Dramatic Technique Part 67

_Lady Plymdale._ My dear _Dumby._ Awful manners young Margaret, what a fascinating Hopper has!

woman your husband has been dancing with! I should be quite _Cecil Graham._ Ah! Hopper is one jealous if I were you! Is she a of Nature's gentlemen, the worst great friend of yours? type of gentleman I know.

_Lady Windermere._ No. _Lady Jedburgh._ What a fascinating woman Mrs. Erlynne _Lady Plymdale._ Really? is! She is coming to lunch Good night, dear. on Thursday, won't you come too?

(_Looks at Mr. Dumby, and I expect the Bishop and dear exit._) Lady Merton.

_Dumby._ Awful manners young _Lady Windermere._ I am afraid I Hopper has! am engaged, Lady Jedburgh.

_Cecil Graham._ Ah! Hopper is _Lady Jedburgh._ So sorry. Good one of Nature's gentlemen, the night. Come, dear.

worst type of gentleman I know.

(_Exeunt Lady Jedburgh and Miss Graham._) _Dumby._ Sensible woman, Lady Windermere. Lots of wives _Dumby._ Sensible woman, would have objected to Mrs. Lady Windermere. Lots of Erlynne coming. But Lady wives would have objected to Windermere has that uncommon Mrs. Erlynne coming. But thing called common sense. Lady Windermere has that uncommon thing called common _Cecil Graham._ And Windermere sense.

knows that nothing looks so like innocence as an _Cecil Graham._ And Windermere indiscretion. knows that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.

_Dumby._ Yes; dear Windermere is becoming almost modern.

Never thought he would. _Dumby._ Yes; dear Windermere is becoming almost modern. Never (_Bows to Lady Windermere thought he would.

and exit._) _Lady Plymdale._ Dumby!

_Lady Jedburgh._ Good night, Lady Windermere. What a (_Dumby bows to Lady fascinating woman Mrs. Erlynne Windermere and exit._) is! She is coming to lunch on Thursday. Won't you come _Lady Plymdale._ My Dear too? I expect the Bishop and Margaret, what a fascinating dear Lady Merton. woman your husband has been dancing with! I should be quite _Lady Windermere._ I am afraid jealous if I were you! Is she a I am engaged, Lady Jedburgh. great friend of yours?

_Lady Jedburgh._ So sorry. _Lady Windermere._ No!

Come, dear.

_Lady Plymdale._ Really? Good night, dear.

(_Exeunt Lady Jedburgh and Miss Graham._) (_Lady Plymdale exits._) _Enter Mrs. Erlynne and _Enter Mrs. Erlynne and Lord Windermere._ Lord Windermere._

_Mrs. Erlynne._ Charming ball _Mrs. Erlynne._ Charming ball it has been! Quite reminds me it has been! Quite reminds me of old days. of old days.

(_Sits on the sofa._)[63] (_Sits on the sofa._)

Dialogue may be both clear and characterizing yet fail because it is difficult to speak. Too many writers, as has been said, do not hear their words but see them. Could any one who heard his words have penned the lines, "She says she's sure she'll have a shock if she sees him."

That time "apt alliteration" was so artful that, setting her trap, she caught a dramatist. Here is the amusing comment of a critic on an author's protest that her lines have been misquoted and made to sound difficult to deliver:

In the review of the----Theatre's opening bill there occurred a line purporting to come from Miss Blank's psychic play, _The Turtle_. Miss Blank writes, "The line, which was either incorrectly spoken or heard, was not, 'How does one know one is one's self?' but 'How is one to know which is one's real self when one feels so different with different people?'" Naturally the reviewer of a play is as open to mistakes in noting down lines as the actor is in speaking them, particularly if the author is much given to the "one-one-one" style of construction. If, however, Miss Blank prefers her own version of the sentence, she is welcome to it.

Of course each writer is perfectly sure that his own ear will keep him from errors of this kind, but even the greatest err. Did Shakespeare write the opening lines of _Measure For Measure_, he the master of exquisitely musical and perfectly chosen dramatic speech? Some scholars believe he did. If so, in that second speech of the Duke which wearies the jaws and tempts to every kind of slurring, Jove certainly nodded.

_Enter Duke, Escalus, Lords and Attendants_

_Duke._ Escalus!

_Escalus._ My lord.

_Duke._ Of government the properties to unfold, Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse, Since I am put to know that your own science Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice My strength can give you: then no more remains, But that, to your sufficiency ...

... as your worth is able, And let them work.

Are the following straight translations from the old French farce, _Pierre Patelin_,[64] as easy to speak as the revisions?

