Act III
Lady Windermere. (Standing by the fireplace.) Why doesn’t he come? This waiting is horrible. He should be here. Why is he not here, to wake by passionate words some fire within me? I am cold—cold as a loveless thing. Arthur must have read my letter by this time. If he cared for me, he would have come after me, and have taken me back by force. But he doesn’t care. He’s entrammeled by this woman—fascinated by her—dominated by her. If a woman wants to hold a man, she has merely to appeal to what is worst in him. We make gods of men and they leave us. Others make brutes of them and they fawn and are faithful. How hideous life is!... Oh! it was mad of me to come here, horribly mad. And yet which is the worst, I wonder, to be at the mercy of a man who loves one, or the wife of a man who in one’s own house dishonors one? What woman knows? What woman in the whole world? But will he love me always, this man to whom I am giving my life? What do I bring him? Lips that have lost the note of joy, eyes that are blighted by tears, chill hands and icy heart. I bring him nothing. I must go back—no; I can’t go back, my letter has put me in their power— Arthur would not take me back! That fatal letter! No! Lord Darlington leaves England tomorrow. I will go with him—I have no choice. (Sits down for a few moments. Then starts up and puts on her cloak.) No, no! I will go back, let Arthur do with me what he pleases. I can’t wait here. It has been madness my coming. I must go at once. As for Lord Darlington—Oh! here he is! What shall I do? What can I say to him? Will he let me go away at all? I have heard that men are brutal, horrible.... Oh! (Hides her face in her hands.)
Enter Mrs. Erlynne, L.52 (Lady Windermere discovered at fireplace, L., crosses to chair, L. of C., takes cloak from chair, puts cloak on crossing to door U.L., stops, decides to stay, crosses to R. of D.C. Enter Mrs. Erlynne.)
Soliloquy when a character is left alone on the stage is a perfect illustration of the difference between permanent and ephemeral technique. As a device for easy exposition, it has been popular from the beginning of drama till recently. Now, though one may use it in a rough draft, a technique which is likely to become permanent in this respect forces us to go over this draft, cutting soliloquy to mere action and the few exclamations which the character might utter under the circumstances. Soliloquy has no such permanent place in technique as have preliminary exposition, suspense, and climax. Soliloquy, when other people are on the stage and known by the speaker to be listening is also absurd. It is because of this fact that the dramatic or psychologic monologue, the form taken by a very large portion of Browning’s voluminous poetry, breaks down if we attempt to stage it. “Some speaker is made to reveal his character, and, sometimes, by reflection, or directly, the character of some one else—to set forth some subtle and complex soul-mood, some supreme, all-determining movement or experience of a life, or, it may be, to ratiocinate subtly on some curious question of theology, morals, philosophy, or art. Now it is in strictly preserving the monologue character that obscurity often results. A monologue often begins with a startling abruptness, and the reader must read along some distance before he gathers what the beginning means. Take the monologue of Fra Lippo Lippi for example. The situation is necessarily left more or less unexplained. The poet says nothing in propria persona, and no reply is made to the speaker by the person or persons addressed. Sometimes a look, a gesture or a remark must be supposed on the part of the one addressed, which occasions a responsive remark. Sometimes a speaker imputes a question, and the reader is sometimes obliged to stop and consider whether a question is imputed by the speaker to the one he is addressing, or is a direct question of his own. This is often the case throughout The Ring and the Book.”53
Giuseppe Caponsacchi. Answer you, Sirs? Do I understand aright?
Have patience! In this sudden smoke from hell,—
So things disguise themselves,—I cannot see
My own hand held thus broad before my face
And know it again. Answer you? Then that means
Tell over twice what I, the first time, told
Six months ago: ’twas here, I do believe,
Fronting you same three in this very room,
I stood and told you: yet now no one laughs,
Who then... nay, dear my lords, but laugh you did,
As good as laugh, what in a judge we style
Laughter—no levity, nothing indecorous, lords!
Only,—I think I apprehend the mood:
There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
The pen’s pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
The titter stifled in the hollow palm
Which rubbed the eyebrow and caressed the nose,
When first I told my tale: they meant, you know,
“The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
Well, he can say no other than what he says.
We have been young, too,—come, there’s greater guilt!
Let him but decently disembroil himself,
Scramble from out the scrape nor move the mud,—
We solid ones may risk a finger-stretch!”
And now you sit as grave, stare as aghast
As if I were a phantom: now ’tis—“Friend,
Collect yourself!”—no laughing matter more—
“Counsel the Court in this extremity,
Tell us again!”—tell that, for telling which,
I got the jocular piece of punishment,
Was sent to lounge a little in the place
Whence now of a sudden here you summon me
To take the intelligence from just—your lips,
You, Judge Tommati, who then tittered most,—
That she I helped eight months since to escape
Her husband, is retaken by the same
Three days ago, if I have seized your sense.54
It may be true that when one reads a dramatic monologue, the changes in thought caused by some movement or look of an imagined hearer may seem sufficiently motivated. When, on the other hand, this monologue is staged, it becomes exceedingly unreal because we feel that the second person would not be silent but would interrupt with question or comment. More than this, unless the listening actor changes from pose to pose with rapid plasticity, he will become stiff in attitude, thus making us conscious of him when we should be listening to the speaker. Increasing the number of hearers does not relieve the situation, but merely increases the number of possible interrupters or of people who stand about the stage more and more stiffly. Soliloquy is, therefore, to be avoided except when it seems or can be made to seem perfectly natural. Monologue, acceptable perhaps to a reader, becomes well-nigh impossible on the stage.
The aside must be subjected to very nearly the same tests. In Two Loves and a Life of Tom Taylor and Charles Reade, Musgrave and his daughter, Anne, are opening letters surreptitiously. They come to the letter of William Hyde, which the girl opens with reluctance, crying,—
Ah, see, father, it is a blank!
Musgrave. A blank! Then it is as I thought!
Anne. How?
Musgrave. Here, girl!
(He takes the letter and holds it to the fire in the brazier.)
Anne. See! Letters become visible!
Musgrave. A stale trick. ’Tis done with lemon juice or milk, when folks would keep what they write from those who are in their secret. Politicians correspond so, Anne, and rebels.
Anne. But William Hyde is neither, father.
Musgrave. Of course not. Now then!
Anne. (Aside.) Thank Heaven! ’tis all about his calling!
Musgrave. Read! (Aside.) I have learned the key to their cypher, which I have copied from the priest’s letter.
Anne. (Reads.) “Dear Will, we have thine advices, and shall be at Lancaster Fair. All the smart fellows—”
Musgrave. (To himself.) Ah! Bardsea Hole—all the Jacobite gentlemen—good.
Anne. (Reads.) “By the time the grilse come ashore—”
Musgrave. (To himself.) Grilse? ammunition. Go on.
Anne. (Reads.) “Which shall be as you fix, on Tuesday the 16th, at ten of the clock, P.M. There is a bill against you and the old clothier, payable at Ulverstone today, drawn by the butcher. Look out and see that he does not nab either of you—”
Musgrave. (Aside.) The proclamation!
Anne. (Reads.) “For your friends assembled. John Trusty.”
Musgrave. From Townley. It is as I suspected.
(He starts up.)
Anne. Father!
Musgrave. I’m a made man, Anne. Give me joy—joy!55
In this once popular drama we have five asides close together, for of course “to himself” is the equivalent of an aside. All are bad, for in each case the other person on the stage must be supposed not to hear, and the aside is merely a device for telling us what the speaker is thinking. They vary in badness, however, for while Musgrave might well explain “grilse” to Anne as “ammunition,” he says, “I have learned the key to their cipher, which I have copied from the priest’s letter,” not as something which he is necessarily thinking at the time, but as something which the audience needs to know at this point. An aside is objectionable when a man speaks what he would be careful only to think, either because of the very nature of his thought or because somebody is near at hand who should not overhear. Asides should be kept for confidential remarks which may be made to some person standing near the speaker, but could not be heard by persons standing at a greater distance; and to what naturally breaks from us in a moment of irritation, terror, or other strong emotion. Asides of the first group, confidential remarks, gain much in naturalness if spoken in half tones. Nothing could be more preposterous than the old stage custom of coming down to the footlights to tell an audience in clear-cut tones confidences which must not be overheard by people close at hand on the stage. Asides which are only brief soliloquies are little better. Asides in which the speaker merely says to the audience what he might perfectly well say to the people on the stage are foolish unless the author wishes to make the point that the character has the habit of talking to himself. The following from Vanbrugh’s The Provoked Wife shows two entirely natural uses of the aside by Lady Brute, and one debatable use by Sir John.
ACT III. Scene opens. Sir John, Lady Brute, and Belinda rising from the Table
Sir John. Will it so, Mrs. Pert? Now I believe it will so increase it, (sitting and smoaking) I shall take my own House for a Papermill.
Lady Brute. (To Belinda aside.) Don’t let’s mind him; let him say what he will.
Sir John. (Aside.) A Woman’s Tongue a Cure for the Spleen—Oons—If a Man had got the Head-ach, they’d be for applying the same Remedy.
Lady Brute. You have done a great deal, Belinda, since yesterday.
Belinda. Yes, I have work’d very hard; how do you like it?
Lady Brute. O, ’tis the prettiest Fringe in the World. Well, Cousin, you have the happiest fancy. Prithee advise me about altering my Crimson Petticoat.
Sir John. A Pox o’ your Petticoat; here’s such a Prating, a Man can’t digest his own Thoughts for you.
