SCENE III. A Street
Enter Cinna the poet, and after him the Plebeians
Cinna. I dreamt tonight that I did feast with Cæsar,
And things unluckily charge my fantasy.
I have no will to wander forth of doors.
Yet something leads me forth.
1. Plebeian. What is your name?
2. Plebeian. Whither are you going?
3. Plebeian. Where do you dwell?
4. Plebeian. Are you a married man or a bachelor?
2. Plebeian. Answer every man directly.
1. Plebeian. Ay, and briefly.
4. Plebeian. Ay, and wisely.
3. Plebeian. Ay, and truly, you were best.
Cinna. What is my name? Whither am I going? Where do I dwell? Am I a married man or a bachelor? Then, to answer every man directly and briefly, wisely and truly: wisely I say, I am a bachelor.
2. Plebeian. That’s as much as to say, they are fools that marry. You’ll bear me a bang for that, I fear. Proceed; directly.
Cinna. Directly, I am going to Cæsar’s funeral.
1. Plebeian. As a friend or an enemy?
Cinna. As a friend.
2. Plebeian. That matter is answered directly.
4. Plebeian. For your dwelling,—briefly.
Cinna. Briefly, I dwell by the Capitol.
3. Plebeian. Your name, sir, truly.
Cinna. Truly, my name is Cinna.
1. Plebeian. Tear him to pieces; he’s a conspirator.
Cinna. I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.
4. Plebeian. Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad verses.
Cinna. I am not Cinna the conspirator.
4. Plebeian. It is no matter, his name’s Cinna. Pluck but his name out of his heart and turn him going.
3. Plebeian. Tear him, tear him! Come, brands, ho! fire-brands! To Brutus’, to Cassius’; burn all! Some to Decius’ house, and some to Casca’s; some to Lingarius’. Away, go!
(Exeunt.)10
It may almost be stated as a general principle that assigning a speech is the first step in focusing the attention of an audience on that speech. The value of such focusing has been discussed earlier under “Characterization.” In exceptional cases, as the citation from The Treasure shows, there may be some justification for unassigned speeches, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, when any lines of the play seem not to need assigning to any particular person, they lack the characterization which belongs to them.
The thesis play or the problem play, which have been so current in the last few years, have brought into special prominence a common fault in so-called dramatic dialogue. The speeches narrate, describe, expound or argue, and well, but not in the character of the supposed speaker. Rather the author himself is speaking. Such dialogue, whether it be as clever as some in Mr. Shaw’s plays, as beautiful as certain passages by George Chapman, or as commonplace as in many modern instances, should be rewritten till the author can state the desired idea or facts as the imagined speaker would have stated them. This was the fault with the extract from the John Brown play, and whether it has its source in an intense desire of the author to present his own ideas, or to phrase his sense of beauty, in lack of characterizing power or in mere carelessness, it is reprehensible. In the following instance, the writer is so absorbed in his own ideas that he forgets characterization.
Senator Morse. ... What great motive—?
Mary. One more imperious than empires or coalitions—(Mary turns to Mrs. Morse)—one that mothers know—(Mary turns to Senator Morse)—and fathers, too. It is the commonest thing in the world, and the one most completely overlooked. Woman’s love and faith and charity are the motives of that great, imperious impulse by which nature is trying to rule this world and perpetuate the human soul. Individual self-control and the governance of the world are themselves in embryo.... Creation is from God and it is divine. It is the thing and the only thing that kills wantonness and makes love pure. The higher modesty is the peculiar inheritance of our race. It is our duty to understand it, respect it, make it sacred, and have it raised out of the darkness of ignorance and mystery in its true dignity as patriotic impulse and made the true basis of society, its government, and its provision for the general welfare.
Does this sound like an individual woman or like the author using one of his characters for the sounding phrases of his own thinking?
In the next illustration, from George Barnwell, the colorlessness comes from the lack of quickening sympathy with character which marks most of Lillo’s work.
Thorowgood. Thou know’st I have no heir, no child but thee; the fruits of many years successful industry must all be thine. Now, it would give me pleasure great as my love, to see on whom you would bestow it. I am daily solicited by men of the greatest rank and merit for leave to address you; but I have hitherto declin’d it, in hopes that by observation I shou’d learn which way your inclination tends; for as I know love to be essential to happiness in the marriage state, I had rather my approbation should confirm your choice than direct it.
Maria. What can I say? How shall I answer, as I ought, this tenderness, so uncommon even in the best of parents? But you are without example; yet had you been less indulgent, I had been most wretched. That I look on the croud of courtiers that visit here with equal esteem, but equal indifference, you have observed, and I must needs confess; yet had you asserted your authority, and insisted on a parent’s right to be obey’d, I had submitted and to my duty sacrificed my peace.
Thor. From your perfect obedience in every other instance, I fear’d as much; and therefore wou’d leave you without a byass in an affair wherein your happiness is so immediately concern’d.
Ma. Whether from a want of that just ambition that wou’d become your daughter, or from some other cause, I know not; but I find high birth and titles don’t recommend the man who owns them to my affections.
