these legs and arms of thine, That hast by tyranny these many years Wasted our country, slain our citizens, And sent our sons and husbands captivate.

Tal. Ha, ha, ha!

Countess. Laughest thou, wretch? Thy mirth shall turn to moan.

Tal. I laugh to see your ladyship so fond To think that you have aught but Talbot’s shadow Whereon to practice your severity.

Countess. Why, art not thou the man?

Tal. I am indeed.

Countess. Then have I substance too.

Tal. No, no, I am but shadow of myself. You are deceiv’d, my substance is not here. For what you see is but the smallest part And least proportion of humanity. I tell you, madam, were the whole frame here, It is of such a spacious, lofty pitch, Your roof were not sufficient to contain’t.

Countess. This is a riddling merchant for the nonce; He will be here, and yet he is not here. How can these contrarieties agree?

Tal. That will I show you presently.

(Winds his horn. Drums strike up: a peal of ordnance. The gates are forced.)

Enter Soldiers

How say you, madam? Are you now persuaded That Talbot is but shadow of himself? These are his substance, sinews, arms, and strength, With which he yoketh your rebellious necks, Razeth your cities and subverts your towns And in a moment makes you desolate.

Countess. Victorious Talbot! pardon my abuse. I find thou art no less than fame hath bruited And more than may be gathered by the shape. Let my presumption not provoke thy wrath; For I am sorry that with reverence I did not entertain thee as thou art.

Tal. Be not dismay’d, fair lady; nor misconstrue The mind of Talbot, as you did mistake The outward composition of his body. What you have done hath not offended me; Nor other satisfaction do I crave, But only with your patience, that we may Taste of your wine and see what cates you have; For soldiers’ stomachs always serve them well.

Countess. With all my heart, and think me honoured To feast so great a warrior in my house.

(Exeunt.)

Except for a few lines of rhetoric, could the account in Scene 3 be shortened? The Countess awaits Talbot; he comes; she reviles him in a few lines; he turns to go; she declares him a prisoner; he laughs at her; and as she stands amazed, calls in his forces brought in secret to the castle. When Talbot invites himself and his men to feast at her expense, the Countess immediately agrees. Reading the scene, one recalls the words of Dumas fils: “Any one can relate a dramatic situation: the art lies in preparing it, getting it accepted, making it plausible, especially in untying the knot.”27 Here Shakespeare does not untie the knot; the Countess merely yields. What she feels, what happened thereafter,—all these are omitted. It is merely the situation which counts. Before Talbot comes in, the scene could easily be made to reveal much more of the character of the Countess. When he does enter, the play of wits between them, even as it disclosed character, might provide interesting dramatic conflict. Surely the moment when the Countess thinks Talbot trapped and he coolly jeers at her, is worth more development. Here it is treated so quickly that the surprise in the entrance of the soldiers hardly gets its full effect. All this is the work of a tyro, even if he be Shakespeare.

In Richard II, there is a scene, not as long as that just quoted, in which the central situation might seem to many people less dramatic than that of Talbot and the Countess, yet note to what a clear and convincing conclusion Shakespeare brings it, how plausible he makes the scene, how thoroughly he prepares it for the largest emotional effect by entering thoroughly into the characters involved.

Enter Aumerle

Duchess. Here comes my son Aumerle.

York. Aumerle that was; But that is lost for being Richard’s friend, And, madam, you must call him Rutland now. I am in Parliament pledge for his truth And lasting fealty to the new made king.

Duch. Welcome, my son. Who are the violets now That strew the green lap of the new come spring?

Aum. Madam, I know not, nor I greatly care not God knows I had as lief be none as one.

York. Well, bear you well in this new spring of time, Lest you be cropp’d before you come to prime. What news from Oxford? Do these jousts and triumphs hold?

Aum. For aught I know, my lord, they do.

York. You will be there, I know.

Aum. If God prevent not, I purpose so.

York. What seal is that, that hangs without thy bosom? Yea, look’st thou pale? Let me see the writing.

Aum. My lord, ’tis nothing.

York. No matter, then, who see it. I will be satisfied: let me see the writing.

Aum. I do beseech your grace to pardon me. It is a matter of small consequence, Which for some reasons I would not have seen.

York. Which for some reasons, sir, I mean to see. I fear, I fear,—

Duch. What should you fear? ’Tis nothing but some hand, which he has ent’red into For gay apparel ’gainst the triumph day.

York. Bound to himself! What doth he with a bond That he is bound to? Wife, thou art a fool. Boy, let me see the writing.

Aum. I do beseech you, pardon me. I may not show it.

York. I will be satisfied; let me see it, I say.

(He plucks it out of his bosom and reads it.)

Treason! foul treason! Villain! traitor! slave!

Duch. What is the matter, my lord?

York. Ho! who is within there?

Enter a Servant

Saddle my horse. God for his mercy, what treachery is here!

Duch. Why, what is it, my lord?

York. Give me my boots, I say; saddle my horse.

(Exit Servant.)

Now, by mine honour, by my life, by my troth, I will appeach the villain.

Duch. What is the matter?

York. Peace, foolish woman.

Duch. I will not peace. What is the matter, Aumerle?

Aum. Good mother, have content; it is no more Than my poor life must answer.

Duch. Thy life answer!

York. Bring me my boots; I will unto the King.

Reënter Servant with boots

Duch. Strike him, Aumerle. Poor boy, thou art amaz’d. —Hence villain! never more come in my sight.

York. Give me my boots, I say.

Duch. Why, York, what wilt thou do? Wilt thou not hide the trespass of thine own? Have we more sons? Or are we like to have? Is not my teeming date drunk up with time? And wilt thou pluck my fair son from mine age, And rob me of a happy mother’s name? Is he not like thee? Is he not thine own?

York. Thou fond mad woman. Wilt thou conceal this dark conspiracy? A dozen of them here have ta’en the sacrament, And interchangeably set down their hands, To kill the King at Oxford.

Duch. He shall be none; We’ll keep him here; then what is that to him?

York. Away, fond woman! Were he twenty times my son, I would appeach him.

Duch. Hadst thou groan’d for him As I have done, thou wouldst be more pitiful. But now I know thy mind; thou dost suspect That I have been disloyal to thy bed, And that he is a bastard, not thy son. Sweet York, sweet husband, be not of that mind. He is as like thee as a man may be, Not like to me or any of my kin, And yet I love him.

