Dramatic Technique

by George Pierce Baker

St. Roche. Of course, of course. (Coming down, glass in hand.) I could tell you things I’ve heard about this Mrs. Ware—

Mrs. St. Roche. (Rising.) Please don’t! I want no details concerning a person of her world.

(She ascends the steps slowly, carrying her cloak and her tumbler—without looking back.)

Goodnight.

St. Roche. (With a wistful glance at her.) Goodnight.

(She departs. He stands for a little while contemplating space; then he switches off the light. The room remains partially illumined by the fire-glow. He turns to examine the fire. Apparently assured on that point, he walks, still carrying his tumbler, to the door which is in the centre wall; where, uttering a little sigh as he opens the door, he disappears.)[51]

The passages quoted (pp. 268-275) from The Troublesome Reign of King John and Shakespeare’s play show crude and perfect handling of exits and entrances. In the old play the murderers merely enter and go out again as ordered. In Shakespeare they enter at the moment which makes them the climactic touch in the terror of Arthur and the audience. When Hubert orders them to go, it is the first sign that he may relent.

The inexperienced dramatist is almost always wasteful in the number of characters used. An adaptation of a Spanish story called for a cast of about a dozen important figures and some sixty supernumeraries as soldiers and peasants—all this in a one-act play. It meant very little labor to cut the soldiery to a few officers and some privates, and the peasantry to some six or eight people. Ultimately, the total cast did not contain a quarter as many people as the original, yet nothing important had been lost. Rewriting a play often is, and should be, a “slaughter of the innocents.” Don’t use unneeded people. You must provide them with dialogue, and as the play goes on, some justification for existence. The manager must pay them salaries. First of all, get rid of entirely unnecessary people. They usually hold over from the story as originally heard or read. For instance, a recent adaptation used from the original story a blinking dwarf sitting silent, forever watchful, at a table in the restaurant where the story was placed. His smile simply emphasized the cynicism of the story enacted in his sight. He was in no way necessary to the telling of the story,—and so he disappeared in the final form of the play. One is constantly tempted to bring in some figure for purposes of easy exposition only to find that one must either bind him in with the story as it develops, or drop him out of sight the moment his expository work is done. The trouble with such figures is that they are likely to give false clues, stirring a hearer to interest in them or their apparent relation to the story, when nothing is to come of one or the other. Usually a little patience and ingenuity will give this needed exposition to some character or characters essential to the plot. In a recent play of Breton life during the Chouan War, an attractive peasant boy was introduced in order to plant in the minds of the audience certain ideas as to immediate conditions of the war, and the relation of the woman to whom he is talking with the Prince, his leader. Wishing to show the devotion of the Prince’s followers, the author had the boy talk much of his own loyalty to his leader. Just there was the false clue. Every auditor expected his loyalty to lead to something later in the play; but the youth, having told his tale, disappeared for good. It took very little time to discover that all the young man told could perfectly well be made clear in one preceding scene between the woman and her son, and two of the other scenes immediately following, between the woman and the young Prince. It is these unnecessary figures who are largely responsible for the scenes already spoken of in chapter IV which clog the movement of a play.

Sometimes, too, similar figures at different places in a play do exactly or nearly the same work,—servants for instance. When it does not interfere with verisimilitude, give the tasks to one person rather than two, or two rather than three. That is, use only people absolutely needed. Sometimes these carelessly introduced figures stray through a play like an unquiet spirit. In The Road to Happiness one character, Porter, was of so little importance that most of the time, when on the stage, he had nothing to do. When really acting, it was largely in pantomime, or with speech that, not effectively, reiterated what some one else was saying. He existed really for two scenes. In the first act he might just as well have been talked about as shown, and in the second act what he did could well have been done by one of the other important characters. When any character in a play shows a tendency not to get into the action readily; when for long periods he is easily overlooked by the author; it is time to consider whether he should not be given the coup de grâce.