Lady Brute. (Aside.) Don’t answer him.—Well, what do you advise me?
Belinda. Why really I would not alter it at all. Methinks ’tis very pretty as it is.56
Sir John’s aside, if addressed to the audience, is bad; if meant to illustrate his habit of grumbling to himself, it is permissible.
Mr. Henry Arthur Jones protests against complete disuse of the aside. “In discarding the ‘aside’ in modern drama we have thrown away a most valuable and, at times, a most necessary convention. Let any one glance at the ‘asides’ of Sir John Brute in The Provoked Wife, and he will see what a splendid instrument of rich comedy the ‘aside’ may become. How are we as spectators to know what one character on the stage thinks of the situation and of the other characters, unless he tells us; or unless he conveys it by facial play and gestures which are the equivalent of an ‘aside’? The ‘aside’ is therefore as legitimate a convention of drama as the removal of the fourth wall. More and more the English modern drama seems to be sacrificing everything to the mean ambition of presenting an exact photograph of real life.”57
Of course Mr. Jones is quite right in wishing to keep the aside for cases in which it is perfectly natural. His illustration of Sir John Brute is, however, not wholly fortunate, for his asides are not conventional but are characterizing touches. Surely we must all admit that a certain type of drunkard likes to mumble to himself insulting speeches which he hasn’t quite the courage to speak directly to other people, but rather hopes they may overhear. Study the asides of Sir John Brute—they are not very many after all—and note that practically every one might be said directly to the people on the stage. All of them help to present Sir John as the heavy drinker who talks to himself and selects for his speeches to himself his particularly insulting remarks.
Why, too, are “facial play and gestures” more objectionable than the conventional aside? The fundamental trouble with the aside which should not be overheard by people on the stage is that, if spoken naturally, it would be too low for the audience to hear, and if spoken loud enough to be heard, would so affect the other characters as to change materially the development of the scene. The aside should, therefore, be used with great care.
Congreve, writing of ordinary human speech said, “I believe if a poet should steal a dialogue of any length, from the extempore discourse of the two wittiest men upon earth, he would find the scene but coldly received by the town.”58 In everyday speech, that is, we do not say our say in the most compact, characteristic, and entertaining fashion. To gain all that, we must use more concentration and selection than we give to ordinary human intercourse. Just that concentration of attention, which produces needed selection, a dramatist must give his dialogue. To this concentration and selection he is forced by the time difficulty already explained. Into the period sometimes consumed by a single bit of gossiping, perhaps shot through with occasional flashes of wit, but more probably dull,—into the space of two hours and a quarter,—the dramatist must crowd all the happenings, the growth of his characters, and the close reasoning of his play. Dramatic dialogue is human speech so wisely edited for use under the conditions of the stage that far more quickly than under ordinary circumstances the events are presented, in character, and perhaps in a phrasing delightful of itself.
Picking just the right words to convey with gesture, voice and the other stage aids of dialogue the emotions of the characters is so exacting a task that many a writer tries to dodge it. He thinks that by prefacing nearly every speech with “Tenderly,” “Sarcastically,” “With much humor,” in other words a statement as to how his lines should be read, commonplace phrasings may be made to pass for the right emotional currency. This is a lazy trick of putting off on the actor what would be the delight of the writer if he really cared for his work and knew what he wished to say. Of course, from time to time one needs such stage directions, but the safest way is to insist, in early drafts, on making the text convey the desired emotion without such statements. Otherwise a writer easily falls into writing unemotionalized speeches, the stage directions of which call upon the actor to provide the emotion.
A similar trick is to write incomplete sentences, usually ending with dashes. Though it is true, as Carlyle long ago pointed out, that a thought or a climax which a reader or hearer completes for himself is likely to give him special satisfaction, the device is easily overdone, and too often the uncompleted line means either that the author does not know exactly what he wishes to say, or that, though he knows, the hearer or reader may not complete the thought as he does. The worst of this last trick is that it may confuse the reader and, as was explained earlier in this chapter, clearness in gaining the desired effect is the chief essential in dialogue.
An allied difficulty comes from writing dialogue in blocks, the author forgetting, in the first place, that the other people on the stage are likely to interrupt and break up such speech, and secondly, that when several ideas are presented to an audience in the same speech, they are likely to confuse hearers. In these parallel passages from the two quartos of Hamlet, is not the right-hand column, with its mingling of rapidly exchanged speech and description, much more vivid and moving?
Enter Ofelia; Enter Ophelia.
Corambis. Farewel, how now Ofelia, what’s the news with you?
Ofelia. O my deare father, such a change in nature,
So great an alteration in a Prince,
So pitifull to him, fearefull to mee,
A maiden’s eye ne’re looked on.
Corambis. Why, what’s the matter my Ofelia?