York. Make way, unruly woman! (Exit.)

Duch. After, Aumerle! Mount thee upon his horse; Spur post and get before him to the King, And beg thy pardon ere he do accuse thee. I’ll not be long behind; though I be old, I doubt not but to ride as fast as York. And never will I rise up from the ground Till Bolingbroke have pardon’d thee. Away, be gone!

(Exeunt.)

So far as the situation is concerned we might go directly from York’s “fealty to the new made King” to his “What seal is that?” omitting some ten lines. We should lose, however, the deft touches which make the discovery all the more dramatic,—the words of York which show that he has no idea that his son is really involved in any disloyalty; the affectionate effort of the mother to draw the talk from unpleasant subjects; and the distrait mood of Aumerle. Again, the discovery of the contents of the seal might be made at once, but the fifteen intervening lines before York cries “Treason! foul treason!” increase our suspense by their clear presentation of the emotions of father, mother, and son. Once more the situation is held when York does not declare at once the nature of the treason and the frantic mother demands again and again the contents of the paper before Aumerle says bitterly, and in perfect character with his first speeches of the scene,

“it is no more Than my poor life must answer.”

Still again we should have the necessary action of the scene perfectly if York, as soon as he has his boots, flung out of the room, to be followed immediately by the Duchess, crying that she will follow him to the King and ask the boy’s pardon. However, had Shakespeare’s treatment here been that he used in the scene of Talbot and the Countess we should have lacked the perfect portrayal of the mother who loses all sense of right and wrong in fear that her loved child may die. Finally, do we not gain greatly by the characterization of the Duchess in the last lines of the scene? Five times, then, Shakespeare, by entering into his characters, “holds the situation.”

The second act of The Magistrate,28 by Sir Arthur Pinero, is in central situation broadly this. Cis Farringdon, represented by his mother to his stepfather, Mr. Posket, as fourteen, because she does not like to admit her own age, is really nineteen and precocious at that. He has brought Mr. Posket to one of his haunts, a supper room in the Hotel des Princes, Meek Street, London, where they are to sup together. As Mr. Posket is a police justice, he has been induced to figure for the evening as “Skinner of the stock exchange.” Shortly after the arrival of the two comes word that a frequenter of the restaurant twenty years ago, now returned to London, wants to sup in their chosen room for the sake of old times. Therefore Mr. Posket and Cis are put into an adjoining room. Colonel Lukyn, the returned stranger, and a friend, Captain Vale, enter. Just as they are ordering supper, a note comes to the effect that Mrs. Posket, with a woman friend, is below, begging to speak with her old acquaintance, Colonel Lukyn. As Mrs. Posket asks a private interview, Captain Vale is put out on the balcony. With Mrs. Posket comes her sister Charlotte. We have already learned from Vale that he is deeply depressed because he thinks Charlotte no longer cares for him. Mrs. Posket has come to beg Colonel Lukyn, who knew her before she became a widow, not to reveal the truth about her age.

Watch now the permutations and combinations the author develops from this general situation. Cis is hardly in the room before Isadore presents his bill for past meals. Cis sees the chance, by borrowing from his stepfather, to settle a long postponed account. Three figures, moved in turn by shrewdness, trickiness, and gullibility, stir us to amusement, giving us Situation I. Even as the bill is paid, Cis asks Isadore to show Mr. Skinner the trick of “putting the silver to bed.” Three people amused or interested by a trick, amuse us—Situation II. With the coming of the note from Alexander Lukyn, and the assignment of the room adjoining to Cis and Mr. Skinner-Posket, there is a hint of future complication which amuses us—Situation III. Lukyn and Vale entering, the former sentimental over his memories of the place, and the latter comically depressed over what he thinks to be the faithlessness of Charlotte Verrinder, give us Situation IV. The note saying Mrs. Posket is below with a friend, asking a private interview, produces Situation V, for it amuses us to think what may happen with Mr. Posket and Cis just on the other side of the door. Placing Vale on the balcony leads to Situation VI, for he goes with amusing regret for the delayed supper.

Up to this point the situations may be declared parts of the main situation, which must now itself be developed. Just after Blond, the proprietor, ushers in the ladies, the pattering of rain outside is heard.

Lukyn. Good gracious, Blond! What’s that?

Blond. The rain outside. It is cats and dogs.

Lukyn. (Horrified.) By George, is it? (To himself, looking towards window.) Poor devil! (To Blond.) There isn’t any method of getting off that balcony is there?

Blond. No—unless by getting on to it.

Lukyn. What do you mean?

Blond. It is not at all safe. Don’t use it.

(Lukyn stands horror-stricken. Blond goes out. Heavy rain is heard.)—Situation VII.

As Mrs. Posket reveals to Lukyn the complications in which her lie is involving her, voices from the next room, not clearly distinguished by those on the stage, but known to us as the voices of Cis and Mr. Skinner-Posket, are heard—Situation VIII. Just when Lukyn is straining every nerve to get the ladies away so that he may release Vale, Charlotte, overwhelmed by hunger, invites herself to supper—Situation IX. As the two women eat, Lukyn sits in anxious despair, at times forgetful of his guests. This brings Situation X, when Vale reaches out from behind the curtains of the balcony and passes to the absent-minded Lukyn from the buffet the dishes Charlotte desires. When Charlotte, turning suddenly, sees the outstretched arm, we have Situation XI. When Vale reënters, thoroughly irritated and quarrels with Lukyn, we have Situation XII. The reunion of Charlotte and Vale makes the thirteenth. That is, if six initial situations produced the situation when all the characters were upon the stage, Sir Arthur has developed seven new situations from the sixth. Now by adding a fresh complication through some new figures, he develops six more situations.

Just as Lukyn, Mrs. Posket, Charlotte, and Vale are about to leave amicably, Blond rushes in to say that the police are below because the prescribed hour for closing has passed. The names and addresses of all persons found on the premises will be taken—Situation XIV. Lukyn, Vale, Mrs. Posket and Charlotte hide themselves in different parts of the room, putting out the lights. Situation XV is the entrance in the darkness of Blond leading Cis and Mr. Skinner-Posket, in order that the other room may be searched safely. At last, the room where all are hidden is examined by the police. All try to hold their breath, but in vain. The police detect some one breathing—Situation XVI. In the resulting confusion, Cis escapes, dragging his stepfather with him—Situation XVII. The other four when caught, foolishly give false names. Lukyn, thoroughly irritated by the officers, flings one of them aside and attempts to force his way out, when he and his party are promptly arrested for assault—Situation XVIII.

