Lorenzo. My life!
Elvira. My soul! (They embrace.)
Dominic. I am taken on the sudden with a grievous swimming in my head and such a mist before my eyes that I can neither hear nor see.[9]
All the needed exposition given in Scene 1 could, with very little difficulty, be transferred to Scene 2. Were the two men to enter, not to Elvira, but by themselves, they could quickly make their relationship clear. The conduct and speech of Elvira could be made to illustrate what she now states in soliloquy just before the two men enter.
In the original last act[10] of Lillo’s George Barnwell, the settings are: “A room in a prison,” “A dungeon.” The whole act could easily have been arranged to take place in some room where prisoners could see friends. Today we should in many cases exchange a number of settings as used in eighteenth century plays for one setting.
Scenes, which in the original story occurred upstairs or downstairs, inside or outside a house, may often be easily interchanged or combined. The Clod, by Lewis Beach, a one-act success of the Washington Square Players, in its first draft showed a setting both upstairs and downstairs. This unsightly arrangement was quickly changed so that all the action took place in a lower room. At one time Bulwer-Lytton thought seriously of changing what is now Scene 1, Act I, of his Richelieu, an interior, to an exterior scene. To Macready he wrote:
Let me know what you mean about omitting altogether the scene at Marion de Lorme’s.
Do you mean to have no substitute for it?
What think you of merely the outside of the House? François, coming out with the packet and making brief use of Huguet and Mauprat [who figure in the interior scene]. Remember you wanted to have the packet absolutely given to François.[11]
Greek plays, because of the fixed backing, provide many illustrations of interior scenes brought outdoors: