The living one’s.... And we?
(A ghostly breathing of laughter and sighing.)
The First
Man’s greatest victory ...
Curtain[9]
Staging this, several facts will confront us. We certainly shall not let different actors of the group speak different lines on successive nights. That is, each supernumerary will be given one speech or more. If certain speeches seem to belong together, they will be given to one actor, and characterization will emerge as he speaks his lines. Unquestionably, too, if speeches which seem in themselves uncharacterizing are given to marked physical types, such as stout, very thin, very tall, or very short people, persons of markedly quick or slow physical movement, some of the speeches may seem unfitting. Rarely, then, is there any value in the unassigned speech. It may pass in the reading, as has been admitted, but the public prefers the assigned speech, and still more the speech so characterized that it must be assigned. Compare this passage from Julius Cæsar with its assignments to the First, the Second, the Third, and the Fourth Plebeian with the passage from Andreiev’s play. Can there be any question that Shakespeare’s assigned speeches are somehow clearer, more dramatic?
SCENE III. A Street
Enter Cinna the poet, and after him the Plebeians
Cinna. I dreamt tonight that I did feast with Cæsar,
And things unluckily charge my fantasy.
I have no will to wander forth of doors.
Yet something leads me forth.