Mr. Henry Arthur Jones protests against complete disuse of the aside. “In discarding the ‘aside’ in modern drama we have thrown away a most valuable and, at times, a most necessary convention. Let any one glance at the ‘asides’ of Sir John Brute in The Provoked Wife, and he will see what a splendid instrument of rich comedy the ‘aside’ may become. How are we as spectators to know what one character on the stage thinks of the situation and of the other characters, unless he tells us; or unless he conveys it by facial play and gestures which are the equivalent of an ‘aside’? The ‘aside’ is therefore as legitimate a convention of drama as the removal of the fourth wall. More and more the English modern drama seems to be sacrificing everything to the mean ambition of presenting an exact photograph of real life.”[57]
Of course Mr. Jones is quite right in wishing to keep the aside for cases in which it is perfectly natural. His illustration of Sir John Brute is, however, not wholly fortunate, for his asides are not conventional but are characterizing touches. Surely we must all admit that a certain type of drunkard likes to mumble to himself insulting speeches which he hasn’t quite the courage to speak directly to other people, but rather hopes they may overhear. Study the asides of Sir John Brute—they are not very many after all—and note that practically every one might be said directly to the people on the stage. All of them help to present Sir John as the heavy drinker who talks to himself and selects for his speeches to himself his particularly insulting remarks.
Why, too, are “facial play and gestures” more objectionable than the conventional aside? The fundamental trouble with the aside which should not be overheard by people on the stage is that, if spoken naturally, it would be too low for the audience to hear, and if spoken loud enough to be heard, would so affect the other characters as to change materially the development of the scene. The aside should, therefore, be used with great care.
Congreve, writing of ordinary human speech said, “I believe if a poet should steal a dialogue of any length, from the extempore discourse of the two wittiest men upon earth, he would find the scene but coldly received by the town.”[58] In everyday speech, that is, we do not say our say in the most compact, characteristic, and entertaining fashion. To gain all that, we must use more concentration and selection than we give to ordinary human intercourse. Just that concentration of attention, which produces needed selection, a dramatist must give his dialogue. To this concentration and selection he is forced by the time difficulty already explained. Into the period sometimes consumed by a single bit of gossiping, perhaps shot through with occasional flashes of wit, but more probably dull,—into the space of two hours and a quarter,—the dramatist must crowd all the happenings, the growth of his characters, and the close reasoning of his play. Dramatic dialogue is human speech so wisely edited for use under the conditions of the stage that far more quickly than under ordinary circumstances the events are presented, in character, and perhaps in a phrasing delightful of itself.
Picking just the right words to convey with gesture, voice and the other stage aids of dialogue the emotions of the characters is so exacting a task that many a writer tries to dodge it. He thinks that by prefacing nearly every speech with “Tenderly,” “Sarcastically,” “With much humor,” in other words a statement as to how his lines should be read, commonplace phrasings may be made to pass for the right emotional currency. This is a lazy trick of putting off on the actor what would be the delight of the writer if he really cared for his work and knew what he wished to say. Of course, from time to time one needs such stage directions, but the safest way is to insist, in early drafts, on making the text convey the desired emotion without such statements. Otherwise a writer easily falls into writing unemotionalized speeches, the stage directions of which call upon the actor to provide the emotion.
A similar trick is to write incomplete sentences, usually ending with dashes. Though it is true, as Carlyle long ago pointed out, that a thought or a climax which a reader or hearer completes for himself is likely to give him special satisfaction, the device is easily overdone, and too often the uncompleted line means either that the author does not know exactly what he wishes to say, or that, though he knows, the hearer or reader may not complete the thought as he does. The worst of this last trick is that it may confuse the reader and, as was explained earlier in this chapter, clearness in gaining the desired effect is the chief essential in dialogue.
An allied difficulty comes from writing dialogue in blocks, the author forgetting, in the first place, that the other people on the stage are likely to interrupt and break up such speech, and secondly, that when several ideas are presented to an audience in the same speech, they are likely to confuse hearers. In these parallel passages from the two quartos of Hamlet, is not the right-hand column, with its mingling of rapidly exchanged speech and description, much more vivid and moving?
| Enter Ofelia; | Enter Ophelia. |
| Corambis. Farewel, how now Ofelia, what’s the news with you? Ofelia. O my deare father, such a change in nature, So great an alteration in a Prince, So pitifull to him, fearefull to mee, A maiden’s eye ne’re looked on. Corambis. Why, what’s the matter my Ofelia? Ofelia. O yong Prince Hamlet, the only floure of Denmark, Hee is bereft of all the wealth he had, The Jewell that adorn’d his feature most Is filcht and stolne away, his wit’s bereft him. | Polonius. Farewell. How now Ophelia, what’s the matter? Ophelia. O my Lord, my Lord, I have been so affrighted. Polonius. With what i’th name of God? Ophelia. My Lord, as I was sowing in my closset, Lord Hamlet with his doublet all unbrac’d, No hat upon his head, his stockins fouled, Ungartred, and downe gyved to his ancle, Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, And with a look so pittious in purport As if he had been loosed out of hell To speake of horrors, he comes before me. Polonius. Mad for thy love? Ophelia. My lord I doe not know, But truly I doe feare it. Polonius. What said he? Ophelia. He took me by the wrist, and held me hard, Then goes he to the length of all his arme, And with his other hand thus ore his brow, He falls to such perusall of my face As a would draw it.[59] |
Is it probable that in the following extract from A Soul’s Tragedy of Browning the deeply interested and excited audience would permit the first bystander to complete uninterrupted his third and very long speech? Are the phrasing and thought really his, or Robert Browning’s?
ACT II. Scene. The market place. Luitolfo in disguise mingling with the Populace assembled opposite the Provost’s Palace.