Ofelia. O yong Prince Hamlet, the only floure of Denmark,
Hee is bereft of all the wealth he had,
The Jewell that adorn’d his feature most
Is filcht and stolne away, his wit’s bereft him. Polonius. Farewell. How now Ophelia, what’s the matter?
Ophelia. O my Lord, my Lord, I have been so affrighted.
Polonius. With what i’th name of God?
Ophelia. My Lord, as I was sowing in my closset,
Lord Hamlet with his doublet all unbrac’d,
No hat upon his head, his stockins fouled,
Ungartred, and downe gyved to his ancle,
Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other,
And with a look so pittious in purport
As if he had been loosed out of hell
To speake of horrors, he comes before me.
Polonius. Mad for thy love?
Ophelia. My lord I doe not know,
But truly I doe feare it.
Polonius. What said he?
Ophelia. He took me by the wrist, and held me hard,
Then goes he to the length of all his arme,
And with his other hand thus ore his brow,
He falls to such perusall of my face
As a would draw it.59
Is it probable that in the following extract from A Soul’s Tragedy of Browning the deeply interested and excited audience would permit the first bystander to complete uninterrupted his third and very long speech? Are the phrasing and thought really his, or Robert Browning’s?
ACT II. Scene. The market place. Luitolfo in disguise mingling with the Populace assembled opposite the Provost’s Palace.
1st Bystander. (To Luitolfo.) You, a friend of Luitolfo’s? Then, your friend is vanished,—in all probability killed on the night that his patron the tyrannical Provost was loyally suppressed here, exactly a month ago, by our illustrious fellow-citizen, thrice-noble saviour, and new Provost that is like to be, this very morning,—Chiappino!
Luitolfo. (Aside.) (If I had not lent that man the money he wanted last spring, I should fear this bitterness was attributable to me.) Luitolfo is dead then, one may conclude?
3rd Bystander. Why, he had a house here, and a woman to whom he was affianced; and as they both pass naturally to the new Provost, his friend and heir...
Luitolfo. Ah, I suspected you of imposing upon me with your pleasantry! I know Chiappino better.
1st Bystander. (Our friend has the bile. After all, I do not dislike finding somebody vary a little this general gape of admiration at Chiappino’s glorious qualities.) Pray, how much may you know of what has taken place in Faenza since that memorable night?
Luitolfo. It is most to the purpose, that I know Chiappino to have been by profession a hater of that very office of Provost, you now charge him with proposing to accept.
1st Bystander. Sir, I’ll tell you. That night was indeed memorable. Up we rose, a mass of us, men, women, children; out fled the guards with the body of the tyrant; we were to defy the world; but, next gray morning, “What will Rome say?” began everybody. You know we are governed by Ravenna, which is governed by Rome. And quietly into the town, by the Ravenna road, comes on muleback a portly personage, Ogniben by name, with the quality of Pontifical Legate; trots briskly through the streets humming a “Cur fremuere gentes,” and makes directly for the Provost’s Palace—there it faces you. “One Messer Chiappino is your leader? I have known three-and-twenty leaders of revolts!” (laughing gently to himself)—”Give me the help of your arm from my mule to yonder steps under the pillar—So! And now, my revolters and good friend what do you want? The guards burst into Ravenna last night bearing your wounded Provost; and, having had a little talk with him, I take on myself to come and try appease the disorderliness, before Rome, hearing of it, resort to another method: ’tis I come, and not another, from a certain love I confess to, of composing differences. So, do you understand, you are about to experience this unheard-of tyranny from me, that there shall be no heading nor hanging, no confiscation nor exile: I insist on your simply pleasing yourselves. And, now, pray, what does please you? To live without any government at all? Or having decided for one, to see its minister murdered by the first of your body that chooses to find himself wronged, or disposed for reverting to first principles and a justice anterior to all institutions,—and so will you carry matters, that the rest of the world must at length unite and put down such a den of wild beasts? As for vengeance on what had just taken place,—once for all, the wounded man assures me that he cannot conjecture who struck him; and this so earnestly, that one may be sure he knows perfectly well what intimate acquaintance could find admission to speak with him late last evening. I come not for vengeance therefore, but from pure curiosity to hear what you will do next.” And thus he ran on, easily and volubly, till he seemed to arrive quite naturally at the praise of law, order, and paternal government by somebody from rather a distance. All our citizens were in the snare and about to be friends with so congenial an adviser; but that Chiappino suddenly stood forth, spoke out indignantly and set things right again.