Lukyn. You’ll dare to lock us up all night?

Messiter. It’s one o’clock now, Colonel—you’ll come on first thing in the morning.

Lukyn. Come on? At what court?

Messiter. Mulberry Street.

Agatha Posket. Ah! The Magistrate?

Messiter. Mr. Posket, Mum.

(Agatha Posket sinks into a chair, Charlotte at her feet; Lukyn, overcome, falls on Vale’s shoulders.)—Situation XIX.

Five situations of nineteen lead up to the sixth. Seven are developed from that sixth by means of four people. The new complication, the search of the restaurant by the police and the bringing into one room of all the figures, gives us six more situations. Certainly Sir Arthur knows how to “hold a situation.”

Act III of Mrs. Dane’s Defence29 is just equally divided between preparatory material and the great scene which ebbs and flows about the following situation. Mrs. Dane, in love with Lionel, the adopted son of Sir Daniel Carteret, at the opening of the scene has lied so successfully about her past that Sir Daniel, who has been suspicious of her, has been entirely convinced of her innocence. Eager to help her set herself right, he asks in the kindest way for information which may aid him. Trying not to commit herself, Mrs. Dane slips once or twice and all the old suspicions of Sir Daniel are rearoused. He cross-examines her so rigidly that ultimately she breaks down and confesses. Handled by the inexperienced that situation might have been good for four or five pages. As treated by Mr. H.A. Jones, it makes a scene of twenty pages of finest suspense and climax. The situation is well held because every reaction upon it by the two characters has been worked out.

One would hardly think two quarrelsome inmates of a poorhouse, visited by a relative of one of them who wishes to take him away to manage her place, likely to produce a masterpiece of comic drama. Yet it does with Lady Gregory in The Workhouse Ward,30 for she knows Irish character and speech so intimately that minor situation after minor situation develops, through the characters, from the original situation.

Indeed, much of our so-called new drama is but a prolonged holding of a situation stated as the play opens, or clearly before us at the end of Act I. Chains31 of Miss Elizabeth Baker in Act I puts this double situation before us. A young married man without children, though happy enough in his marriage, is so weary of the sordidness of his small means and limited opportunities that he longs to break away, go out to Australia, and when he has made a career for himself, send for his wife. His sister-in-law, a shop girl, equally weary of her life, is weakly thinking of marrying a man she does not love, but who really loves her, in order to escape the grayness of her life. At the end of the play these two are accepting the situations in which we found them. Yet the three acts of the play are full of varied interest for an audience, so admirably does the writer discern the situations which her characters will develop from the original situation. Hindle Wakes,32 the best play of Stanley Houghton, is really a study of the way in which a situation which took place before the play began affects three families.

Surely it must now be evident that if a dramatist should in the first place understand perfectly that illustrative action is the core of drama, and must be carefully selected; and secondly that he must, among possible illustrative actions, select those which quickest will produce the largest emotional results; he must also recognize that till he has searched and probed his situations by means of the characters, in the first place he cannot know which are his strongest, and in the second place cannot hope to hold the situations chosen.

Another complaint from the inexperienced dramatist when shaping up his story is that though he sees the big moments in his play, he does not see his way from one to another. That is, transitional scenes are lacking. They will not worry him long, however, if he follows the methods just stated for holding a situation. Let him watch the people who have come into his imagination, first simply as people. Who and what are they? Secondly, what are they feeling and thinking in the situations which have occurred to him? He can’t long consider this without deciding what people they must have been in order to be in the situations in question. Hard upon this comes the question: “What will people who have been like these and have passed through this experience do immediately, and thereafter?” In the answer to the question, “What have they been?” he finds the transitional scenes which take him back into an earlier episode; in the answer to “What will they become?” the transitional scenes that carry him forward. In the scene cited from Richard II the main moments are the home-coming, the discovery of the traitorous paper, and the departure of the Duke and Duchess of York. How is the transition from one to the other to be gained? Through knowledge of the characters, as the analysis showed. What applies here to transition within a scene from dramatic moment to dramatic moment applies equally in transition from scene to scene. Suppose that Sir Arthur Pinero had as the starting-point of the third act of The Magistrate the idea that Mrs. Posket should be arrested under such conditions that she must appear in the court of her husband when he is as guilty as she. Sir Arthur has decided that they must be in some place like the Hotel des Princes when it is raided. He has in mind episodes which will bring them all together at that place. He already sees clearly the scene of the raid and the arrest. But the place cannot be raided till late in the evening, and Agatha Posket is too jealous of her reputation thoughtlessly to stay late in such a place. What are to be the transitional “scenes” which, in the first place, shall make us feel that considerable time has passed since Mrs. Posket came to the hotel, and secondly shall keep us amused? Sir Arthur finds them through the characters. It is the hunger of self-indulgent Charlotte which motivates the staying and gives us the supper “scene.” It is the character of Vale which gives us his quarrel with Lukyn. The love making of Charlotte and Vale provides another transitional “scene.” In other words, whether one is looking for more episodes or for transitions from one chosen episode to another, one should not go far afield hunting episodes as episodes, but should become acquainted with the characters as closely as possible. They will solve the difficulties.

All this lengthy consideration of selection makes for unity of action in the story resulting. Some unity of action, whether the story be slight or complicated, there must be. Of the three great unities over which there has been endless discussion, Action, Place, and Time, the modern dramatists, as we shall see, treat Place with the greatest freedom, and are constantly inventing devices to avoid the Time difficulty. With the dramatists of the present, as with the dramatists of the past, however, what they write must be a whole, a unit. Some central idea, plan, purpose, whatever we choose to call it, must give the play organic structure. Story is the first step to this. Which gives most pleasure,—a string of disconnected anecdotes and jests; or a series of them given some unity because they concern some man of note, for instance, Abraham Lincoln; or the same series edited till, taken all together, they make Abraham Lincoln, in one or more of his characteristics, clearer than ever before? Does not a large part of our pleasure in biography come from the way in which it co-ordinates and interprets episodes and incidents hitherto not properly inter-related in our minds? Unity of action is, then, of first importance in story.

