Enter Wilson right, announcing Lady Eastney. Enter Lady Eastney. Exit Wilson.
Lady Eastney. (Shaking hands.) You’re busy?
Sir Daniel. Yes, trying to persuade myself I am forty—solely on your account.
Lady Eastney. That’s not necessary. I like you well enough as you are.
Sir Daniel. (Tenderly.) Give me the best proof of that.
Notice that the statement just formulated as to stage directions reads, “cannot be conveyed,” not “may not.” Cross the line, and differences between the novel and the play are blurred, for the author runs a fair chance of omitting exposition needed in the text and of writing colorless dialogue. A recently published play prefaces not only every speech, but even parts of the speeches with careful statements as to how they should be given, even when the text is perfectly clear. Nothing is left to the imagination, and the text is often emotionally colorless.
Let it be remembered, then, that the stage direction is not a pocket into which a dramatist may stuff whatever explanation, description, or analysis a novelist might allow himself, but is more a last resort to which he turns when he cannot make his text convey all that is necessary.
The passing of the soliloquy and the aside[40] makes the dramatist of today much more limited than were his predecessors in letting a character describe itself. Today everything depends on the naturalness of the self-exposition. The vainglorious, the self-centered, the garrulous will always talk of themselves freely. The reserved, the timid, and persons under suspicion will be sparing of words. When the ingenuity of the dramatist cannot make self-exposition plausible, the scene promptly becomes unreal. The point to be remembered is, as George Meredith once said, that “The verdict is with the observer.” Not what seems plausible to the author but what, as he tries it on auditors, proves acceptable, may stand.
Description of one character by another is usually more plausible than the method just treated. Even here, however, the test remains plausibility. It requires persuasive acting to make the following description of Tartuffe perfectly natural. There is danger that it will appear more the detailed picture the dramatist wishes to place in our minds than the description the speaker would naturally give his listeners:
Orgon. Ah! If you’d seen him, as I saw him first,