Just what, however, is this action which in drama is so essential? To most people it means physical or bodily action which rouses sympathy or dislike in an audience. The action of melodrama certainly exists largely for itself. We expect and get little but physical action for its own sake when a play is announced as was the well-known melodrama, A Race for Life.
| As Melodramatically and Masterfully Stirring, Striking and Sensational as Phil Sheridan’s Famous Ride. Superb, Stupendous Scenes in Sunset Regions. Wilderness Wooings Where Wild Roses Grow. The Lights and Shades of Rugged Border Life. Chinese Comedy to Make Confucius Chuckle. The Realism of the Ranch and Race Track. The Hero Horse That Won a Human Life. An Equine Beauty Foils a Murderous Beast. Commingled Gleams of Gladness, Grief, and Guilt. Dope, Dynamite and Devilish Treachery Distanced. Continuous Climaxes That Come Like Cloudbursts. |
Some plays depend almost wholly upon mere bustle and rapidly shifting movement, much of it wholly unnecessary to the plot. Large portions of many recent musical comedies illustrate this. Such unnecessary but crudely effective movement Stevenson burlesqued more than once in the stage directions of his Macaire.
ACT I. SCENE I
Aline and maids; to whom Fiddlers; afterwards Dumont and Charles. As the curtain rises, the sound of the violin is heard approaching. Aline and the inn servants, who are discovered laying the table, dance up to door L.C., to meet the Fiddlers, who enter likewise dancing to their own music. Air: “Haste to the Wedding.” The Fiddlers exeunt playing into house, R.U.E. Aline and Maids dance back to table, which they proceed to arrange.
Aline. Well, give me fiddles: fiddles and a wedding feast. It tickles your heart till your heels make a runaway match of it. I don’t mind extra work, I don’t, so long as there’s fun about it. Hand me up that pile of plates. The quinces there, before the bride. Stick a pink in the Notary’s glass: that’s the girl he’s courting.
Dumont. (Entering with Charles.) Good girls, good girls! Charles, in ten minutes from now what happy faces will smile around that board!
ACT II. SCENE 2
To these all the former characters, less the Notary. The fiddlers are heard without, playing dolefully. Air: “O, dear, what can the matter be?” in time to which the procession enters.
Macaire. Well, friends, what cheer?