There is, however, another kind of unity which has not been enough considered,—what may, perhaps, be called artistic unity. Why is it that a play which begins seriously and for most of its course so develops, only to end farcically, or which begins lightly only to become tragic, leaves us dissatisfied? Because the audience finds it difficult to readjust its mood as swiftly as does the author. The Climbers33 and The Girl With the Green Eyes34 of Clyde Fitch are examples in point. The first begins with such dignity and mysteriousness that its lighter moods, after Act I, seem almost trivial. In the second play the very tragic scene of the attempted suicide, after the light comedy touch of the preceding parts, is distinctly jarring. A recent play which for two acts or more seemingly had been dealing with but slightly disguised figures of the political world had a late scene in which one of these politicians, like Manson in The Servant in the House,35 or The Stranger in The Passing of the Third Floor Back,36 shadowed the figure of Christ himself. The effect was jarring, unpleasant, and confusing, mainly because of its suddenness. It will be noted that in both the plays mentioned, Manson and The Stranger carry their suggestion from the start. Should we know how to take Percinet and Sylvette in The Romancers37 of Rostand did not that opening scene, when these two, in love with being in love, read Romeo and Juliet together, prepare us for all the later fantasy? A dramatist will do well, then, to know clearly before he begins to write whether he wishes his story to be melodrama, tragedy, farce, or comedy of character or intrigue. Unless he does and in consequence selects his illustrative material so that he may give it artistic unity, he is likely to produce a play of so mixed a genre as to be confusing.

“Just what is tragi-comedy, then?” a reader may ask. The Elizabethan dramatist frequently offered one serious and one comic plot, running parallel except when brought together in the last scene of the play. Technically, however, tragi-comedy is a form which, although it may contain tragic elements, is throughout given a general emphasis as comedy and ends in comedy. We do not have good tragi-comedy when most of the play is comedy or tragedy, and one scene or act is distinctly the opposite. Therefore not only unity of action but artistic unity, unity of genre, should be sought by the dramatist shaping up his story.

How much story does a play require? This is a difficult point to settle, but first of all let us clearly understand that there are great differences in audiences as far as plotting is concerned. Some periods require more plot than others. Today we do not demand, as did the audience of Shakespeare’s time, plays containing two or more stories, sometimes scarcely at all connected, sometimes neatly interwoven. Middleton’s The Changeling38 contains two almost independent stories. This is nearly as true of The Coxcomb39 by Beaumont and Fletcher. On the other hand, in Much Ado About Nothing the Hero-Claudio story, the Beatrice-Benedict story, and the Dogberry-Verges story are so deftly interwoven that they are, to all appearances, a unit. Even as late as thirty years ago one found in many plays a group of characters for the serious interest and another for the comic values. Gradually, however, dramatists have come to get their comic values from people essential to the serious story, or from a comic emphasis they place on certain aspects of the serious figures of the play. Today is the time of the single story rather than the interwoven story. Yet even now, so far as the public of the United States is concerned, a writer may easily go too far in simplicity, or rather scantiness of story, trusting too much to admirable characterization. That is why that delightful play, The Mollusc,40 failed in this country. Many people, among them the intelligent, declared the play too thin to give them pleasure. That is, apparently we of the United States care more in our plays for elaborate stories than do our English cousins.

Indeed, national taste differs as to the amount of plot desirable. Both Americans and English care more for plot than do most of the Continental nations, which are often satisfied with plays of slight story-value but admirable characterization. Nor is the difference a new one. Writing of Wycherley’s arrangement of Molière’s Misanthrope in his Plain Dealer, Voltaire said, “The English author has corrected the only fault of Molière’s piece, lack of plot.”41 In the same Letter on Comedy, Voltaire brings out clearly what any student of English drama knows, that all through its greatest period it depended far more on complicated story than did the drama of the Continent. Lessing in his Hamburg Dramaturgy, speaking of Colman’s The English Merchant, says it has not action enough for the English critics. “Curiosity is not sufficiently fostered, the whole complication is visible in the first act. We Germans are well content that the action is not richer and more complex. The English taste on this point distracts and fatigues us, we love a simple plot that can be grasped at once. The English are forced to insert episodes into French plays if they are to please on their stage. In like manner we have to weed episodes out of the English plays if we want to introduce them to our stage. The best comedies of Congreve and Wycherley would seem intolerable to us without this excision. We manage better with their tragedies. In part these are not so complex and many of them have succeeded well amongst us without the least alteration, which is more than I could say for any of their comedies.”42

About all the generalization one may permit one’s self here is: For the public of the United States one can at present feel sure that story increases its interest in characterization, however fine. As we shall see in dealing with character, the latter should never be sacrificed to story, but story often ferries a play from the shore of unsuccess to the shore of success. Even today it is not the great poetry, the subtle characterization nor the fine thinking of Hamlet which give it large audiences: it is the varied story, full of surprises and suspense.

In another way, Hamlet is a case in point. It shows the impossibility of laying down any golden rule as to the amount of story a play should have. Only speaking broadly is it true that different kinds of plays seem to call for different amounts of story. Melodrama obviously does depend on story-happenings often unmotivated and forced on the characters by the will of the dramatist. Romance is almost synonymous with action and we associate with it a large amount of story. The word Intrigue in the title “Comedy of Intrigue” at once suggests story. Tragedy and High Comedy, on the other hand, depend for their values on subtle characterization. In these last two forms it would seem that the increasing characterization must, because of the time limit, mean decrease in the amount of story; then Hamlet, with its complicated story, occurs to us as by no means a single instance of a play of subtle characterization in complicated story. Farce may be either of character or of situation, but there are also farces in which both situation and character have the exaggerations which distinguish this form from comedy. Comedy of Manners must obviously use much characterization, but it does not preclude a complicated story. Melodrama, then, does call above all else for story. With all the other forms it is in the last analysis the common sense of the dramatist which must tell him how much story to use. He will employ the amount the time limits permit him if he is at the same time to do justice to his characters and to the idea, if any, he may wish to convey. That is, story as we have been watching it develop from the point of departure is, for the dramatist, story in the rough. It is only when it has been proportioned and emphasized so that upon the stage it will produce in an audience the exact emotional effects desired by the dramatist that it becomes plot.

Just as the point of departure for a play comes to a writer as a kind of unconscious selection from among all possible subjects, so we have seen that story takes shape by a similar process of conscious or unconscious selection till it is something with a beginning, a middle, and an end, and clear. Nor does selection stop here. The very necessary proportioning and emphasizing mean, as we shall see, that the dramatist selects, and again selects.

1 Samuel French, New York.

2 Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.

3 Drama League Series, Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

4 Brentano, New York.

5 Le Berceau. P. V. Stock, Paris.

6 Preface, Au Public, to La Princesse Georges. A. Dumas fils. Œuevres, vol. V, p. 79. Calmann Levy, Paris.

7 De la Poésie Dramatique. Diderot. Œuvres, vol. VII, pp. 321-322. Garnier Frères, Paris.

8 Auteurs Dramatiques. F. de Curel. L’Année Psychologique, 1874, p. 121.

9 Letters of Bulwer-Lytton to Macready, p. 35. Introduction by Brander Matthews. Privately printed. The Carteret Book Club, Newark, N.J., 1911.

10 A False Saint. F. de Curel. Translated by B. H. Clark. Drama League Series. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

11 Auteurs Dramatiques. F. de Curel. L’Année Psychologique, 1894, pp. 121-123.

12 Play-Making, pp. 58-59, note. William Archer. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston.

13 See chapter X, “The Dramatist and His Public.”

14 See chapter IX.

15 My Best Play. Edgar Selwyn. The Green Book Magazine, March, 1911, pp. 536-537.

16 Idem.

17 Les Oberlé. Edmond Haraucourt. L’Illustration Théâtrale, Dec. 9, 1905, p. 5.

18 Les Oberlé, p. 7.

19 Plays of Thomas Middleton. Mermaid Series. Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.

20 Chefs-d’Œuvres Dramatiques de A. N. Ostrovsky. E. Durand-Gréville. E. Plon Nourrit et Cie, Paris.

21 Becket, Act I, Scene 4. Alfred Lord Tennyson. The Macmillan Co., New York.

22 Letters of Bulwer-Lytton, p. 38. Brander Matthews, ed.

23 Plays of Thomas Dekker. Mermaid Series. Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.

24 A. F. Lange, ed. Mayer & Müller, Berlin.

25 Letters of Bulwer-Lytton, pp. 36-37. Brander Matthews, ed.

26 Preface, Au Public, to La Princesse Georges. Œuvres, vol. V. p. 78. Calmann Lévy, Paris.

27 Preface to Le Supplice d’une Femme. Œuvres, vol. V. Calmann Lévy, Paris.

28 Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

29 The Macmillan Co., New York.

30 Seven Short Plays. Maunsel & Co., Dublin.

31 J. W. Luce & Co., Boston; Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., London.

32 J. W. Luce & Co., Boston; Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd., London.

33 Harper & Bros., New York.

34 Hurst & Blackett, Ltd., London.

35 Doubleday & McClure Co., New York.

36 The Macmillan Co., New York.

37 The Macmillan Co., New York.

38 Plays of Thomas Middleton. Mermaid Series. Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.

39 Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, vol. IV. Whalley & Colman, eds. 1811.

40 The Mollusc. H. H. Davies. Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

41 Lettres sur les Anglais, Lettre XIX, Sur la Comédie, p. 170. A. Basle, 1734.

42 Hamburg Dramaturgy, p. 265. Bohn ed.

CHAPTER V

FROM SUBJECT TO PLOT: PROPORTIONING THE MATERIAL: NUMBER AND LENGTH OF ACTS

A dramatist, proportioning his rough story for performance in the limited space of time the stage permits, faces at once the question: “How many acts?” If inexperienced, noting the number of changes of set his story seems to demand he finds himself in a dilemma: to give an act to each change of scene is to break the play into many scrappy acts of a few minutes each; to crowd all his needed scenes into five acts is to get scenes as scrappy as the eight which make the fifth act of Shakespeare’s Macbeth or the ten in Act IV of Henry VI, Part II. In either case, if he gives his numerous scenes adequate treatment, he is likely to find their combined length forces him beyond the time limit the theatre allows—about two hours and a half.

Let him rid himself immediately of any feeling that custom or dramatic dignity calls for any preference among three, four, or five acts. The Elizabethan drama put such a spell upon the imagination of English-speaking peoples that until recently the idea was accepted: “Five is dignity, with a trailing robe, whereas one, two, or three acts would be short skirts, and degrading.”1 Today a dramatist may plan for a play of three, four, or five acts, as seems to him best.

Why, if no change of scene be required, is not a play of one long act desirable? At first sight, there would seem to be a gain in the unbroken movement. The power of sustained attention in audiences is, however, distinctly limited. Any one who has seen a performance of The Trojan Women2 by Euripides, or von Hofmannsthal’s Electra3 needs no further proof that though each makes a short evening’s entertainment it is exhausting because of uninterrupted movement from start to finish. To plays of one long act most audiences become unresponsive from sheer physical fatigue. Consequently, use has confined one-act plays to subjects that may be treated in fifteen minutes to an hour, with an average length of from twenty to forty-five minutes. Strindberg has stated well the problem which the play in one long act involves: “I have tried,” he wrote in his Introduction to Miss Julia, “to abolish the division into acts. And I have done so because I have come to fear that our decreasing capacity for illusion might be unfavorably affected by intermissions during which the spectator would have time to reflect and to get away from the suggestive influence of the author-hypnotist. My play will probably last an hour and a half, and as it is possible to listen that length of time, or longer, to a lecture, a sermon, or a debate, I have imagined that a theatrical performance could not become fatiguing in the same time. As early as 1872, in one of my first dramatic experiments, The Outlaw, I tried the same concentrated form, but with scant success. The play was written in five acts, and wholly completed, when I became aware of the restless, scattered effect it produced. Then I burned it, and out of the ashes rose a single, well-built act, covering fifty printed pages, and taking an hour for its performance. Thus the form of the present play is not new, but it seems to be my own, and changing aesthetical conventions may possibly make it timely.

