From all this it is a simple deduction that where legend (historic or otherwise) associates a particular character with a particular scene that is by any means presentable on the stage, that scene becomes obligatory in a drama of which he is the leading figure. The fact that Shakespeare could write a play about King John, and say nothing about Runnymede and Magna Charta, shows that that incident in constitutional history had not yet passed into popular legend. When Sir Herbert Tree revived the play, he repaired the poet's omission by means of an inserted tableau. Even Shakespeare had not the hardihood to let Caesar fall without saying, "The Ides of March are come" and "Et tu, Brute!" Nero is bound to fiddle while Rome burns, or the audience will know the reason why.[[84]] Historic criticism will not hear of the "Thou hast conquered, Galilean!" which legend attributes to Julian the Apostate; yet Ibsen not only makes him say it, but may almost be said to find in the phrase the keynote of his world-historic drama. Tristram and Iseult must drink a love-philtre or they are not Tristram and Iseult. It would be the extreme of paradox to write a Paolo-and-Francesca play and omit the scene of "Quel giorno più non vi leggemmo avante."
The cases are not very frequent, however, in which an individual incident is thus imposed by history or legend. The practical point to be noted is rather that, when an author introduces a strongly-marked historical character, he must be prepared to give him at least one good opportunity of acting up to the character which legend--the best of evidence in the theatre--assigns to him. When such a personage is presented to us, it ought to be at his highest potency. We do not want to see--
"From Marlborough's eyes the tears of dotage flow,
And Swift expire, a driveller and a show."
If you deal with Napoleon, for instance, it is perfectly clear that he must dominate the stage. As soon as you bring in the name, the idea, of Napoleon Bonaparte, men have eyes and ears for nothing else; and they demand to see him, in a general way, acting up to their general conception of him. That was what Messrs. Lloyd Osbourne and Austin Strong forgot in their otherwise clever play, The Exile. It is useless to prove, historically, that at a given moment he was passive, supine, unconscious, while people around him were eagerly plotting his escape and restoration. That may have been so; but it is not what an audience wants to see. It wants to see Napoleon Napoleonizing. For anomalies and uncharacteristic episodes in Napoleon's career we must go to books; the playhouse is not the place for them. It is true that a dramatist like Mr. Bernard Shaw may, at his own risk and peril, set forth to give us a new reading of Caesar or of Napoleon, which may or may not be dramatically acceptable.[[85]] But this is not what Messrs. Osbourne and Strong tried to do. Their Napoleon was the Napoleon of tradition--only he failed to act "in a concatenation according."
There are a few figures in history--and Napoleon is one of them--which so thrill the imagination that their mere name can dominate the stage, better, perhaps, than their bodily presence. In L'Aiglon, by M. Rostand, Napoleon is in fact the hero, though he lies dead in his far-off island, under the Southern Cross. Another such figure is Abraham Lincoln. In James Herne's sadly underrated play, Griffith Davenport, we were always conscious of "Mr. Lincoln" in the background; and the act in which Governor Morton of Indiana brought the President's instructions to Davenport might fairly be called an obligatory scene, inasmuch as it gave us the requisite sense of personal nearness to the master-spirit, without involving any risk of belittlement through imperfections of representation. There is a popular melodrama, passing in Palestine under the Romans, throughout the course of which we constantly feel the influence of a strange new prophet, unseen but wonder-working, who, if I remember rightly, is personally presented to us only in a final tableau, wherein he appears riding into Jerusalem amid the hosannas of the multitude. The execution of Ben Hur is crude and commonplace, but the conception is by no means inartistic. Historical figures of the highest rank may perhaps be best adumbrated in this fashion, with or without one personal appearance, so brief that there shall be no danger of anti-climax.
The last paragraph reminds us that the accomplished playwright shows his accomplishment quite as much in his recognition and avoidance of the scène à ne pas faire as in his divination of the obligatory scene. There is always the chance that no one may miss a scene demanded by logic or psychology; but an audience knows too well when it has been bored or distressed by a superfluous, or inconsequent, or wantonly painful scene.