Luitolfo. Do you see? I recognize him there!60
People who think ramblingly and not clearly must undoubtedly on the stage speak in similar fashion, but it is wise when possible to avoid stating two or three ideas in the same sentence, or developing two or three ideas in one long speech. An idea to a sentence, with the development of one thought in a speech, is a fairly safe principle, though not unalterable. For instance, the daughter of a widowed mother is facing the fact that if they are to stay in their meagre quarters she may have to ask this as a favor from her employer, Mr. Hollings. The mother, not knowing that he has pressed his attentions objectionably, does not understand the unwillingness of the girl to ask his help. In answer to her pleadings the girl cries, “Oh, I would do anything for you! Poor dear father! Mother, go to Mr. Hollings.” Here are three different trains of thought in one speech. The first exclamation is a direct answer to the mother’s preceding speech. For the audience there is no clearness of transition to the second exclamation, nor from it to the third. Cut the girl’s answer to the first sentence. Then the mother, seizing on the idea that her daughter is willing to do anything, urges her for this and that reason to see her employer, emphasizing the idea that, had the father lived, all their present sorrow would not exist. In this case the second exclamation falls into its proper place, as a natural reply of the girl to her mother. If, too, as the mother urges reason after reason for going to the employer for aid, the girl at last pleads, “Mother, you go to Mr. Hollings,” this sentence also falls into its proper place. It becomes the first sign of her yielding, for she is at last willing that some one should intercede with the man. When a writer finds himself skipping from idea to idea within a speech or a sentence, with transitions likely to be unclear for the audience, he should break what he has written into its component parts and let the other people on the stage, by their interruptions, queries, and comments, provide the connectives of speech and thought which will bind these ideas together properly. The following rearrangement by Miss Anglin of the original text of Lady Windermere’s Fan shows her correct feeling that ideas originally treated together should be separated. Lord Windermere’s reply is to the first sentence of Mrs. Erlynne’s speech. It is therefore much clearer to shift her two succeeding exclamations to her next speech.
| ORIGINAL | REVISION |
| Mrs. Erlynne. (C.) How do you do, again, Lord Windermere? How charming your sweet wife looks! Quite a picture! Lord Windermere. (In a low voice.) It was terribly rash of you to come! Mrs. Erlynne. (Smiling.) The wisest thing I ever did in my life. And, by the way, you must pay me a good deal of attention this evening.61 | Mrs. Erlynne. (C.) How do you do, again, Lord Windermere? Lord Windermere. (In a low voice.) It was terribly rash of you to come! Mrs. Erlynne. (Smiling.) The wisest thing I ever did in How charming your sweet wife looks! Quite a picture! And, by the way, you must pay me a good deal of attention this evening. |
Often dialogue which is clear sentence by sentence is, as a whole, somewhat confusing to an audience. Frequently a careful re-ordering of the parts of the speech, or of a group of speeches, will dispose of the trouble. Occasionally a playwright allows his ordering of his ideas to obscure the cue, or important idea. Undoubtedly the important word in what follows is “christenings,” but Chasuble runs on into various other matters before Jack speaks. Consequently a hearer is a little startled when Jack takes up the idea of christenings instead of anything following it.
Chasuble. In Paris! (Shakes his head.) I fear that hardly points to any very serious state of mind at the last. You would no doubt wish me to make some slight allusion to this tragic domestic affliction next Sunday. (Jack presses his hand convulsively.) My sermon on the meaning of the manna in the wilderness can be adapted to almost any occasion, joyful, or, as in the present case, distressing. (All sigh.) I have preached it at harvest celebrations, christenings, confirmations, on days of humiliation and festal days. The last time I delivered it was in the Cathedral, as a charity sermon on behalf of the Society for the Prevention of Discontent among the Upper Orders. The Bishop, who was present, was much struck by some of the analogies I drew.
Jack. Ah! That reminds me, you mentioned christenings I think, Dr. Chasuble? I suppose you know how to christen all right? (Dr. Chasuble looks astounded.) I mean, of course, you are continually christening, aren’t you?62
It is true that the last part of Chasuble’s speech illustrates his volubility, and that the way in which Jack picks up the idea, “christening,” shows that he is so absorbed in his purpose as to pay no attention to anything Chasuble says after “christenings.” Here, therefore, the method is probably justified, but ordinarily the end of one speech leads into the next, and when something which breaks the sequence stands between, it must prove its right to be there, or be postponed for later treatment, or be cut out altogether. What re-ordering will do for a dialogue which is uninteresting and somewhat confused was shown in the revising of the extract from the John Brown play (pp. 309-313). There is a brilliant instance, in Miss Anglin’s version of Lady Windermere’s Fan, of re-ordering such that a climax of interest develops from groups of somewhat independent sentences.
ORIGINAL REVISION
Lady Plymdale. My dear woman your husband has been dancing with! I should be quite jealous if I were you! Is she a great friend of yours?
Lady Windermere. No.
Lady Plymdale. Really? Good night, dear.
(Looks at Mr. Dumby, and exit.)
Dumby. Awful manners young
Cecil Graham. Ah! Hopper is one of Nature’s gentlemen, the worst type of gentleman I know.
Dumby. Sensible woman, Lady Windermere. Lots of wives would have objected to Mrs. Erlynne coming. But Lady Windermere has that uncommon thing called common sense.