“My hope is still for a public educated to a point where it can sit through a whole-evening performance in a single act. But that point cannot be reached without a great deal of experimentation.”4

The difficulty with a play of only two acts is similar. If the piece is to fill an evening, each act must last an hour or more. The Winter’s Tale is really a two-act play: Act I is the story of Hermione and Leontes, Act II the story of Florizel and Perdita, with Time as Chorus separating the acts. Division of this play into five acts and use of modern scenery have given it the effect of breaking to pieces midway, where Time speaks. When each of the two parts is played uninterruptedly, as in Mr. Granville Barker’s recent revival, this effect disappears and it becomes clear that the original division is artistically right. However, so long is each of the two parts that The Winter’s Tale, when seen in this way, badly strains the attention of a present-day audience.

Contrastingly, to use more than five acts in the space of two hours and a half is either to carry the performance over into a second day, as with the two-part play of Elizabeth’s time—something we cannot now tolerate; or to write such scrappy acts that the frequent shifting of scenery and dropping of the curtain spoil desired illusion. If it be remembered that there is nothing essentially wrong in a play of one, two, six, or even more acts, and that changing tastes or the necessities of particular subjects may in very rare instances make any of these divisions desirable, it can be said that three, four, or five acts are today the normal divisions for plays.

An objection to long plays of one or two acts is that when the piece lasts only an hour and a half, as in the case of Miss Julia, the evening must be filled out with something else. In the first place, it is by no means easy to arrange a mixed program in which each play shows to complete advantage. Nor are audiences usually fond of adjusting themselves to new characters and new plots two or three times in an evening. On the professional stage, Barrie’s short plays have done something to make the general public more ready to shift their interest to fresh subjects in the course of an evening, but a mixed program of plays is rarely popular except in theatres of the so-called “experimental” class.

The advantage in three acts is that each allows a longer space than does the division into four or five acts in which characterization may develop before the eyes of the audience, or a larger number of illustrative actions bearing on the central purpose of the act may be shown. The offset is that three acts provide only two breaks by which the passing of time may be suggested. Neither four nor three acts have any essential superiority over each other, or over five acts. Five acts, in and of themselves, have no superiority over four or three; nor, as some persons have seemed to think, are they the only divisions in which a drama in verse may be written. Avoidance of awkward changes of scene within an act may compel use of four or five acts rather than three. The more episodes in the story to be dramatized, the more aspects of character to be shown by action, the more acts or scenes the dramatist must use. If long spaces of time must be allowed for because they are part of the story or marked changes of character demand them, the dramatist will need more entr’acte space, and, consequently, more acts. It is, then, necessary change of place and passage of time which are the chief factors in determining choice among three, four, or five acts.

For centuries theoretical students of the drama have worried themselves about the two unities: place and time. Practising dramatists, however, have usually found that generalizations in regard to them help little and that in each individual play they must work out the place and time problems for themselves. Practice as to shifting scenes has depended most, and always will, upon whether the physical conditions of the stage permit many real or imagined shifts. The Greek stage, with its fixed background and its chorus nearly always present, forced an attempt at unity of place, though the Greeks often broke through it.

Unity of action was the first dramatic law of the ancients; unity of time and place were mere consequences of the former which they would scarcely have observed more strictly than exigency required had not the combination with the chorus arisen. For since their actions required the presence of a large body of people and this concourse always remained the same, who could go no farther from their dwellings nor remain absent longer than it is customary to do from mere curiosity, they were almost obliged to make the scene of the action one and the same spot and confine the time to one and the same day. They submitted bona fide to this restriction; but with a suppleness of understanding such that in seven cases out of nine they gained more than they lost thereby. For they used this restriction as a reason of simplifying the action and to cut away all that was superfluous, and thus, reduced to essentials, it became only the ideal of an action which was developed most felicitously in this form which required the least addition from circumstances of time and place.

The French, on the contrary, who found no charms in true unity of action, who had been spoilt by the wild intrigues of the Spanish school, before they had learnt to know Greek simplicity, regarded the unity of time and place not as consequences of unity of action, but as circumstances absolutely needful to the representation of an action, to which they must therefore adapt their more complicated and richer actions with all the severity required in the use of chorus, which, however, they had totally abolished. When they found, however, how difficult, nay at times impossible this was, they made a truce with the tyrannical rules against which they had not the courage to rebel. Instead of a single place they introduced an uncertain place, under which we could imagine now this now that spot; enough if the places combined were not too far apart and none required special scenery, so that the scenery could fit the one about as well as the other. Instead of the unity of a day, they substituted unity of duration, and a certain period during which no one spoke of sunrise or sunset, or went to bed, or at least did not go to bed more than once, however much might occur in this space, they allowed to pass as a day.5

The Elizabethan author writing, in his public performances, for an audience accustomed to build imaginatively a setting from hints given by properties, signs on the stage, or descriptions in the text, changed the scene at will. Recall the thirteen changes in Act III of Antony and Cleopatra.

On the modern stage such frequent change is undesirable for three reasons: the expense of constructing and painting so many scenes; the time consumed in making the changes, which may reduce decidedly the acting time of the play; and the check in sustained interest on the part of the audience caused by these many changes. The growth of the touring system also has led to reduction in the number of scenes, for transportation of numerous and elaborate sets is too expensive. Moreover, the interest in extreme realism has carried us more and more into such scenes of simple or sordid living as call for only one to three sets in a play.

At times it is easy, or at least possible with ingenuity, to have for a play, whatever its length, but one setting. Von Hofmannsthal’s Electra is an illustration. Another is The Servant in the House, a play in five acts by Rann Kennedy.

The scene, which remains unchanged throughout the play, is a room in the vicarage. Jacobean in character, its oak-panelling and beamed-ceiling, together with some fine pieces of antique furniture, lend it an air of historical interest, whilst in all other respects it speaks of solid comfort, refinement, and unostentatious elegance.6

Hervieu’s Connais-Toi, a play of three acts, is another instance of one setting throughout.7

Not infrequently it is comparatively simple to confine a play to one set for each act, or even less. The Great Divide, by William Vaughn Moody, and The Weavers, by Hauptmann, show a new setting for each act. In The Truth, by Clyde Fitch, Acts I and II have the same setting: “At Mrs. Warder’s. An extremely attractive room in the best of taste”; Acts III and IV are in “Mr. Roland’s rooms in Mrs. Crespigny’s flat in Baltimore.” In the four acts of The Witching Hour, by Augustus Thomas, there is a change of set only for Act II.8 Such reducing of possible settings to two or three for a play of four or five acts requires practice, and, in some cases, decided ingenuity. In present-day use the safest principle is this: a set to an act, if really needed, but no change of set within the act unless there be unavoidable reason for it.