Some twenty years ago, in criticizing a play named Le Maître d'Armes, M. Sarcey took the authors gravely to task, in the name of "Aristotle and common sense," for following the modern and reprehensible tendency to present "slices of life" rather than constructed and developed dramas. Especially he reproached them with deliberately omitting the scène à faire. A young lady is seduced, he says, and, for the sake of her child, implores her betrayer to keep his promise of marriage. He renews the promise, without the slightest intention of fulfilling it, and goes on board his yacht in order to make his escape. She discovers his purpose and follows him on board the yacht. "What is the scene," asks M. Sarcey--here I translate literally--"which you expect, you, the public? It is the scene between the abandoned fair one and her seducer. The author may make it in a hundred ways, but make it he must!" Instead of which, the critic proceeds, we are fobbed off with a storm-scene, a rescue, and other sensational incidents, and hear no word of what passes between the villain and his victim. Here, I think, M. Sarcey is mistaken in his application of his pet principle. Words cannot express our unconcern as to what passes between the heroine and the villain on board the yacht--nay, more, our gratitude for being spared that painful and threadbare scene of recrimination. The plot demands, observe, that the villain shall not relent. We know quite well that he cannot, for if he did the play would fall to pieces. Why, then, should we expect or demand a sordid squabble which can lead to nothing? We--and by "we" I mean the public which relishes such plays--cannot possibly have any keen appetite for copious re-hashes of such very cold mutton as the appeals of the penitent heroine to the recalcitrant villain. And the moral seems to be that in this class of play--the drama, if one may call it so, of foregone character--the scène à faire is precisely the scene to be omitted.
In plays of a more ambitious class, skill is often shown by the indication, in place of the formal presentment, even of an important scene which the audience may, or might, have expected to witness in full. We have already noted such a case in The Wild Duck: Ibsen knew that what we really required to witness was not the actual process of Gregers's disclosure to Hialmar, but its effects. A small, but quite noticeable, example of a scene thus rightly left to the imagination occurred in Mr. Somerset Maugham's first play, A Man of Honour. In the first act, Jack Halliwell, his wife, and his sister-in-law call upon his friend Basil Kent. The sister-in-law, Hilda Murray, is a rich widow; and she and Kent presently go out on the balcony together and are lost to view. Then it appears, in a scene between the Halliwells, that they fully believe that Kent is in love with Mrs. Murray and is now proposing to her. But when the two re-enter from the balcony, it is evident from their mien that, whatever may have passed between them, they are not affianced lovers; and we presently learn that though Kent is in fact strongly attracted to Mrs. Murray, he considers himself bound in honour to marry a certain Jenny Bush, a Fleet Street barmaid, with whom he has become entangled. Many playwrights would, so to speak, have dotted the i's of the situation by giving us the scene between Kent and Mrs. Murray; but Mr. Maugham has done exactly right in leaving us to divine it. We know all that, at this point, we require to know of the relation between them; to have told us more would have been to anticipate and discount the course of events.
A more striking instance of a scene rightly placed behind the scenes occurs in M. de Curel's terrible drama Les Fossiles. I need not go into the singularly unpleasing details of the plot. Suffice it to say that a very peculiar condition of things exists in the family of the Duc de Chantemelle. It has been fully discussed in the second act between the Duke and his daughter Claire, who has been induced to accept it for the sake of the family name. But a person more immediately concerned is Robert de Chantemelle, the only son of the house--will he also accept it quietly? A nurse, whoù is acquainted with the black secret, misbehaves herself, and is to be packed off. As she is a violent woman, Robert insists on dismissing her himself, and leaves the room to do so. The rest of the family are sure that, in her rage, she will blurt out the whole story; and they wait, in breathless anxiety, for Robert's return. What follows need not be told: the point is that this scene--the scene of tense expectancy as to the result of a crisis which is taking place in another room of the same house--is really far more dramatic than the crisis itself would be. The audience already knows all that the angry virago can say to her master; and of course no discussion of the merits of the case is possible between these two. Therefore M. de Curel is conspicuously right in sparing us the scene of vulgar violence, and giving us the scene of far higher tension in which Robert's father, wife and sister expect his return, their apprehension deepening with every moment that he delays.