Cecil Graham. And Windermere knows that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.
Dumby. Yes; dear Windermere is becoming almost modern. Never thought he would.
(Bows to Lady Windermere and exit.)
Lady Jedburgh. Good night, Lady Windermere. What a fascinating woman Mrs. Erlynne is! She is coming to lunch on Thursday. Won’t you come too? I expect the Bishop and dear Lady Merton.
Lady Windermere. I am afraid I am engaged, Lady Jedburgh.
Lady Jedburgh. So sorry. Come, dear.
(Exeunt Lady Jedburgh and Miss Graham.)
Enter Mrs. Erlynne and Lord Windermere.
Mrs. Erlynne. Charming ball it has been! Quite reminds me of old days.
(Sits on the sofa.)63 Dumby. Awful manners young Hopper has!
Cecil Graham. Ah! Hopper is one of Nature’s gentlemen, the worst type of gentleman I know.
Lady Jedburgh. What a fascinating woman Mrs. Erlynne is! She is coming to lunch on Thursday, won’t you come too? I expect the Bishop and dear Lady Merton.
Lady Windermere. I am afraid I am engaged, Lady Jedburgh.
Lady Jedburgh. So sorry. Good night. Come, dear.
(Exeunt Lady Jedburgh and Miss Graham.)
Dumby. Sensible woman, Lady Windermere. Lots of wives would have objected to Mrs. Erlynne coming. But Lady Windermere has that uncommon thing called common sense.
Cecil Graham. And Windermere knows that nothing looks so like innocence as an indiscretion.
Dumby. Yes; dear Windermere is becoming almost modern. Never thought he would.
Lady Plymdale. Dumby!
(Dumby bows to Lady Windermere and exit.)
Lady Plymdale. My dear Margaret, what a fascinating woman your husband has been dancing with! I should be quite jealous if I were you! Is she a great friend of yours?
Lady Windermere. No!
Lady Plymdale. Really? Good night, dear.
(Lady Plymdale exits.)
Enter Mrs. Erlynne and Lord Windermere.
Mrs. Erlynne. Charming ball it has been! Quite reminds me of old days.
(Sits on the sofa.)
Dialogue may be both clear and characterizing yet fail because it is difficult to speak. Too many writers, as has been said, do not hear their words but see them. Could any one who heard his words have penned the lines, “She says she’s sure she’ll have a shock if she sees him.” That time “apt alliteration” was so artful that, setting her trap, she caught a dramatist. Here is the amusing comment of a critic on an author’s protest that her lines have been misquoted and made to sound difficult to deliver:
In the review of the——Theatre’s opening bill there occurred a line purporting to come from Miss Blank’s psychic play, The Turtle. Miss Blank writes, “The line, which was either incorrectly spoken or heard, was not, ‘How does one know one is one’s self?’ but ‘How is one to know which is one’s real self when one feels so different with different people?’” Naturally the reviewer of a play is as open to mistakes in noting down lines as the actor is in speaking them, particularly if the author is much given to the “one-one-one” style of construction. If, however, Miss Blank prefers her own version of the sentence, she is welcome to it.
Of course each writer is perfectly sure that his own ear will keep him from errors of this kind, but even the greatest err. Did Shakespeare write the opening lines of Measure For Measure, he the master of exquisitely musical and perfectly chosen dramatic speech? Some scholars believe he did. If so, in that second speech of the Duke which wearies the jaws and tempts to every kind of slurring, Jove certainly nodded.
Enter Duke, Escalus, Lords and Attendants
Duke. Escalus!
Escalus. My lord.
Duke. Of government the properties to unfold,
Would seem in me to affect speech and discourse,
Since I am put to know that your own science
Exceeds, in that, the lists of all advice
My strength can give you: then no more remains,
But that, to your sufficiency...
... as your worth is able,
And let them work.
Are the following straight translations from the old French farce, Pierre Patelin,64 as easy to speak as the revisions?
| TRANSLATION | REVISION |
| Guillemette. And don’t forget your dram, if you can come by it for nothing. | Guillemette. And if any one offers to stand treat, don’t refuse. |
| ····· | ····· |
| (Patelin is trying to cheat the Draper out of a piece of cloth.) Patelin. I don’t care: give me my money’s worth. (Whispering in the Draper’s ear.) I know of another coin or two nobody ever got a smell of. Draper. Now you’re talking! That would be capital. Patelin. In a word, I am hot for this piece, and have some I must. | (Patelin is trying to cheat the Draper out of a piece of cloth.) Patelin. I don’t care: give me my money’s worth. (Whispering in the Draper’s ear.) I know of some chink— Draper. Now you’re talking! Patelin. (Letting his hand fall on the goods.) This! |
The first revision certainly gives lines easier to speak. The writer of the second revision hears it and knows the gesture, facial expression, and intonation which must go with “This!” Dialogue which is perfectly clear and characterizing should not be allowed to pass in the final revision if at any point it is unnecessarily difficult to deliver.
