The difficulty of arranging the stage in this case will at once prove the imperative need of going through the play with the utmost attention to stage directions and lines, in order to make an accurate series of stage diagrams, property, light, and furniture plots.
Notice that in the preliminary stage directions the center entrance is not designated. It soon becomes evident, however, that a center door (or one, at least, at the back of the stage) is taken for granted.
This elementary diagram will serve as a working basis. A very little rehearsing will soon make it necessary to arrange the furniture, and so on, in a manner more pleasing to the eye and more convenient to the actor.
There is one more kind of text with which amateurs have to do: it is the reprint of actual prompt-copies, and is usually accurate in material details. The following extract is from the opening pages of the fourth act of Henry Arthur Jones's "The Liars" (in the special edition published by Samuel French):
Scene: Drawing-room in Sir Christopher's flat in Victoria Street. L. at back is a large recess, taking up half the stage. The right half is taken up by an inner room furnished as library and smoking-room. Curtains dividing library from drawing-room. Door up-stage, L. A table down-stage, R. The room is in great confusion, with portmanteau open, clothes, etc., scattered over the floor; articles which an officer going to Central Africa might want are lying about.
The diagram, as given in the text, is this:
This is merely a skeleton, as it were, of a diagram, but first, the preliminary stage directions—quoted above—and the detailed and full marginal and other stage directions in the text, make clear every crossing, entrance, and exit, and designate at least the important articles of furniture and "props." For example, it is learned from the text on the first and second pages of the act, that there is a uniform case "up-Center"—up-stage, that is, in the center of it; a folding stool by the table; a trunk to the left of Center; and a sofa on the extreme left. Unlike the quotations from the Wilde and Shaw plays, those of Jones supply all necessary information to the stage manager and the actors. Of course, as always, modifications must be made to meet the exigencies of certain stages and certain actors, but these are minor matters.
The fundamental principles of this preliminary blocking-out having been laid down, we shall now proceed to a consideration of the infinitely varied problems of grouping and detailed stage business.