TRANSLATION REVISION

_Guillemette._ And don't forget _Guillemette._ And if your dram, if you can come by any one offers to stand treat, it for nothing. don't refuse.

(_Patelin is trying to cheat (_Patelin is trying to cheat the Draper out of a piece the Draper out of a piece of cloth._) of cloth._)

_Patelin._ I don't care: give me _Patelin._ I don't care: give me my money's worth. (_Whispering my money's worth. (_Whispering in the Draper's ear._) I know of in the Draper's ear._) I know of another coin or two n.o.body ever some c.h.i.n.k-- got a smell of.

_Draper._ Now you're talking! _Draper._ Now you're talking!

That would be capital.

_Patelin._ In a word, I am hot _Patelin._ (_Letting his hand for this piece, and have some fall on the goods_.) This!

I must.

The first revision certainly gives lines easier to speak. The writer of the second revision hears it and knows the gesture, facial expression, and intonation which must go with "This!" Dialogue which is perfectly clear and characterizing should not be allowed to pa.s.s in the final revision if at any point it is unnecessarily difficult to deliver.

From the preceding discussion it must be clear that the three essentials of dialogue are clearness, helping the onward movement of the story, and doing all this in character. Dialogue is, naturally, still better if it possesses charm, grace, wit, irony, or beauty of its own. Dialogue which merely states the facts is, as we have seen, likely to be dull or commonplace. Well characterized dialogue still falls short of all dialogue may be if it has none of the attributes just mentioned. Feeling this strongly, the dramatists throughout the ages have striven to give their dialogue attractiveness because of its style, forgetting that above all for the dramatist it is true that "style is the man," and that "style is a thinking out into language." Lyly, Shakespeare, in some of the scenes of his early plays, Kyd in _The Spanish Tragedy_, John Dryden in his Heroic Drama, Cibber and Lillo in their rhythmic prose which often might be perfectly well printed as blank verse, strove to decorate their dialogue from without--something sure to fail, either with the immediate audience or with posterity. If the charm, the grace, the wit, the irony of the dialogue does not come from the characters speaking, that dialogue fails in what has been shown to be one of its chief essentials, right characterization. Congreve emphasized this in that cla.s.sic of dramatic criticism, his letter _Concerning Humour in Comedy_.[65] "A character of a splenetic and peevish humour should have a satirical wit. A jolly and sanguine humour should have a facetious wit. The former should speak positively; the latter, carelessly: for the former observes and shows things as they are; the latter rather overlooks nature, and speaks things as he would have them; and his wit and humour have both of them a less alloy of judgment than the others."

Undoubtedly, however, the dramatist may do much in helping a character to reveal these qualities, particularly beauty of thought or phrasing.

It is a conventional use supposed to make for beauty which _The Rehearsal_ ridicules in the following scene, for at nearly all crises the Heroic Drama rested on a simile for its strongest effect.

_Prettyman._ How strange a captive am I grown of late!

Shall I accuse my love or blame my fate?

My love I cannot; that is too divine: And against fate what mortal dares repine?

_Enter Chloris_

But here she comes.

Sure 'tis some blazing comet! is it not? (_Lies down._)

_Bayes._ Blazing comet! Mark that; egad, very fine.

_Prettyman._ But I am so surpris'd with sleep, I cannot speak the rest. (_Sleeps._)

_Bayes._ Does not that, now, surprise you, to fall asleep in the nick?

His spirits exhale with the heat of his pa.s.sion, and all that, and, swop, he falls asleep, as you see. Now, here she must make a simile.

_Smith._ Where's the necessity of that, Mr. Bayes?

_Bayes._ Because she's surprised. That's a general rule; you must ever make a simile when you're surprised; 'tis the new way of writing.

_Chloris._ As some tall pine which we on aetna find T' have stood the rage of many a boist'rous wind, Feeling without that flames within do play, Which would consume his root and sap away; He spreads his worsted arms unto the skies: Silently grieves, all pale, repines, and dies: So, shrouded up, your bright eye disappears.

Break forth, bright scorching sun, and dry my tears. (_Exit._)

_John._ Mr. Bayes, methinks this simile wants a little application, too.

_Bayes._ No faith; for it alludes to pa.s.sion, to consuming, to dying, and all that, which, you know, are the natural effects of an amour.

(Act II, sc. 3.)[66]

Why is it that the citation from Shakespeare in the left-hand column is less satisfactory than that in the right-hand?

_York._ To do that office _Viola._ If I did love you of thine own good will in my master's flame, Which tired majesty did make thee With such a suffering, such a offer, deadly life, The resignation of thy state and In your denial I would find no crown sense, To Henry Bolingbroke. I would not understand it.