Thor. I wou’d not that they shou’d, unless his merit recommends him more. A noble birth and fortune, tho’ they make not a bad man good, yet they are a real advantage to a worthy one, and place his virtues in the fairest light.
Ma. I cannot answer for my inclinations, but they shall ever be submitted to your wisdom and authority; and, as you will not compel me to marry where I cannot love, so love shall never make me act contrary to my duty. Sir, I have your permission to retire?
Thor. I’ll see you to your chamber. (Exeunt.)11
Too often even somewhat skilled dramatists are led astray by the belief that to write in a style approved at the moment, or which they themselves hold beautiful, is better than to let the characters speak their own language. Examining the early plays of John Lyly—Alexander and Campaspe, Sapho and Phao, Endymion12 (1579-1590)—we find in the more serious portions both action and characterization subordinated to standards of expression supposed at the time to be best. Contrasting the lovers’ dialogue of Love’s Labor’s Lost with the scenes of Orsino and Viola in Twelfth Night, we see perfect illustration of the greater effectiveness of dialogue growing out of the characters as compared with dialogue which puts style first. The Heroic Drama of the second half of the seventeenth century rested upon theory rather than reality. Here is the way in which Almahide and Almanzor state strong feeling.
Almahide. Then, since you needs will all my weakness know,
I love you; and so well, that you must go.
I am so much oblig’d, and have withall
A heart so boundless and so prodigal
I dare not trust myself, or you, to stay,
But, like frank gamesters, must foreswear the play.
Almanzor. Fate, thou art kind to strike so hard a blow;
I am quite stunn’d, and past all feeling now.
Yet—can you tell me you have pow’r and will
To save my life, and at that instant, kill!13
All that these two worthy people are trying to say is
Almahide. I love you; and so well that I dare not trust myself or you to stay.
Almanzor. Can you tell me you have power and will to save my life and at that instant kill!
Dryden makes Almahide describe her own emotional condition and, as is proper at any critical moment in Heroic Drama, drop into simile. Almanzor, too, confidently diagnoses his own condition and apostrophizes fate. All this was quite correct in its own day, not for real life, but for the people of the myth land conjured up by the dramatic theories of the litterati. Did people under such circumstances speak in this way? Surely not.
This scene from George Barnwell, 1731, illustrates the same substitution of an author’s idea of what is effective because “literary” for a phrasing that springs from the real emotion of perfectly individualized figures.
SCENE 7. Uncle. George Barnwell at a distance
Uncle. O Death, thou strange mysterious power,—seen every day, yet never understood but by the incommunicative dead—what art thou? The extensive mind of man, that with a thought circles the earth’s vast globe, sinks to the centre, or ascends above the stars; that worlds exotick finds, or thinks it finds—thy thick clouds attempts to pass in vain, lost and bewilder’d in the horrid gloom; defeated, she returns more doubtful than before; of nothing certain but of labour lost.
(During this speech, Barnwell sometimes presents the pistol and draws it back again; at last he drops it, at which his uncle starts and draws his sword.)
Barnwell. Oh, ’tis impossible!
Uncle. A man so near me, arm’d and masqu’d!
Barn. Nay, then there’s no retreat.
(Plucks a poniard from his bosom, and stabs him.)
Uncle. Oh! I am slain! All-gracious heaven regard the prayer of thy dying servant! Bless, with thy choicest blessings, my dearest nephew; forgive my murderer, and take my fleeting soul to endless mercy!
(Barnwell throws off his mask, runs to him, and, kneeling by him, raises and chafes him.)
Barn. Expiring saint! Oh, murder’d, martyr’d uncle! Lift up your dying eyes, and view your nephew in your murderer! O, do not look so tenderly upon me! Let indignation lighten from your eyes, and blast me e’re you die!—By Heaven, he weeps in pity of my woes. Tears,—tears for blood! The murder’d, in the agonies of death, weeps for his murderer.—Oh, speak your pious purpose, pronounce my pardon then—and take me with you!—He wou’d, but cannot. O why with such fond affection do you press my murdering hand!—What! will you kiss me! (Kisses him. Uncle groans and dies.) He’s gone forever—and oh! I follow. (Swoons away by his uncle’s body.) Do I still live to press the suffering bosom of the earth? Do I still breathe and taint with my infectious breath the wholesome air! Let Heaven from its high throne, in justice or in mercy, now look down on that dear murder’d saint, and me the murderer. And, if his vengeance spares, let pity strike and end my wretched being!—Murder the worst of crimes, and parricide the worst of murders, and this the worst of parricides! Cain, who stands on record from the birth of time, and must to its last final period, as accurs’d, slew a brother, favour’d above him. Detested Nero by another’s hand dispatched a mother that he fear’d and hated. But I, with my own hand, have murder’d a brother, mother, father, and a friend, most loving and belov’d. This execrable act of mine’s without a parallel. O may it ever stand alone—the last of murders, as it is the worst!