From the preceding discussion it must be clear that the three essentials of dialogue are clearness, helping the onward movement of the story, and doing all this in character. Dialogue is, naturally, still better if it possesses charm, grace, wit, irony, or beauty of its own. Dialogue which merely states the facts is, as we have seen, likely to be dull or commonplace. Well characterized dialogue still falls short of all dialogue may be if it has none of the attributes just mentioned. Feeling this strongly, the dramatists throughout the ages have striven to give their dialogue attractiveness because of its style, forgetting that above all for the dramatist it is true that “style is the man,” and that “style is a thinking out into language.” Lyly, Shakespeare, in some of the scenes of his early plays, Kyd in The Spanish Tragedy, John Dryden in his Heroic Drama, Cibber and Lillo in their rhythmic prose which often might be perfectly well printed as blank verse, strove to decorate their dialogue from without—something sure to fail, either with the immediate audience or with posterity. If the charm, the grace, the wit, the irony of the dialogue does not come from the characters speaking, that dialogue fails in what has been shown to be one of its chief essentials, right characterization. Congreve emphasized this in that classic of dramatic criticism, his letter Concerning Humour in Comedy.65 “A character of a splenetic and peevish humour should have a satirical wit. A jolly and sanguine humour should have a facetious wit. The former should speak positively; the latter, carelessly: for the former observes and shows things as they are; the latter rather overlooks nature, and speaks things as he would have them; and his wit and humour have both of them a less alloy of judgment than the others.” Undoubtedly, however, the dramatist may do much in helping a character to reveal these qualities, particularly beauty of thought or phrasing. It is a conventional use supposed to make for beauty which The Rehearsal ridicules in the following scene, for at nearly all crises the Heroic Drama rested on a simile for its strongest effect.
Prettyman. How strange a captive am I grown of late!
Shall I accuse my love or blame my fate?
My love I cannot; that is too divine:
And against fate what mortal dares repine?
Enter Chloris
But here she comes.
Sure ’tis some blazing comet! is it not? (Lies down.)
Bayes. Blazing comet! Mark that; egad, very fine.
Prettyman. But I am so surpris’d with sleep, I cannot speak the rest. (Sleeps.)
Bayes. Does not that, now, surprise you, to fall asleep in the nick? His spirits exhale with the heat of his passion, and all that, and, swop, he falls asleep, as you see. Now, here she must make a simile.
Smith. Where’s the necessity of that, Mr. Bayes?
Bayes. Because she’s surprised. That’s a general rule; you must ever make a simile when you’re surprised; ’tis the new way of writing.
Chloris. As some tall pine which we on Ætna find
T’ have stood the rage of many a boist’rous wind,
Feeling without that flames within do play,
Which would consume his root and sap away;
He spreads his worsted arms unto the skies:
Silently grieves, all pale, repines, and dies:
So, shrouded up, your bright eye disappears.
Break forth, bright scorching sun, and dry my tears.
(Exit.)
John. Mr. Bayes, methinks this simile wants a little application, too.
Bayes. No faith; for it alludes to passion, to consuming, to dying, and all that, which, you know, are the natural effects of an amour.
(Act II, sc. 3.)66
Why is it that the citation from Shakespeare in the left-hand column is less satisfactory than that in the right-hand?
York. To do that office of thine own good will
Which tired majesty did make thee offer,
The resignation of thy state and crown
To Henry Bolingbroke.
King Richard. Give me the crown.—Here cousin, seize the crown;
Here, cousin,
On this side my hand, and on that side thine.
Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen, and full of water.
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high,
Bolingbroke. I thought you had been willing to resign.
King Richard. My crown I am; but still my griefs are mine.
You may my glories and my state depose,
But not my griefs; still I am king of those.67 Viola. If I did love you in my master’s flame,
With such a suffering, such a deadly life,
In your denial I would find no sense,
I would not understand it.
Olivia. Why, what would you?
Viola. Make me a willow cabin at your gate,
And call upon my soul within the house;
Write loyal cantons of contemned love
And sing them loud even in the dead of night;
Halloo your name to the reverberate hills
And make the babbling gossip of the air
Cry out “Olivia!” O, you should not rest
Between the elements of air and earth,
But should pity me!
Olivia. You might do much68
The second extract is the more effective because the onward sweep of the emotion of the scene reveals beauty as it moves, but the first shows King Richard checking the course of his natural emotion in order suavely and perfectly to develop his comparison. Of course there is beauty in the first extract, but it is not genuine dramatic beauty. Why does one find the following passage from The Importance of Being Earnest (Act I), delightful as it is, less fine than the passage from The Way of the World (Act II, Scene 5)?