What, then, is the would-be dramatist to do when faced by six or more settings to a five-act play, or two or three settings within what he believes should be an act? Often what seems a necessary early scene is but clumsy exposition: skilful handling would incorporate it with the scene immediately following. Scene 1, Act III, of Dryden’s The Spanish Friar is in the street. Lorenzo, in friar’s habit, meeting the real friar, Dominic, bribes him to introduce him into the chamber of Elvira. The scene is merely the easiest way of making the audience understand why the two men enter together very early in the next scene.

ACT III. SCENE 1. The Street

Enter Lorenzo, in Friar’s habit, meeting Dominic

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 appetites 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 compassed 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 relationship clear. The conduct and speech of Elvira could be made to illustrate what she now states in soliloquy just before the two men enter.

In the original last act10 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 Washington 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 substitute for it?

What think you of merely the outside of the House? François, 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 François.11

Greek plays, because of the fixed backing, provide many illustrations 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 illustrations 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). Œdipus 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’ Œdipus 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’ Thesmophoriazuæ, 67 f.). The love-lorn Phædra 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 circumstances 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 Oberlé, a dinner party at the Brausigs’ is transferred to the home of Jean Oberlé, 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 Oberlé, 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 passes from the railway station to his house.13 Shakespeare, in handling the original sources of Macbeth, also illustrates successful combination around one person of incidents or details historically associated with other persons, times, and even places.

Most of the story is taken from Holinshed’s account [in the Historie of Scotland] of the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth (A.D. 1034-1057), but certain details are drawn from other parts of the chronicle. Thus several points in the assassination of Duncan, like the drugging of the grooms by Lady Macbeth, and the portents described in II, iv., are from the murder of Duncan’s ancestor Duffe (A.D. 972); and the voice that called “Sleep no more!” seems to have been suggested by the troubled conscience of Duffe’s brother Kenneth, who had poisoned his own nephew.14

Marlowe, in his Edward II,—a dramatization of a part of Holinshed’s History,—proves that he perfectly understood all these devices for compacting his material.

The action covers a period of twenty years, from 1307, when Gaveston was recalled, to the death of Edward in 1327. Marlowe’s treatment of the story shows a selection and transposing of events in order to bring out the one essential fact of the King’s utter incompetence and subjection to unworthy favorites. Gaveston was executed in 1312, and the troubles in Ireland (II, ii.) and in Scotland (II, ii.) occurred after his death, but Marlowe shifts both forward in point of time in order to connect them with Gaveston’s baleful influence. Warwick died in his bed in 1315, seven years before the battle of Boroughbridge, but Marlowe keeps him alive to have him captured and ordered to execution in retaliation for his killing of Gaveston. At the time the play opens the Earl of Kent was six years old, but Marlowe, needing a counsellor and supporter of the King, used Kent for the purpose. In the play young Spencer immediately succeeds Gaveston as the King’s favorite; really the young Hugh le Despenser, who had been an enemy of Gaveston, remained an opponent of Edward’s for some six years after Gaveston’s death. Historically the Mortimers belong with the Spencers, i.e. to the later part of the reign, but in order to motivate the affair between the Queen and young Mortimer Marlowe transfers them to the beginning of the play and makes them leaders in the barons’ councils.15

The essential point in all this compacting is: when cumbered with more scenes than you wish to use, determine first which scenes contain indispensable action, and must be kept as settings; then consider which of the other scenes may by ingenuity be combined with them.

Evidently a dramatist must develop great ingenuity and skill in so re-working scenes originally conceived as occurring in widely separated places and times that they may be acted in a single set. As has been said, the audience of the public theatres in Shakespeare’s day imaginatively shifted the scene at any hint from text, stage properties, or even signs. With the Restoration came elaborate scenery, a gift from earlier performances at the English court and from the continental theatres which the English nobility had attended in their exile. By means of the “drawn scene” dramatists now changed rapidly from place to place. In The Spanish Friar, Scene 1 of Act II is “The Queen’s ante-chamber.” For Scene 2, “The scene draws, and shows the Queen sitting in state; Bertram standing next her; then Teresa, etc.” These drawn scenes held the stage until very recently. Painted on flats which could be pulled off stage from left and right, these scenes could not be “drawn” without hurting theatrical illusion. If moved in any light, all illusion departed; if changed in darkness, but not instantaneously, they interfered with illusion. To overcome these objections there have been many inventions in recent years—Revolving, Wagon, Sinking Stages.16 Undoubtedly, these make changes of scene within the act well-nigh unobjectionable. The difficulty with them is that most are elaborate and expensive, and therefore exist in only a few theatres. It is, consequently, useless to stage a play with them in mind, for on the road it will not find the conditions of production essential to its success. Occasionally, as in On Trial, some simple, easily portable device makes these very quick changes possible even on the road. At present, though invention tries steadily to make change of scene so swift as to be unobjectionable, it is wiser to keep to one setting to an act, unless the play will greatly suffer by so doing, or the change is one which may be made almost instantaneously when the lights are lowered or the curtain dropped.

On the other hand, recently dramatists have rather overdone reducing possible settings to the minimum. While a change of setting within the act always demands justification, forcing a play of three to five acts into one or two settings when, at a trifling additional cost, a pleasing variety to the eye and a change of place helpful to the dramatist might have been provided, is undesirable. Lately there have been signs that our audiences are growing weary of plays of only one set, especially when they suspect the play has been thus arranged by skill, rather than necessity. Certainly, the newer group of dramatists permit themselves changes of scene even within the act. Act II of The Silver Box,17 by Galsworthy, shows as Scene 1, “The Jones’s lodgings, Merthyr Street”; as Scene 2, “The Barthwicks’ dining-room.” In Hindle Wakes,18 by Stanley Houghton, Scene 1, Act I, is the “Kitchen of the Hawthorns’ house”; Scene 2 is the “Breakfast room of the Jeffcotes’ house.” To the preliminary statement of scenes the dramatist appended words which hint the underlying danger in all changes of setting,—disillusioning waits:

Note.—The scene for Act I, Scene 1, should be very small, as a contrast to the room at the Jeffcotes’. It might well be set inside the other scene so as to facilitate the quick change between Scenes 1 and 2, Act I.

