There is an A-B-C for the apprentice playwright to learn as there is for the child at school, and if he never learns it, he will not be a proficient workman. I acknowledge this simile is a little old-fashioned for the modern kindergarten child is taught nowadays to grunt strange sounds instead of mastering his or her A-B-C; the scientific teacher being I suppose, under a delusion that English is a phonetic language like my own native Welsh. But when the educational slush has subsided a little, we shall begin again with the A-B-C in our study of the English tongue, just as our playwrights will go back to the simple elementary rules of their interesting craft.
When Shakespeare wrote of the players that “they have their exits and their entrances,” he wrote what was strictly true of his own plays, for he took care to provide them with exits and entrances as any honest playwright should. And to explain briefly what I mean by the simple rules of the craft, let us consider for a moment the subject of “entrances.” It does not, nor need it, enter into the head of the playgoer that his convenience is consulted by the playwright on the matter of the entrances of the characters. The critic generally misses the best “entrances” if any, and makes his own exit with the programme as a book of reference before the players’ exits are completed. He has a soul above these matters. But Shakespeare knew that an actor wanted—and rightly wanted both an exit and an entrance and would not be happy unless he got them. These matters had to be thought out and designed, and in the matter of entrances, Shakespeare seems to have learned a very simple little truth, namely, that from a playwright’s point of view, and equally from an audience’s point of view, it was not the slightest use for a player to be talking upon the stage unless the audience knew who he was. Open your Hamlet and see how the play begins:
Act I. Scene I. A Platform before the Castle.
Francisco at his post. Enter to him Bernardo.
Ber. Who’s there?
Fran. Nay, answer me; stand, and unfold yourself.
Ber. Long live the king!
Fran. Bernardo?
Ber. He.
Fran. You come most carefully upon your hour.