| The rich man thus, in torment and despair, Prefer’d his vain, but charitable prayer. The fool, his own soul lost, wou’d fain be wise For others good; but Heaven his suit denies. By laws and means well known we stand or fall, And one eternal rule remains for all. |
The End of the Third Act.14
Have you noticed that people under stress of strong emotion stop to depict their emotional condition, to analyze it, or neatly to apostrophize fate or Providence? The more real the emotion the more compact and connotative, usually, is its expression. People under high emotional strain who can tell you just what they ought to feel, or who describe elaborately what they are feeling are usually “indeed exceeding calm.” Dryden’s Lyndaraxa builded better than she knew when she said:
| By my own experience I can tell Those who love truly do not argue well. |
Bulwer-Lytton was thinking of the weakness of self-descriptive woe when he wrote Macready, while composing Richelieu, “In Act 4—in my last alteration, when Richelieu, pitying Julie, says, ‘I could weep to see her thus—But’—the effect would I think be better if he felt the tears with indignation at his own weakness—thus:
| ‘Are these tears? O, shame, shame, Dotage’—” |
Emotion, if given free way, finds the right words by which to express itself. When a character stands outside itself, describing what it feels, the speaker is really the author in disguise, describing what he is incompetent, from lack of sympathetic power, to phrase with simple, moving accuracy. M. de Curel has described perfectly the right relation of author to character and dialogue.
During the first days of work I have a very distinct feeling of creation. Later I move on instinctively and that is much better. When the sentiments of my characters are in question I am absolutely in their skins, for my own part indifferent as to their griefs or joys. I can be moved only later in re-reading, and then this emotion seems to arise from the fact that I have to do with characters absolutely strange to me. I experience sometimes, and then personally, a feeling of irony, of flippancy, in regard to my characters who tangle themselves up and get themselves into difficulties. That transpires sometimes in the language of some other character who, at the moment, ceases to speak correctly because he speaks as I should. As a result, corrections later. At the end of a year, my play, when I re-read it, seems something completely apart from me, written by another.15
Allowing a character to express itself exactly raises inevitably the question of dialect. On the one hand it must be admitted that nothing more quickly characterizes a figure, as far as type is concerned, than to let him speak like a Yankee, a Scotchman, a Negro, etc. If the character utters phrases which an audience recognizes instantly as characteristic of his supposed type, there is special satisfaction to the audience in such recognition. On the other hand, very few audiences know any dialect thoroughly enough to permit a writer to use it with absolute accuracy. The moment dialect begins to show the need of a glossary, it is defeating its own ends. As a result a compromise has arisen, dating from the very early days of the drama—stage dialects. A character made up to represent Scotchman, Welshman, Frenchman, Negro, or Indian, speaks in a way that has become time-honored on the stage as representing this or that figure among these types. Till recently most dialect on the stage has been at best a mere popular approximation to real usage. Until within a few years the peasant dialogue of Gammer Gurton’s Needle, the famous sixteenth-century Interlude, was supposed to represent dialect of its time in the neighborhood of Cambridge, England. Recently philologists have shown that the speech of these peasants is unlike any dialect of the period of the play, and was obviously a stage convention of the time. Study the Welshmen and other dialect parts in Shakespeare, and you will reach approximately the same conclusion. With our developing sense of historical truth and of realism, we have, in recent years, been trying to make our characters speak exactly as they would in real life. The plays of the Abbey Theatre are in large part a revolt from the Irish dialogue which the plays of Dion Boucicault had practically established as true to life. Today we try not only phonetically to represent the ways in which words are spoken by the people of a particular locality, but by the use of words and phrases heard among such people to make the characterization vivid and convincing. Here, in Mr. Sheldon’s play, The Nigger, is care to reproduce phonetically the speech of negroes:
Jinny. (Wearily.) I speck yo’ right. Hev yo’ got suthin’ fo’ me t’night? Seems lak I might take it down wif me t’ de cabin.
Simms. (Grumbling.) Fo’ dat young good-fo’-nuffin hawg-grubbah t’ swallow w’en he done come home? Laws me, w’y Marse Phil ’lows his fried chicken en’ co’n-braid t’ feed dat wo’thles rap-scallion, I jes’ cain’t see! Clar out o’ heah, yo’ ern’ry yallah gal!
Jinny. (Crushingly.) Yallah gal—! Sho’! I was livin’ heah fo’ yo’ was bawn! Don’ fo’get dat, yo’ imperent, low-down li’tle niggah yo’!
Simms. (Pacifically.) Hol’ on, Jinny! I ain’t said nuffin’. Dat I ain’t! Yo’ g’ long now en’ I’ll sen’ down a gal t’ yo’ cabin wif a basket.
Jinny. (Turning away.) Yo’ sho’ will—er Marse Phil’d—
Simms. (As he goes up the steps.) En’ keep yo’ gran’chillun out dat saloom, Jinny, ef yo’ don’ want t’ see ’em cross de Jo’dan ahead o’ yo’! Dat Joe! Lawd-a-massy! De white in him ain’t done nobody no good’s fah’s dis—’Scuse me, sah!
(He stops suddenly and turns aside, bowing, on seeing Noyes and Georgie, who have opened the door and come out.)
Here is equal care to represent the speech of Southerners.
