| Mary. Alas! for my sweet son, I say, That dolefully to deed thus is dight, Alas! for full lovely thou lay In my womb, this worthely wight Alas! that I should see this sight Of my son so seemly to see, Alas! that this blossom so bright Untruly is tugged to this tree, Alas! My lord, my life, With full great grief, Hanges as a thief, Alas! he did never trespass.[6] | Mary, O my son, my son! my darling dear! What have I defended [offended] thee? Thou hast spoke to all of those that be here, And not a word thou speakest to me. To the Jews thou art full kind, Thou hast forgiven all here misdeed; And the thief thou hast in mind, For once asking mercy heaven is his meed. Ah! my sovereign lord, why wilt thou not speak To me that am thy mother in pain for thy wrong? Ah, heart, heart why wilt thou not break? That I were out of this sorrow so strong![7] |
The writer of the Hegge speech had discovered long before Ralph Waldo Emerson that the secret of good dialogue is “truth carried alive into the heart by passion.” The second requisite, then, of good dialogue is that it must be kindled by feeling, made alive by the emotion of the speaker. For the would-be dramatist the secret is so to know his characters that facts are not mere facts, but conditions moving him because they move the characters he perfectly understands. As he interprets between character and audience, he must be like Planchette or the clairvoyant, the creature of another’s will, whose ideas and emotions rather than his own he tries with all the power that is in him to convey. In brief, then, though it is absolutely necessary that dialogue give the facts as to what happens, who the people are, their relations to one another, etc., it is better dialogue if, while doing all this, it seems to be busied only with characterization.
Unassigned dialogue usually makes a reader or hearer promptly recognize his preference for characterized rather than uncharacterized speech. When a group, as in many stage mobs, speaks in chorus, or at best in sections, the result is unreality for many hearers and absurdity for the more critical. Every hearer knows that people do not really, when part of a mob, say absolutely the same thing, and rarely speak in perfect unison. Common sense cries out for individualization among the possible speakers. When we read the following extract from Andreiev’s Life of Man, we may agree with what is apparently the author’s idea, that it makes no difference which one of the speakers delivers a particular line or sentence; but the moment the scene is staged everything changes.
A profound darkness within which nothing moves. Then there can be dimly perceived the outlines of a large, high room and the grey silhouettes of Old Women in strange garments who resemble a troop of grey, hiding mice. In low voices and with laughter to and fro the Old Women converse.
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When they sent him to the drug store for some medicine he rode up and down past the store for two hours and could not remember what he wanted. So he came back.
(Subdued laughter. The crying again becomes louder and then dies away. Silence.)
What has happened to her? Perhaps she is already dead.
No, in that case we should hear weeping. The doctor would run out and begin to talk nonsense, and they would bring out her husband unconscious, and we should have our hands full. No, she is not dead.
Then why are we sitting here?