(Thunder and lightning.)
O, soul, be chang’d into little water-drops,
And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found!
Enter Devils
My God, my God, look not so fierce on me!
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while!
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer!
I’ll burn my books!—Ah, Mephistophilis!
(Exeunt Devils with Faustus.)[11]
Though this scene doubtless requires physical action as the tortured Faustus flings himself about the stage, would that action be clear enough to move us greatly were it not for the characterization of the preceding scenes and the masterly phrasing which exactly reveals the tortured soul? Is it not a mental state rather than physical action which moves us here? Surely.
The fact is, the greatest drama of all time, and the larger part of the drama of the past twenty years, uses action much less for its own sake than to reveal mental states which are to rouse sympathy or repulsion in an audience. In brief, marked mental activity may be quite as dramatic as mere physical action. Hamlet may sit quietly by his fire as he speaks the soliloquy “To be, or not to be,” yet by what we already know of him and what the lines reveal we are moved to the deepest sympathy for his tortured state. There is almost no physical movement as Percinet reads to Sylvette from Romeo and Juliet in the opening pages of Rostand’s Romancers, yet we are amused and pleased by their excited delight.
ACT I
The stage is cut in two by an old wall, mossy and garlanded by luxurious vines. To the right, a corner of Bergamin’s park; to the left a corner of Pasquinot’s. On each side, against the wall, a bench.
SCENE 1. Sylvette. Percinet. When the curtain rises, Percinet is seated on the wall, with a book on his knees, from which he is reading to Sylvette. She stands on the bench in her father’s park, her chin in her hands, her elbows against the wall, listening attentively.