Noyes. My fathah? Yes, he gave way t’ his Comme’cial ambition by sellin’ powda an’ bullets t’ the Union—way back in ’62. That got him into a bunch o’ trouble, but it wasn’t what sta’ted the—slight fam’ly coolness!
Georgie. Wasn’t it? Why, I always hea’d—
Noyes. No, it came befo’ that. My gran’fathah an’ Phil’s—they were brothahs-in-law, you know—they began it in the fo’ties.
Georgie. Why?
Noyes. (Grimly.) I reckon the Morrows are tryin’ now t’ keep it da’k. But Lawd!—I don’t mind tellin’. It’s the old thing—both losin’ theah heads ovah the same woman.
Georgie. (Innocently.) How romantic! Phil’s gran’mothah?
Noyes. (After a pause.) No—niggah woman.
Georgie. (In a low voice, turning away.) Oh—I didn’t—realize—
Noyes. (Clearing his throat.) Phil’s gran’fathah—he won out. An’ that’s the kick that sta’ted the Noyes fam’ly a-rollin’ t’ pe’dition.
Georgie. (With difficulty.) But mos’ people are willin’ to fo’get—at least they ought to be.
Noyes. (Dryly.) Some ain’t killed ‘emselves tryin’. Howevah, on lookin’ ahead I saw Phil an’ I might be in a position t’ help each othah, so we agreed t’ sink it. I—I wish yo’ mothah would follow Phil, Miss Byrd. I ce’tainly do wish that!
Georgie. She’s old-fashioned—oh, hopelessly so!—in things the world now considers—trivial.
Noyes. (Looking at his hands.) Such as—trade?
Georgie. (Gently.) That’s one of them.16
Lady Gregory, after writing a rough draft of one of her plays, goes among the people of her community and sets them talking of the subject she is treating. Noting their racy, apt, and highly individualized phrases, she gives them to her characters in the play as she re-writes. Such intimate, loving study of dialect as Lady Gregory, Mr. Yeats, and Synge have shown has given us an accurate representation of the Irish peasant, and may ultimately drive from the English stage the conventional absurdities of the past. Dialect, then, if carefully studied, is highly desirable if two or three facts are borne in mind. First of all, it should be accurate; but secondly it must be clear or must be made clear for any audience. Unquestionably, Mr. Stanley Houghton’s memorable play Hindle Wakes had a bad title away from its birthplace,—Manchester, England. In the United States, this title is perfectly meaningless. How many in any audience in this country could be expected to know that the title means certain “autumn week-end holidays in the town of Hindle.” There could be no harm in using a different title away from the birthplace of the play. Recently, in a manuscript play, appeared a figure speaking a strange mixture of Negro and Irish dialects. He seemed to all readers a clumsy attempt by the author at a dialect part. Really, the figure was a portrait of a small political boss who, from boyhood on, had acquired in the saloons and purlieus of his district words and phrases of both the Negroes and the Irish. A little preliminary exposition at the right place cleared up this difficulty and turned what seemed inept characterization into a particularly individual figure of richly characterizing phrase. Obviously, then, dialect should, first, be written accurately. Then it should be gone over to see what in it may not be clear to most auditors. These words or phrases should be made clear because they are translated by other people on the stage or by the speaker, who himself sees or is told that some stage listener does not understand him. Only a little ingenuity is needed to do away with such vaguenesses. To substitute for such words and phrases others which, though incorrect, would be instantly understood by the audience is to botch the dialect and produce what is, after all, not different from the conventional stage dialect of the past. This raises a third point in regard to dialect, and one very frequently disregarded. Over and over again in plays using dialect certain speeches are passed over by the author in his final revision which neither phonetically nor in the words and phrases chosen comport with the context. Instantly the mood and the color of the scene are lost unless the actor supplies what the author failed to give. That is, dialect, if used, should be used steadily and consistently. The desiderata are, then, accuracy, persistent use, and clearness for the general public. Thus used, dialect is one of the chief aids to characterization.
If, in writing dialogue, a dramatist must not speak as himself but in character, must not be consciously or unconsciously literary if not in character, how may one surely choose the right words? Perhaps one or two illustrations will help here. The citation in the left-hand column from the first quarto Hamlet states the facts clearly enough, but wholly uncolored by the emotion of the speaker. In the right-hand column the passionate sympathy of Shakespeare has given him perfect understanding of Hamlet’s feeling.
| Hamlet. O fie Horatio, and if thou shouldst die, What a scandale wouldst thou leave behinde? What tongue should tell the story of our deaths, If not from thee? O my heart sinckes Horatio, Mine eyes have lost their sight, my tongue his use: Farewell Horatio, heaven receive my soule. |
Hamlet.. O good Horatio, what a wounded name Things standing thus unknowne, shall I leave behind me? If thou did’st ever hold me in thy hart, Absent thee from felicity a while And in this harsh world drawe thy breath in paine To tell my story; What warlike noise is this? |
| (Hamlet dies.) | (A march a farre off.)17 |
Speaking, not as the historian, not as the observer, but as Hamlet himself, Shakespeare by his quickened feeling finds a phrasing of which we may say what Swinburne said of some of the lines of John Webster: that the character says, not what he might have said, not what we are satisfied to have him say, but what seems absolutely the only thing he could have said.
