De Flores. Here’s a favour with a mischief now! I know
She had rather wear my pelt tanned in a pair
Of dancing pumps, than I should thrust my fingers
Into her sockets here.[19]
Here the dramatist makes repulsion clear by illustrative action so emotional that it moves us to keenest sympathy or dislike for the woman herself. Dramatically speaking, then, illustrative action is not merely something which illustrates an idea or character, but it must be an illustration mirroring emotion of the persons in the play or creating it in the observer.
What is the relation of illustrative action to dramatic situation? The first is the essence of the second. A dramatic episode presents an individual or group of individuals so moved as to stir an audience to responsive emotion. Illustrative action by each person in the group or by the group as a whole is basal. The glove incident in The Changeling concerns both Beatrice and De Flores. Hers is illustrative action when she shrinks from the glove his hand has touched. He shows it when kissing and amorously fondling the glove she has refused. Their illustrative actions make together the dramatic episode of the glove,—which is in turn a part of Scene 1 of the first act of the play. There are the divisions: play, act, scene, episode, and illustrative action. Just as sometimes the development of a single episode may make a scene, or there may be but one scene to an act, there are cases when an illustrative action is a dramatic episode. The ending of Act II of Ostrovsky’s Storm illustrates this.
Varvara, who has just gone out, has put into the hands of Catherine the key to a gate in the garden hedge. This Varvara has taken without the knowledge of her mother, who is the mother-in-law of Catherine. Just as Varvara goes, she has said that if she meets Catherine’s lover, Boris, she will tell him to come to the gate. Catherine, terrified, at first tries to refuse the key, but Varvara insists on leaving it with her.
Catherine. (Alone, the key in her hand.) Oh, what is she doing? What hasn’t she courage for? Ah, she is crazy—yes, crazy. Here is what will ruin me. That’s the truth! I must throw this key away, throw it far away, into the river, so that it may never be found again. It burns my hand like a hot coal. (Dreamily.) This is how we are ruined, people like me! Slavery, that isn’t a gay business for any one. How many ideas it puts into our heads. Another would be enchanted with what has happened to me, and would rush on full tilt. How can one act in that way without reflection, without reason? Misfortune comes so quickly, and afterward there is all the rest of one’s life in which to weep and torment oneself, and the slavery will be still more bitter. (Silence.) And how bitter it is, slavery! Oh, how bitter it is! Who would not suffer from it? And we other women suffer more than all the rest. Here am I at this moment battling with myself in vain, not seeing a ray of light, and I shan’t see one. The further I go, the worse it is. And here is this additional sin that I am going to take on my conscience. (She dreams a moment.) Were not my mother-in-law—she has broken me: it is she who has made me come to hate this house. I hate its very walls. (She looks pensively at the key.) Ought I to throw it away? Of course I ought. How did it get into my hands? To seduce me to my ruin. (Listening.) Some one is coming! My heart fails me. (She puts the key into her pocket.) No!—no one. Why was I so frightened? And I hid the key—Very well, that’s the way it is to be. It is clear that fate wills it. And after all, where is the sin in seeing him just once, if at a distance? And if I were even to talk with him a little, where would the harm be?—But my husband—Very well, it was he himself who didn’t forbid it! Perhaps I shall never have such another chance in all my life. Then I shall weep and say to myself, “You had a chance to see him and didn’t know how to take advantage of it.” What am I saying? Why lie to myself? I will die for it if necessary, but see him I will. Whom do I want to deceive here? Throw away the key? No, not for anything in the world. I keep it. Come what will, I will see Boris. Ah, if the night would only come more quickly!
Curtain.[20]
Sometimes, even a playwright of considerable experience, though his mind is full of dramatic material, finds his plotting at a standstill. The trouble is that he has not sifted his material by means of the purpose he has in mind. When he does, details of setting, bits of characterization or even characters as wholes, parts or all of a scene and many ideas good in themselves but not necessarily connected with his real subject, will drop out. Many plays of modern realism have been overloaded with details of setting, with figures, or even scenes really unessential. In a recent play of Breton life a prominent detail in the setting of a cave was the figurehead of a ship. Even if one missed noticing this striking detail, its presence was emphasized by the text. It turned out, however, that the figurehead had nothing to do with the story or its development, nor was it really needed for any special color it gave. It should, therefore, have been omitted. No fault is more common than the use of unnecessary figures. When Lady Gregory wrote her version of The Workhouse Ward, she wisely cut out the matron, the doorkeeper, and all the inmates except two. With three figures her play is a masterpiece. With five actors and voices from off stage, Dr. Hyde’s Gaelic version is not. A one-act play adapted from the Spanish showed some dozen or more individual parts and a mob of at least forty. Ultimately, on a small stage, the plot was done full justice with half that number of individual parts and the crowd reduced to twenty or less. An amusing play of mistaken identity had a delightful scene in which an aunt of the heroine is proposed to by a friend of her youth. In it, the dramatist, with admirable characterization, set forth the views on matrimony of many middle-aged women. Yet the whole scene had nothing whatever to do with the story of the heroine. Consequently it was ultimately dropped out. That dramatic ideas must be sifted was shown on page 75 in the play seemingly about architects’ draughtsmen.
Not even when a scene, a bit of dialogue or some other detail, is entirely in character may it always keep its position. Though a detail or episode must be in character before it is admitted, it can hold its position only if it is necessary for the purpose of the play. Time limits everything for the dramatist. The final curtain impending inevitably at the end of two hours and a half is the dramatist’s “sword of Damocles.” It reminds him that in a play, “whatever goes for nothing, goes for less than nothing” because it shuts out something which, in its place, might be effective. In Tennyson’s Becket is a fine scene, the washing of the beggars’ feet by the Archbishop.[21] It illustrates both customs of the time and a side of Becket’s character, yet it contained nothing absolutely necessary to the central purpose of the play. Consequently, as the play must be condensed for acting purposes, Sir Henry Irving cut out the whole scene.
This time limit forces the dramatist, when choosing between two episodes of equal value otherwise, to select that which does more in less space, or to combine desirable parts of the two episodes when possible. In Tennyson’s Becket, Scene 1 of Act II and Scene 1 of Act III take place in Rosamund’s Bower. Henry and Rosamund are the principal speakers in both. There is, too, no marked lapse of time between the scenes, though Tennyson chose to separate them by the “Meeting of the Kings” at Montmirail. Very naturally, therefore, when condensation was necessary, Irving by severe cutting brought these two scenes together as Act II of his version. He not only saved time; he gained in unity of effect. Similarly, Irving brings together the essential parts of Scene 2, Act II, the “Meeting of the Kings,” and Scene 3, Act III, “Traitor’s Meadow at Freteval,” making them the first scene of the third act in his version.
A cluttered play is always a bad play. Such clutter usually comes from including details of setting, characterization or idea, and even whole characters or scenes, not really necessary. Selection with one’s purpose clearly in mind is the remedy for such clutter.