All things considered, it is probably best to repeat the statement already made: a change of scene within the act is desirable only when absolutely necessary; a change of scene with each act is desirable, except when truth to life, expense, or undue time required for setting it forbid.

What exactly does this constantly repeated word “Scene” mean? In English theatrical usage today, and increasingly the world over, it signifies: “a change of setting.” All that happens from one change of set to another change makes a scene. French usage, based on the Latin, till very recently always marked off a scene when any person more important than a servant or attendant entered or left the stage. For instance, in Les Petits Oiseaux of Labiche, known in English as A Pair of Spectacles, four consecutive scenes in Act I, which throughout has no change of setting read thus:

SCENE 4. Blandinet, Henriette, Leonce, then Joseph [a servant].

A scene of some fourteen brief speeches follows, when:

(They start to go out, Tiburce appears.)

SCENE 5. The same persons, Tiburce

After a scene of eleven short speeches,

(Blandinet goes over to left with Leonce.)

SCENE 6. Henriette, Tiburce

Henriette, who sat down after the entrance of Tiburce, and took up her work again, rises immediately on the exit of Blandinet, folding her work.

Tiburce. (Approaching her hesitatingly.) You are not working any longer, Aunt.... It’s done already?

(Henriette bows to him frigidly and goes out at right.)

SCENE 7. Tiburce, then François19

What this French use of the word “scene” leads to, when logically carried out so that even servants entering or leaving the stage create a scene, the following from Act IV of George Barnwell, will show:

SCENE 5. To them a Servant

Thorowgood. Order the groom to saddle the swiftest horse, and prepare himself to set out with speed!—An affair of life and death demands his diligence.

(Exit Servant.)

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 assistance. 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 assist the dramatist, today we are so conscious of time spaces 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 space of time, or writes: “Thus, in idle talk, a full hour passed,” and we do not query the supposed passage 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 passage 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 passed; 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 passage 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 passed. 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 passed; ’twill all be passed 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 passed—to create an illusion of time.

The second method of meeting the time difficulty, finding motivation of some marked change in character or circumstances 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 passions 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 noble 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! 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 godsends 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 space 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 space, 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 title 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 passage 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 passionately 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 passed and it is now twelve o’clock. Otway has used three devices to cover a time space: 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 passing 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 passing 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 Æschylus.30 Surely, it is logical to treat spaces between acts like spaces 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 hell and treason hold their promises, Ere he take ship 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 pass; 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 shift 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 Bountiful31 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 assume that a lapse of time stated to have passed 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 assume that only as much time has passed 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.

THE PROLOGUE

In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece The princes orgillous, their high blood chaf’d, Have to the port of Athens sent their ships, Fraught with the ministers and instruments Of cruel war. Sixty and nine, that wore Their crownets regal, from the Athenian bay Put forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures The ravish’d Helen, Menelaus’ queen, With wanton Paris sleeps; and that’s the quarrel. To Tenedos they come, And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge Their warlike fraughtage. Now on Dardan plains The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch Their brave pavilions. Priam’s six-gated city, Dardan, and Timbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien, And Antenorides, with massy staples And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts Spar up the sons of Troy. Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits, On one and other side, Troyan and Greek, Sets all on hazard; and hither am I come A prologue arm’d, but not in confidence Of author’s pen or actor’s voice, but suited In like conditions as our argument, To tell you, fair beholders, that our play Leaps o’er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils, Beginning in the middle, starting thence away To what may be digested in a play. Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are. Now good or bad; ’tis but the chance of war.34

A growing technique led the dramatists from Dumb Show and Chorus to soliloquy, in order to provide this necessary preliminary exposition. Is Richard, Duke of Gloucester, at the opening of Richard III, much more than a re-christened Chorus?

ACT I. SCENE I. (London. A street.)

Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester, solus

Gloucester. Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; Our bruised arms hung up for monuments; Our stern alarums chang’d to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visag’d War hath smooth’d his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shap’d for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them; Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to see my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity. And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain And hate the idle pleasures of these days. Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, To set my brother Clarence and the King In deadly hate the one against the other; And if King Edward be as true and just As I am subtle, false, and treacherous, This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up About a prophecy, which says that G Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be. Dive, thoughts, down to my soul; here Clarence comes.

Led by Shakespeare, dramatists have come to understand that such information should, if in any way possible, be conveyed not by soliloquy but within the play itself. It should, too, be so incorporated with the text that it is acquired almost unconsciously by an auditor held absorbed by the immediate dramatic action.

Sometimes, however, it is well-nigh impossible thus to incorporate needed exposition with the dramatic action. For instance, a play depicted the fortunes of a Jacobite’s daughter. All that is dramatic in her story as a young woman is predetermined by terrible scenes attending the death of her father, when she was a child of six. Somehow the audience must be made to understand very early in the play what these scenes were which made a lasting, intense impression on the child. That the young woman, when twenty, should recall the scenes with such minuteness as to make the audience perfectly understand their dramatic values is hardly plausible. To have some one come out of the past to reawaken the old memories is commonplace, and likely, by long descriptions to clog the movement of the act. Facing this problem, present-day dramatists, avoiding chorus, soliloquy, and lengthy description, have chosen to put such needed material into a division which, because it is preliminary, they have at will distinguished from the other acts as the Induction or more frequently the Prologue. The latter term is a confusing use. Historically, it signifies the single figure or group of figures who, before the curtain, bespeak the favor of the audience for the play to follow. Very rarely, the Prologue partook a little of the nature of Chorus, stating details that must be understood, were the play to have its full effect. Dramatists, feeling that the relation of this introductory division to the other divisions is not so close as are the inter-relations of the other divisions, have called this preliminary action, not Act I, but Prologue. A similar situation exists for what has been dubbed Epilogue. Historically, a figure from the play just ended, or an entirely new figure, strove, often in lines not written by the dramatist, to point the story or, at least, to win for it the final approval of the audience. Today, when a dramatist wishes to point the meaning of a play which he seems to have brought to a close, or to include it in some larger scheme, he writes what he prefers to call, not an additional act, but an Epilogue.