When a dramatist works as he should, the emotion of his characters gives him the right words for carrying their feelings to the audience, and every word counts. Writing to Macready of Money, Bulwer-Lytton said of his play, “At the end of Act in your closing speech, will you remember to say, you ‘would’ refuse me ten pounds to spend on benevolence. Not you refuse me. The would is important.” 18
In the left-hand column the complete sympathy of Heywood with his characters makes them speak simply, out of the fullness of their emotion. In the right-hand column, Heywood’s collaborator, Rowley, lacking complete understanding of his characters, is thinking more of phrase for its own sake.
| ACT I. SCENE 4. The street | ACT II. SCENE 1. Hounslow |
| Enter Rainsford and Young Forrest, meeting | Enter Rainsford and Young Forrest |
| Young Forrest. Pray let me speak with you. Rainsford. With me, sir? Young For. With you. Rains. Say on. Young For. Do you not know me? Rains. Keep off, upon the peril of thy life. Come not within my sword's length, lest this arm Prove fatal to thee and bereave thy life, As it hath done thy brother's. Young For. Why now thou know'st me truly, by that token, That thou hast slain my brother. Put up, put up! So great a quarrel as a brother's life Must not be made a street-brawl;'tis not fit That every prentice should, with his shop club, Betwixt us play the sticklers. Sheathe thy sword. Rains. Swear thou wilt act no sudden violence, Or this sharp sword shall still be interposed 'Twixt me and thy own hatred. Young For. Sheathe thy sword. By my religion and that interest I have in gentry I will not be guilty Of any base revenge. Rains. Say on. Young For. Let's walk. Trust me. Let not thy guilty soul Be jealous of my fury. This my hand Is curbed and govern'd by an honest heart, Not by just anger. I'll not touch thee foully For all the world. Let's walk. Rains. Proceed. Young For. Sir, you did kill my brother. Had it been In fair and even encounter, tho' a child, His death I had not question'd. Rains. Is this all? Young For. He's gone. The law is past. Your life is clear'd; For none of all our kindred laid against You evidence to hang you. You're a gentleman; And pity 'twere a man of your descent Should die a felon's death. See, sir, thus far We have demeaned fairly, like ourselves. But, think you, though we wink at base revenge, A brother's death can be so soon forgot? Our gentry baffled, and our name disgraced? No: 'tmust not be; I am a gentleman Well known; and my demeanor hitherto Hath promis'd somewhat. Should I swallow this, The scandal would outlive me. Briefly then, I'll fight with you. Rains. I am loath. Young For. Answer directly, Whether you dare to meet me on even terms; Or mark how I'll proceed. Rains. Say, I deny it. Young For. Then I say thou'rt a villain, and I challenge thee, Where'er I meet thee next, in field or town, The father's manors, or thy tenants' grange, Saving the church, there is no privilege In all this land for thy despised life. (Fortune by Land and Sea, Act I, Scene 4.)19 |
Rainsford. Your resolution holds, then? Young Forrest. Men that are easily mov'd are soon remov'd From resolution; but when, with advice And with foresight we purpose, our intents Are not without considerate reasons alter'd. Rains. Thou art resolv'd, and I prepar'd for thee. Yet thus much know, thy state is desperate, And thou art now in danger's throat already Ev'n half devour'd. If I subdue thee, know Thou art a dead man; for this fatal steel, That search'd thy brother's entrails is prepar'd To do as much to thee. If thou survivest, And I be slain, th'art dead too, my alliance And greatness in the world will not endure My slaughter unavenged. Come, I am for thee. Young For. I would my brother liv'd, that this our diff'rence Might end in an embrace of folded love; But 'twas Heaven's will that for some guilt of his He should be scourged by thee; and for the guilt In scourging him, thou by my vengeance punish'd. Come; I am both ways arm'd, against thy steel If I be pierc'd by it, or 'gainst thy greatness If mine pierce thee. Rains. Have at thee. (They fight and pause.) Young For. I will not bid thee hold; but if thy breath Be as much short as mine, look to thy weakness. Rains. The breath thou draw'st but weakly, Thou now shalt draw no more. (They fight. Forrest loseth his weapon.) Young For. That Heaven knows. He guard my body that my spirit owes! (Guards himself, and puts by with his hat—slips—the other, running, falls over him, and Forrest kills him.) Good. My cousin's fall'n—pursue the murderer. Foster. But not too near, I pray; you see he's armed, And in this deep amazement may commit Some desperate outrage. Young For. Had I but known the terror of this deed, I would have left it done imperfectly, Rather than in this guilt of conscience Labour'd so far. But I forget my safety. The gentleman is dead. My desp'rate life Will be o'erswayed by his allies and friends, And I have now no safety but my flight. And see where my pursuers come. Away! Certain destruction hovers o'er my stay. (Exit.) (Fortune by Land and Sea, Act II, Scene 1.)19 |
Two sets of extracts from the first and final versions of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House show the way in which perfected understanding of a character reveals the apt phrase.
