Musgrave. (Aside.) The proclamation!
Anne. (Reads.) “For your friends assembled. John Trusty.”
Musgrave. From Townley. It is as I suspected.
(He starts up.)
Anne. Father!
Musgrave. I’m a made man, Anne. Give me joy—joy![55]
In this once popular drama we have five asides close together, for of course “to himself” is the equivalent of an aside. All are bad, for in each case the other person on the stage must be supposed not to hear, and the aside is merely a device for telling us what the speaker is thinking. They vary in badness, however, for while Musgrave might well explain “grilse” to Anne as “ammunition,” he says, “I have learned the key to their cipher, which I have copied from the priest’s letter,” not as something which he is necessarily thinking at the time, but as something which the audience needs to know at this point. An aside is objectionable when a man speaks what he would be careful only to think, either because of the very nature of his thought or because somebody is near at hand who should not overhear. Asides should be kept for confidential remarks which may be made to some person standing near the speaker, but could not be heard by persons standing at a greater distance; and to what naturally breaks from us in a moment of irritation, terror, or other strong emotion. Asides of the first group, confidential remarks, gain much in naturalness if spoken in half tones. Nothing could be more preposterous than the old stage custom of coming down to the footlights to tell an audience in clear-cut tones confidences which must not be overheard by people close at hand on the stage. Asides which are only brief soliloquies are little better. Asides in which the speaker merely says to the audience what he might perfectly well say to the people on the stage are foolish unless the author wishes to make the point that the character has the habit of talking to himself. The following from Vanbrugh’s The Provoked Wife shows two entirely natural uses of the aside by Lady Brute, and one debatable use by Sir John.
ACT III. Scene opens. Sir John, Lady Brute, and Belinda rising from the Table