Becket. Rosamund de Clifford!
Rosamund. They follow me—and I must not be known.
There are real values in these seemingly slight changes. With a rush and in confusion, Rosamund enters. As it is her first appearance in the play, it is of the highest importance that she be identified for the audience. If Becket gives her name as she enters, it may be lost in her onward rush. If entering, she speaks the line, “Save me, father, hide me,” she centers attention on him and he may fully emphasize the identification in, “Rosamund de Clifford!” Note as bearing on what has already been said in regard to unnecessary use of stage direction that Irving cut out “flying from Sir Reginald Fitz Urse.” He knew that Rosamund’s speeches and her action would make the fleeing clear enough, and that the scene immediately following with Fitz Urse would show who was pursuing her. Entrances, when well handled, therefore, must be in character, prepared for, and properly motivated.
Exits are just as important as entrances. The exit of Captain Nat in Shore Acres has already been mentioned under pantomime. Mark the significance of the exit of Hamlet in the ghost scene, as he goes with sword held out before him. The final exit of Iris in Pinero’s play is symbolic of her passing into the outer and under world.
Maldonado. You can send for your trinkets and clothes in the morning. After that, let me hear no more of you. (She remains motionless, as if stricken.) I’ve nothing further to say.
(A slight shiver runs through her frame and she resumes her walk. At the door, she feels blindly for the handle; finding it, she opens the door narrowly and passes out.)
The absurdities in which the ill-managed exit or entrance may land us, Lessing shows amusingly:
Maffei often does not motivate the exits and entrances of his personages: Voltaire often motivates them falsely, which is far worse. It is not enough that a person says why he comes on, we ought also to perceive by the connection that he must therefore come. It is not enough that he say why he goes off, we ought to see subsequently that he went on that account. Else, that which the poet places in his mouth is mere excuse and no cause. When, for example, Eurykles goes off in the third scene of the second act, in order, as he says, to assemble the friends of the queen, we ought to hear afterwards about these friends and their assemblage. As, however, we hear nothing of the kind, his assertion is a schoolboy “Peto veniam exeundi,” the first falsehood that occurs to the boy. He does not go off in order to do what he says; but in order to return a few lines on as the bearer of news which the poet did not know how to impart by means of any other person. Voltaire treats the ends of acts yet more clumsily. At the close of the third act, Polyphontes says to Merope that the altar awaits her, that all is ready for the solemnizing of their marriage and he exits with a “Venez, Madame.” But Madame does not come, but goes off into another coulisse with an exclamation, whereupon Polyphontes opens the fourth act, and instead of expressing his annoyance that the queen has not followed him into the temple (for he had been in error, there was still time for the wedding) he talks with his Erox about matters he should not ventilate here, that are more fitting conversation for his own house, his own rooms. Then the fourth act closes—exactly like the third. Polyphontes again summons the queen into the temple, Merope herself exclaims, “Courons nous vers le temple où m’attend mon outrage”; and says to the chief priests who come to conduct her thither, “Vous venez à l’autel entrainer la victime.” Consequently we must expect them inside the temple at the beginning of the fifth act, or are they already back again? Neither; good things will take time. Polyphontes has forgotten something and comes back again and sends the queen back again. Excellent! Between the third and fourth, between the fourth and fifth acts nothing occurs that should, and indeed, nothing occurs at all, and the third and fourth acts only close in order that the fourth and fifth may begin.[50]
At the end of Act II of The Princess and the Butterfly the exits are as important as any part of the text. Note particularly the last.
Denstroude. (On the steps, pausing and looking back.) You cycle at Battersea tomorrow morning?