| (Nora stands motionless. He goes to the door and opens it.) | (Nora stands motionless. Helmer goes to the door and opens it.) |
| The Maid. (In the Hall.) Here is a letter for you, ma’am. | Ellen. (Half-dressed in the Hall.) Here is a letter for you, ma’am. |
| Helmer. Give it here. (He seizes the letter and shuts the door.) Yes, from him. Look here. | Helmer. Give it to me. (Seizes letter and shuts the door.) Yes, from him. You shall not have it. I shall read it. |
| Nora. Read it. | Nora. Read it. |
| Helmer. I have hardly the courage. I fear the worst. We may both be lost, both you and I. Ah! I must know. (Hastily tears the letter open; reads a few lines with a cry of joy.) Nora! | Helmer. (By the lamp.) I have hardly the courage to. We may both be lost, both you and I. Ah! I must know. (Hastily tears the letter open; reads a few few lines, looks at an enclosure; a cry of joy.) Nora! |
| (Nora looks inquiringly at him.) | (Nora looks inquiringly at him.) |
| Helmer. Nora!—Oh, I must read it again. Yes, yes, it is so. You are saved, Nora, you are saved. | Helmer. Nora! Oh, I must read it again. Yes, yes, it is so. I are saved, Nora, I am saved. |
| Nora. How, saved? | Nora. And I? |
| Helmer. Look here. He sends you back your promissory note. He writes that he regrets and apologises, that a happy turn in his life—Oh, what matter what he writes. We are saved, Nora! There is nothing to witness against you. Oh, Nora, Nora.20 | Helmer. You too, of course; we are both saved, both of us. Look here, he sends you back your promissory note. He writes that he regrets and appologises; that a happy turn in his life—Oh, matter what he writes. We are saved, Nora! No one can harm you. Oh, Nora, Nora.21 |
The text of the right-hand column brings out more clearly than the original the complete but unconscious selfishness of Helmer. Ibsen, understanding that character more fully than in his first draft, makes not only the change from “You are saved, Nora” to the self-revelatory “I am saved!” but also the change to that infinitely more dramatic “And I?” which replaces Nora’s “How, saved?”
In a second set of extracts from the same scene, a firmer grasp of the characters has permitted Ibsen to replace the general and conventional in the last two speeches of the left-hand column with the more specific and characterizing lines of Helmer and the lines of Nora that are an inspiration.
| Nora.... It never for a moment occurred to me that you would think of submitting to that man’s conditions, that you would agree to direct your actions by the will of another. I was convinced that you would say to him, “Make it known to the whole world”; and that then— | Nora.... When Krogstad’s letter lay in the box, it never occurred to me that you would think of submitting to that man’s conditions. I was convinced that you would say to him, “Make it known to all the world”; and that then— |
| Helmer. Well? I should give you up to punishment and disgrace. | Helmer. Well? When I had given my own wife’s name up to disgrace and shame—? |
| Nora. No; then I firmly believed that you would come forward, take everything upon yourself, and say, “I am the guilty one”— | Nora. Then I firmly believed that you would come forward, take everything upon yourself, and say, “I am the guilty one.” |
| Helmer. Nora! | Helmer. Nora! |
| Nora. You mean I would never have accepted such a sacrifice? No, of course not. But what would my word have been in opposition to yours? I so firmly believed that you would sacrifice yourself for me—“don’t listen to her,” you would say—“she is not responsible; she is out of her senses”—you would say that it was love of you—you would move heaven and earth. I thought you would get Dr. Rank to witness that I was mad, unhinged, distracted. I so firmly believed that you would ruin yourself to save me. That is what I dreaded, and therefore I wanted to die. | Nora. You mean I would never have accepted such a sacrifice? No, certainly not. But what would my assertions have been worth in opposition to yours? That was the miracle that I hoped for and dreaded. And it was to hinder that that I wanted to die. |
| Helmer. Oh, Nora, Nora! | Helmer. I would gladly work for you day and night, Nora—bear sorrow and want for your sake—but no man sacrifices his honour, even for one he loves. |
| Nora. And how did it turn out? No thanks, no outburst of affection, not a shred of a thought of saving me.22 | Nora. Millions of women have done so.23 |
Perfect phrasing rests, then, on character thoroughly understood and complete emotional accord with the character. Short of that in dialogue, one stops at the commonplace and colorless, the personal, or the literary.
Even, however, when dialogue expounds properly and is thoroughly in character, it will fail if not fitted for the stage. John Oliver Hobbes stated a truth, if somewhat exaggeratedly, in these lines of her preface to The Ambassador:
Once I found a speech in prose—prose so subtly balanced, harmonious, and interesting that it seemed, on paper, a song: But no actor or actress, though they spoke with the voice of angels, could make it, on the stage, even tolerable.... Yet the speech is nevertheless fine stuff: it is nevertheless interesting in substance: it has imagination: it has charm. What, then, was lacking? Emotion in the tone and, on the part of the writer, consideration for the speaking voice. Stage dialogue may have or may not have many qualities, but it must be emotional. It rests primarily on feeling. Wit, philosophy, moral truths, poetic language— all these count as nothing unless there is feeling of an obvious, ordinary kind.24
When reading a play aloud, do we give all the stage directions, or, cutting out those which state how certain speeches should be read, try to give these as directed? Even when reading some story aloud, do we not often find troublesome full directions as to just how the speakers delivered their lines? If given by us, they provide an awkward standard by which to judge our reading. If we wish to suppress them, they are not, in rapid reading, always seen in time. As was pointed out very early in this book, gesture, facial expression, movement about the stage, and above all, the voice, aid the dramatist as they cannot aid the novelist. These aids and the time limits of a play have, as we shall see, very great effect on dialogue. Note in the opening of The Case of Rebellious Susan, by Henry Arthur Jones, the effects demanded from the aids just named.