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
Lady Bracknell. (Sitting down.) You can take a seat, Mr. Worthing.
(Looks in her pocket for notebook and pencil.)
Jack. Thank you, Lady Bracknell, I prefer standing.
Lady Bracknell. (Pencil and notebook in hand.) I feel bound to tell you that you are not down on my list of eligible young men, although I have the same list as the dear Duchess of Bolton has. We work together, in fact. However, I am quite ready to enter your name, should your answers be what a really affectionate mother requires. Do you smoke?
Jack. Well, yes, I must admit I smoke.
Lady Bracknell. I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind. There are far too many idle men in London as it is. How old are you?
Jack. Twenty-nine.
Lady Bracknell. A very good age to be married at. I have always been of opinion that a man who desires to get married should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?
Jack. (After some hesitation.) I know nothing, Lady Bracknell.
Lady Bracknell. I am pleased to hear it. I do not approve of anything that tempers with natural ignorance. Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone. The whole theory of modern education is radically unsound. Fortunately in England, at any rate, education produces no effect whatsoever. If it did, it would prove a serious danger to the upper classes, and probably lead to acts of violence in Grosvenor Square. What is your income?
Jack. Between seven and eight thousand a year.
Lady Bracknell. (Makes a note in her book.) In land or investments?
Jack. In investments, chiefly.
Lady Bracknell. That is satisfactory. What between the duties expected of one during one’s lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one’s death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position and prevents one from keeping it up. That’s all that can be said about land.
Jack. I have a country house with some land, of course, attached to it, about fifteen hundred acres, I believe; but I don’t depend on that for my income. In fact, as far as I can make out, the poachers are the only people who are making anything out of it.
Lady Bracknell. A country house! How many bedrooms? Well, that point can be cleared up afterwards. You have a town house, I hope? A girl with a simple unspoiled nature, like Gwendolen, could hardly be expected to reside in the country.
Jack. Well, I own a house in Belgrave Square, but it is let by the year to Lady Bloxham. Of course, I can get it back whenever I like, at six months’ notice.
Lady Bracknell. Lady Bloxham? I don’t know her.
Jack. Oh, she goes about very little. She is a lady considerably advanced in years.
Lady Bracknell. Ah, nowadays that is no guarantee of respectability of character. What number in Belgrave Square?
Jack. 149.
Lady Bracknell. (Shaking her head.) The unfashionable side. I thought there was something. However, that could easily be altered.
Jack. Do you mean the fashion or the side?
Lady Bracknell. (Sternly.) Both, if necessary, I presume. What are your politics?
Jack. Well, I’m afraid I really have none. I am a Liberal Unionist.
Lady Bracknell. Oh, they count as Tories. They dine with us. Or come in the evening, at any rate. Now to minor matters. Are your parents living?
Jack. I have lost both my parents.
Lady Bracknell. Both?—That seems like carelessness. Who was your father? He was evidently a man of some wealth. Was he born in what the Radical papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the aristocracy?
Jack. I’m afraid I really don’t know. The fact is, Lady Bracknell, I said I had lost my parents. It would be nearer the truth to say that my parents seem to have lost me—I don’t actually know who I am by birth. I was—well, I was found.
Lady Bracknell. Found!
Jack. The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentleman of a very charitable and kindly disposition, found me and gave me the name of Worthing, because he happened to have a first-class ticket for Worthing at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. It is a seaside resort.
Lady Bracknell. Where did the gentleman who had a first-class ticket for this seaside resort find you?
Jack. (Gravely.) In a hand-bag.
Lady Bracknell. A hand-bag!
Jack. (Very seriously.) Yes, Lady Bracknell. I was in a hand-bag—a somewhat large, black leather hand-bag, with handles to it—an ordinary hand-bag in fact.
Lady Bracknell. In what locality did this Mr. James, or Thomas, Cardew come across this ordinary hand-bag?
Jack. In the cloak-room at the Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own.
Lady Bracknell. The cloak-room at Victoria Station?
Jack. Yes, the Brighton line.
Lady Bracknell. The line is immaterial. Mr. Worthing, I confess I feel somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me. To be born, or at any rate, bred in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that remind one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to? As for the particular locality in which the hand-bag was found, a cloak-room at a railway station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion—has probably, indeed, been used for that purpose before now—but it could hardly be regarded as an assured basis for a recognized position in good society.
Jack. May I ask you then what you would advise me to do? I need hardly say I would do anything in the world to ensure Gwendolen’s happiness.
Lady Bracknell. I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over.
Jack. Well, I don’t see how I could possibly manage to do that. I can produce the hand-bag at any moment. It is in my dressing-room at home. I really think that should satisfy you, Lady Bracknell.
Lady Bracknell. Me, sir! What has it to do with me? You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter—a girl brought up with the utmost care—to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? Good morning, Mr. Worthing!