FROM SUBJECT TO PLOT: ARRANGEMENT FOR CLEARNESS, EMPHASIS, MOVEMENT
The chief desideratum of a dramatist beginning to arrange his material within a number of acts already decided on is to create interest as promptly as possible. To that end neither striking dialogue nor stirring situation is of prime consequence. Clearness is. When an audience does not understand who the people are with whom the play opens and their relations to one another, no amount of striking dialogue or stirring situation will create lasting interest. The danger for a later public of allusive reference clear enough at one time is shown by the verses sung when the Helstone Furry, or Flower Dance, takes place in Cornwall. Lines once full of meaning are today so out of date as to be meaningless.
From an early hour the place is alive with drums and fifes, and townsmen hoarsely chanting a ballad, the burden of which conveys the spirit of the festival:
| With Hal-an-tow, Jolly rumble O, And we are up as soon as any day O, And for to fetch the Summer home, The Summer and the May O; For the Summer is a-come O, And Winter is a-go O! |
The verses of the ballad seem to convey topical allusions that have become traditional. One speaks of Robin Hood and Little John as gone to the fair, and the revellers will go too; another triumphs in the Spaniards eating the gray goose feather while the singers will be eating the roast. Another runs thus quaintly:
| God bless Aunt Mary Moses With all her power and might O; And send us peace in merry England Both night and day O. With Hal-an-tow, Jolly rumble O, And we were up as soon as any day O, And for to fetch the Summer home, The Summer and the May O; For the Summer is a-come O, And Winter is a-go O! |
Thus singing they troop through the town; if they find anyone at work, they hale him to the river and make him leap across; arrived at the Grammar School they demand a holiday; at noon they go “fadding” into the country, and come back with oak branches and flowers in their hats and caps; then until dusk they dance hand-in-hand down the streets, and through any house, in at any door, out at another; when night falls they keep up the dancing indoors. The character of the dancing is exactly that of the ancient Comus; and the whole spirit of the Cornish Furry is a fair representation of primitive nature festivals, except, of course, that modern devoutness has banished from the flower dance all traces of a religious festival;—unless a trace is to be found in the fact that the dancers at one point make a collection.[1]
The Greek dramatist, staging religious legends, could assume in his audience common knowledge as to the identity and the historic background of his figures which saved him much exposition. Today, readers of his play demand explanatory notes because of these omissions.
The Choephori, like the plays of Æschylus generally, consists of scenes from a story taken as known. Some indispensable parts of it are represented only by allusions. Others can scarcely be said to be represented at all. The history of Pylades belongs to the second class; that of Strophius belongs to the first. What is evident is that the author presumes us to be familiar with his conception of both, that as a fact we are not, and that our only way of approaching the play intelligently is by the assumption of some working hypothesis.[2]