ACT I. SCENE. Drawing-room at Mr. Harabin’s; an elegantly furnished room in Mayfair. At back, in centre, fireplace, with fire burning. To right of fireplace a door leading to lady Susan’s sitting-room. A door down stage left.
Enter footman left showing in Lady Darby
Lady Darby. (A lady of about fifty.) Where is Lady Susan now?
Footman. Upstairs in her sitting-room, my lady.
(Indicating the door right.)
Lady D. Where is Mr. Harabin?
Footman. Downstairs in the library, my lady.
Enter Second Footman showing in Inez, a widow of about thirty, fascinating, inscrutable
Lady D. (To First Footman.) Tell Lady Susan I wish to see her at once.
Inez. And will you say that I am here too?
(Exit First Footman at door right. Exit Second Footman at door left.)
Lady D. (Going affectionately to Inez, shaking hands very sympathetically.) My dear Mrs. Quesnel, you know?
Inez. Sue wrote me a short note saying that she had discovered that Mr. Harabin had—and that she had made up her mind to leave him.
Lady D. Yes, that’s what she wrote me. Now, my dear, you’re her oldest friend. You’ll help me to persuade her to—to look over it and hush it up.
Inez. Oh, certainly. It’s the advice everybody gives in such cases, so I suppose it must be right. What are the particulars?
Lady D. I don’t know. But with a man like Harabin—a gentleman in every sense of the word—it can’t be a very bad case.
Enter Lady Susan.25
If the voice does not deftly stress “now” in Lady Darby’s first speech, and the “upstairs” and the “downstairs” of the footman, this opening will fail of its desired effect. Everything in this well-written beginning of an interesting play depends on bringing to the delivery of the lines right use of the dramatist’s greatest aids: gesture, facial expression, pantomime, and above all the exquisite intonations of which the human voice is capable. Write this scene as a novelist would handle it, and see to what different proportions it will swell. Note in the final result how much less connotative, how much more commonplace the dialogue probably is. Contrasting two passages—one from a novel, the other in a play drawn from it—will perhaps best illustrate that the dialogue of the novel and of the play treating the same story usually differ greatly.
And when it became clear that somebody, good or bad, was without, Patty, having regard to the lateness of the hour and the probability of supernatural visitations, was much disposed to make as though the knocking were unheard, and to creep quietly off to bed. But Mistress Beatrice prevailed upon her to depart from this prudent course; and the two peered from an upper window to see who stood before the door.
At first they could see no one; but presently a little figure stepped back from the shadow, looking up to the window above, and Beatrice Cope, although she discerned not the face, felt more than ever certain that this summons was for her.
“’Tis but a child there without, Patty,” she said. “Maybe ’tis some poor little creature that has lost its way, and come here for help and shelter. Heaven forbid that we should leave it to wander about, all the dreary night through!”
Patty’s fears were not much calmed by the sight of this lonely child. “’Twas the Phantom Child,” she murmured, “who comes wailing piteously to honest folks’ doors o’ nights; and if they take it in and cherish it, it works them grievous woe.”
Mistress Beatrice, however, tried to hear as little as she might of what Patty was saying; and she went downstairs and undid the heavy bar very cautiously. Then she opened the door a little space; and Patty Joyce stood by her staunchly, although disapproving of what she did.
And when the door was opened, this persevering applicant proved to be only the boy Bill Lampeter, who was known at White-oaks as at Crowe Hall, and a score of country Granges beside. He did but crave a drink of milk and a bit to eat, he said. He had been a-foot all day, and had had nought to eat; and seeing a light burning in the houseplace, he made bold to knock and ask for what he needed.
The boy’s breath was short and hurried, and his grimy face was pale and damp with toil of hard running. He did not seek to enter, but kept glancing over his shoulder into the darkness behind him.
Beatrice sent Patty for food and drink, standing still herself in the doorway; and the maid was no sooner gone than the boy drew nearer and spoke.
“Oh, mistress,” he said, hoarsely, “I have been beat to-night—but I told ’em nought. The corporal he raddled my bones terrible—but I set my teeth, and I told ’un nought. I bit him when he took they shining white things o’ yourn, wi’ the writing; them as I could not give to Mr. Cope, the day I warned the porter at Goodrest that the red-coats was upon ’em. I had the white things safe, mistress, hid in my smock”—(he put his hand to his breast, where the rough garment he wore was heavily quilted and closely drawn).—“And I would ha’ giv’ them to Mr. Cope, the first chance I got—I would, honest and true. But the scouting party caught me; and they says, ’Thee be allays running from one Grange to another, thee little ne’er-do-weel; thee can tell us what we wants to know about Goodrest in the hills’—And I was telling of ’em just what tales comed into my head, for fear of unpleasantness, mistress, when the corporal, a great rough chap, seizes hold of me, and says, says he, ‘’Tis all a pack o’ lies, this here. Search him,’ he says, ‘and see if he carries messages or tokens.’ And then I fought and bit, for I know’d they’d find your bright things in my smock; and I bit his hand nigh upon through, that I did,” said Bill, with grim satisfaction, and an oath at which poor Beatrice shuddered.
“Oh, hush!” she said. “There is no help in swearing, boy.”
“He swore,” Bill replied. “But when he got the tablets, he were fine and pleased. And he said, ‘This is a stag of ten, my boys; and should he snuff the breeze too soon we have means to keep him where he is till morning. Hold that little viper fast,’ says he,’and for your lives don’t let him give us the slip.’—So one of the troopers took me behind him on his horse, with a rope round my body, drawn cruel tight at first. And I panted and groaned, and made as though he were killing of me; and after a bit he slacked the rope a little, so as I could put my head down and gnaw it through in the dark. And at the dip of a valley, where the shadow was deep under the trees, I slipped off quiet-like into the long grass. He knew the rope was loose in a minute, and he snapped his pistol; but the covert was good, and I crope into the heart of a holler tree covered o’er wi’ ivy. I bided there, till they was tired o’ hunting round.—But oh, mistress, the poor gentleman at Goodrest is undone!—They talked together while the trooper was making me fast upon his horse; and I heard a word now and again, for I listened with all my might. There were but four of ’em; and they said they weren’t strong enough to surprise Goodrest, but must ride back to quarters for help. And as we went past Grantford Farm, the corporal called a halt; and one held his horse while he went in and spoke with the farmer. And, mistress, Hugh Stone of Grantford is known for a bitter Whig. ...And presently Hugh of Grantford comes out, and his little brother with him; and the boy had that as you wrote upon—that as they took from me—in his hand. And the corporal says, looking over his shoulder quick and short, ‘Does he understand?’ says he. ‘Oh, aye,’ says Hugh of Grantford, ‘he understands fine.’ And I could see wee Jock did not like the job he were put upon; and I made a face at him from ahint the trooper’s back, and he liked it less nor ever then.”
“What job, Bill?”
Bill Lampeter looked in amazement at this beautiful, terrified lady, who did not understand.
“Don’t ’ee see?” he said. “Jock o’ Grantford were to take your writing to Goodrest, and play upon the gentleman there, to keep him biding till the red-coats come. What were it as you wrote down that day, mistress?”
As in a flash of painful memory Beatrice saw the dainty tablets once more, with words traced upon them in a hand rendered somewhat unsteady by the slow pace of the sorrel horse—a hand unmistakable, however, to the eyes of Charlie Cope.
I pray you, do not stir far from home. There is risk abroad.
B. C.
She understood then; and she turned quickly to Patty Joyce, who had come back bringing bread and milk ere Bill’s tale was half done. Bill, even in the eagerness of his disclosure, had clutched the bread and cheese; and now he drained the mug of milk, while the good-natured maid stood open-mouthed, her eyes fixed upon Mistress Beatrice.
“Patty,” the young lady whispered, “I think you are faithful and true.... I must trust you with a perilous secret. This gentleman whom they seek at Goodrest is my only brother; he has papers of importance in his keeping, and a warrant is out for his arrest. They will lure him to his destruction by means of me, his sister; he knows my handwriting and will trust to my warning. He will lie close at Goodrest, as a hare upon her form; and they will take him—oh! they will take him prisoner!—ere morning dawns. I must to Goodrest now, in the dark night.—Boy! is there time? is there time?”
Bill Lampeter nodded, munching his bread.
“They’ll not be back afore the dawning, them troopers,” he said. “They’ve limed the twig, ye see; the bird is made fast. If Mr. Cope do hear the country’s up, he’ll bide where he be there at Goodrest, reckoning ’tis safest to keep still. Between now and the first streak as shows over the Black Scaur, mistress, you can do as you will.”
“Eh, Mistress Beatrice, you can’t never go,” said Patty, trembling. “You couldn’t dare to do it. And this here boy,” she whispered, standing close to Mistress Beatrice, “is a very proverb for wicked story-telling. ’Tis a naughty little varlet; who knows that he has not been set on to bring this tale?”
“’Tis true enough, though I be a story-teller,” said Bill, whose ears were sharp. “Yon gentleman at Goodrest has need of thee the night, mistress. And now let me lie down on the straw in the big barn, for my bones do ache, and I be dizzy wi’ running.”
He caught at the doorpost as he spoke; and Patty Joyce’s suspicion vanished in pity for the worn-out creature. She kindled a flame to light the lanthorn which hung in the houseplace; and herself crossed the wide courtyard to make Bill a comfortable resting-place in the soft hay and clean straw which filled the great barn.26
This is the same scene in the play: