Chapter XVIII: Act III: , "Traitor's Meadow at Freteval." It is, indeed, often necessary

to transfer a group of people from the exact setting in which an occurrence took place to another which makes possible other important action. In Haraucourt's adaptation of _Les Oberle_, a dinner party at the Brausigs' is transferred to the home of Jean Oberle, with his father and mother as hosts. This change permits the adapter to follow the dinner party with episodes which must take place in Jean's home. This group of changes concerns, obviously, bringing to one place events which happened to the same persons at another place, and even at another time.

Sometimes necessary condensation forces a dramatist to bring together at one place what really happened at the same time, but to other people in another place. For instance, the heroine of the play is concealing in the house her Jacobite brother, supposed by the people who have seen him to be the Pretender himself. The Whig soldiery come to search the house. Sitting at the spinet, the girl makes her brother crouch between her and the wall, folding her ample gown around and over him. Then, as the officer and his men minutely search the room, she plays, apparently idly song after song of the day. Just at this time, but at a distance, her lover, a young Whig officer, is eating his heart out with jealousy, because he fears that she is concealing the Pretender through love of him. Why waste time on a separate scene for the lover? Make him the officer in command of the searching troop: then all that is vital in what was his scene can be brought out when what happened to the same people at the same time, but at different places, is made to happen at the same place.

Similarly, what happened to two people in the same place but at different times may sometimes, with ingenuity, be made to happen to one person, and thus time saved.

Finally, what happened to another person at another time, and at another place may at times be arranged so that it will happen to any desired figure. About midway in the novel _Les Oberle_, Jean and his uncle Ulrich hear the women at the autumn grape-picking sing the song of Alsace. In the play, in the first scene, Jean sings it as he passes from the railway station to his house.[13] Shakespeare, in handling the original sources of _Macbeth_, also illustrates successful combination around one person of incidents or details historically associated with other persons, times, and even places.

Most of the story is taken from Holinshed's account [in the _Historie
of Scotland_] of the reigns of Duncan and Macbeth (A.D. 1034-1057),
but certain details are drawn from other parts of the chronicle. Thus
several points in the assassination of Duncan, like the drugging of
the grooms by Lady Macbeth, and the portents described in II, iv., are
from the murder of Duncan's ancestor Duffe (A.D. 972); and the voice
that called "Sleep no more!" seems to have been suggested by the
troubled conscience of Duffe's brother Kenneth, who had poisoned his
own nephew.[14]

Marlowe, in his _Edward II_,--a dramatization of a part of Holinshed's _History_,--proves that he perfectly understood all these devices for compacting his material.

The action covers a period of twenty years, from 1307, when Gaveston
was recalled, to the death of Edward in 1327. Marlowe's treatment of
the story shows a selection and transposing of events in order to
bring out the one essential fact of the King's utter incompetence and
subjection to unworthy favorites. Gaveston was executed in 1312, and
the troubles in Ireland (II, ii.) and in Scotland (II, ii.) occurred
after his death, but Marlowe shifts both forward in point of time in
order to connect them with Gaveston's baleful influence. Warwick died
in his bed in 1315, seven years before the battle of Boroughbridge,
but Marlowe keeps him alive to have him captured and ordered to
execution in retaliation for his killing of Gaveston. At the time the
play opens the Earl of Kent was six years old, but Marlowe, needing a
counsellor and supporter of the King, used Kent for the purpose. In
the play young Spencer immediately succeeds Gaveston as the King's
favorite; really the young Hugh le Despenser, who had been an enemy of
Gaveston, remained an opponent of Edward's for some six years after
Gaveston's death. Historically the Mortimers belong with the Spencers,
i.e. to the later part of the reign, but in order to motivate the
affair between the Queen and young Mortimer Marlowe transfers them to
the beginning of the play and makes them leaders in the barons'
councils.[15]

The essential point in all this compacting is: when cumbered with more scenes than you wish to use, determine first which scenes contain indispensable action, and must be kept as settings; then consider which of the other scenes may by ingenuity be combined with them.

Evidently a dramatist must develop great ingenuity and skill in so re-working scenes originally conceived as occurring in widely separated places and times that they may be acted in a single set. As has been said, the audience of the public theatres in Shakespeare's day imaginatively shifted the scene at any hint from text, stage properties, or even signs. With the Restoration came elaborate scenery, a gift from earlier performances at the English court and from the continental theatres which the English nobility had attended in their exile. By means of the "drawn scene" dramatists now changed rapidly from place to place. In _The Spanish Friar_, Scene 1 of Act II is "The Queen's ante-chamber." For Scene 2, "The scene draws, and shows the Queen sitting in state; Bertram standing next her; then Teresa, etc." These drawn scenes held the stage until very recently. Painted on flats which could be pulled off stage from left and right, these scenes could not be "drawn" without hurting theatrical illusion. If moved in any light, all illusion departed; if changed in darkness, but not instantaneously, they interfered with illusion. To overcome these objections there have been many inventions in recent years--Revolving, Wagon, Sinking Stages.[16] Undoubtedly, these make changes of scene within the act well-nigh unobjectionable. The difficulty with them is that most are elaborate and expensive, and therefore exist in only a few theatres. It is, consequently, useless to stage a play with them in mind, for on the road it will not find the conditions of production essential to its success. Occasionally, as in _On Trial_, some simple, easily portable device makes these very quick changes possible even on the road. At present, though invention tries steadily to make change of scene so swift as to be unobjectionable, it is wiser to keep to one setting to an act, unless the play will greatly suffer by so doing, or the change is one which may be made almost instantaneously when the lights are lowered or the curtain dropped.

On the other hand, recently dramatists have rather overdone reducing possible settings to the minimum. While a change of setting within the act always demands justification, forcing a play of three to five acts into one or two settings when, at a trifling additional cost, a pleasing variety to the eye and a change of place helpful to the dramatist might have been provided, is undesirable. Lately there have been signs that our audiences are growing weary of plays of only one set, especially when they suspect the play has been thus arranged by skill, rather than necessity. Certainly, the newer group of dramatists permit themselves changes of scene even within the act. Act II of _The Silver Box_,[17] by Galsworthy, shows as Scene 1, "The Jones's lodgings, Merthyr Street"; as Scene 2, "The Barthwicks' dining-room." In _Hindle Wakes_,[18] by Stanley Houghton, Scene 1, Act I, is the "Kitchen of the _Hawthorns'_ house"; Scene 2 is the "Breakfast room of the _Jeffcotes'_ house." To the preliminary statement of scenes the dramatist appended words which hint the underlying danger in all changes of setting,--disillusioning waits:

Note.--The scene for Act I, Scene 1, should be very small, as a
contrast to the room at the Jeffcotes'. It might well be set inside
the other scene so as to facilitate the quick change between Scenes 1
and 2, Act I.

All things considered, it is probably best to repeat the statement already made: a change of scene within the act is desirable only when absolutely necessary; a change of scene with each act is desirable, except when truth to life, expense, or undue time required for setting it forbid.

What exactly does this constantly repeated word "Scene" mean? In English theatrical usage today, and increasingly the world over, it signifies: "a change of setting." All that happens from one change of set to another change makes a scene. French usage, based on the Latin, till very recently always marked off a scene when any person more important than a servant or attendant entered or left the stage. For instance, in _Les Petits Oiseaux_ of Labiche, known in English as _A Pair of Spectacles_, four consecutive scenes in Act I, which throughout has no change of setting read thus:

SCENE 4. _Blandinet, Henriette, Leonce, then Joseph [a servant]._

A scene of some fourteen brief speeches follows, when:

(_They start to go out, Tiburce appears._)

SCENE 5. _The same persons, Tiburce_

After a scene of eleven short speeches,

(_Blandinet goes over to left with Leonce._)

SCENE 6. _Henriette, Tiburce_

_Henriette, who sat down after the entrance of Tiburce, and took up
her work again, rises immediately on the exit of Blandinet, folding
her work._

_Tiburce._ (_Approaching her hesitatingly._) You are not working any
longer, Aunt.... It's done already?
(_Henriette bows to him frigidly and goes out at right._)

SCENE 7. _Tiburce, then Francois_[19]

What this French use of the word "scene" leads to, when logically carried out so that even servants entering or leaving the stage create a scene, the following from Act IV of _George Barnwell_, will show:

SCENE 5. _To them a Servant_

_Thorowgood._ Order the groom to saddle the swiftest horse, and
prepare himself to set out with speed!--An affair of life and death
demands his diligence. (_Exit Servant._)

SCENE 6. _Thorowgood, Trueman, and Lucy_

_Thorowgood._ For you, whose behavior on this occasion I have no time
to commend as it deserves, I must ingage your farther assistance.
Return and observe this Millwood till I come. I have your directions,
and will follow you as soon as possible. (_Exit Lucy._)

SCENE 7. _Thorowgood and Trueman_

_Thorowgood._ Trueman, you I am sure would not be idle on this
occasion. (_Exit_.)

SCENE 8.

_Trueman._ He only who is a friend can judge of my distress.
(_Exit._)[20]

This French division of scenes is, of course, made for the convenience of the dramatist as he composes and for the reader, not for the actor or the audience. Though somewhat copied in the past by English authors, it is now rejected by most stages. Even French dramatists are breaking away from it. Memory of this French usage, however, still affects popular speech: when we speak of any part of an act in which two or more people are on stage, we are very likely to call it their "scene" no matter whether they have come on in a changed setting or not. Obviously if _scene_ is to correspond with _setting_, we need another word for what in our practice is the same as the older French _scene_.

Not only do necessary changes in setting make proportioning material into acts and within acts difficult, but the time question also raises many problems. It may be troublesome within the act, between the acts, and at the opening of the play. In the final soliloquy of _Faustus_ (p. 35), an hour is supposed to elapse in some thirty lines. Though the Elizabethan, in a case like this, was ready to assist the dramatist, today we are so conscious of time spaces that practically all stage clocks are temporarily out of order, lest they mark too distinctly the discrepancy between pretended and real time.[21] The novelist, in a few lines, tells us of many happenings in a considerable space of time, or writes: "Thus, in idle talk, a full hour passed," and we do not query the supposed passage of time. On the stage, however, when one gossip says to another: "I must be off. I meant to stop a minute, and I have gossiped an hour," auditors who recognize perfectly that the two people have not talked ten minutes are likely to laugh derisively. As has been pointed out,[22] this time difficulty has made it practically impossible to dramatize satisfactorily Stevenson's _The Sire de Maletroit's Door_. The swiftly-moving simple story demands the one-act form, but certain marked changes in feeling, convincing enough when they are said to come after ten or twelve hours of strong emotion, become, when they are seen to occur after twenty minutes to an hour, unconvincing. The central situation may be used, but for success on the stage the story must be so re-told that the marked changes in feeling are convincing even when seen. A dilemma results: lapses of time are handled more easily in three or four acts than in one act; the moment _The Sire de Maletroit's Door_ is re-cast into three or four acts, it needs so much padding as to lose nearly all its original values.

When a dramatist faces the need to represent on stage, a passage of time which could not in real life be coincident with the action of the scene, he must (_a_) hypnotize an audience by a long scene of complicated and absorbing emotion into thinking that the required time has passed; or (_b_) must discover some motive sufficiently strong to account for a swift change in feeling; (_c_) or must get his person or persons off stage and write what is known as a "Cover Scene."

An audience led through an intense emotional experience does not mark accurately the passage of time. Make the emotional experience protracted, as well as absorbing, and you may imply or even state that any reasonable length of time has passed. The fearful agony of _Faustus_ so grips an audience that it loses track of the time necessary for the speech, or would, were it not for the unfortunate emphasis on the actual time: "Ah, half the hour is passed; 'twill all be passed anon"; "The clock strikes twelve." In _Hamlet_, the fourth act takes place during the absence of Hamlet in England. By its many intensely moving happenings, it makes an auditor willing to believe that Hamlet has been absent for a long time, when in reality he has been on the stage within a half hour. Such time fillings may, of course, be a portion of a scene, a whole scene, or even a whole act. In most cases, it is quite impossible that the time really requisite and the time of action should coincide. The business of the dramatist is to make the audience feel as if the time had passed--to create an illusion of time.

The second method of meeting the time difficulty, finding motivation of some marked change in character or circumstances which permits it to be as swift as it is on the stage, is best treated in the next chapter.

In _The Russian Honeymoon_,[23] a play once very popular with amateurs, there is bad handling of a time difficulty. The hero, going out in his peasant costume, must return after a few speeches, in full regimentals. A lightning change of costume is, therefore, necessary. More than once this lack of a proper Cover Scene has caused an awkward wait at this point in the play. Mark the absurdly short time Steele, in his _Conscious Lovers_ allows Isabella for bringing Bevil Junior on stage. Apparently, the latter and all his group must have been waiting at the end of the corridor.

_Isabella._ But here's a claim more tender yet--your Indiana, sir,
your long lost daughter.

_Mr. Sealand._ O my child! my child!

_Indiana._ All-gracious Heaven! Is it possible? Do I embrace my
father?

_Mr. Sealand._ And I do hold thee--These passions are too strong for
utterance--Rise, rise, my child, and give my tears their way--O my
sister! (_Embracing her_)

_Isabella._ Now, dearest niece, my groundless fears, my painful cares
no more shall vex thee. If I have wronged thy noble lover with too
hard suspicions, my just concern for thee, I hope, will plead my
pardon.

_Mr. Sealand._ O! make him then the full amends, and be yourself the
messenger of joy: Fly this instant!--Tell him all these wondrous
turns of Providence in his favour! Tell him I have now a daughter to
bestow, which he no longer will decline: that this day he still shall
be a bridegroom: nor shall a fortune, the merit which his father
seeks, be wanting: tell him the reward of all his virtues waits on his
acceptance. (_Exit Isabella._) My dearest Indiana!
(_Turns and embraces her._)

_Indiana._ Have I then at last a father's sanction on my love? His
bounteous hand to give, and make my heart a present worthy of Bevil's
generosity?

_Mr. Sealand._ O my child, how are our sorrows past o'erpaid by such a
meeting! Though I have lost so many years of soft paternal dalliance
with thee, yet, in one day, to find thee thus, and thus bestow thee,
in such perfect happiness! is ample! ample reparation! And yet again
the merit of thy lover--

_Indiana._ O! had I spirits left to tell you of his actions! how
strongly filial duty has suppressed his love; and how concealment
still has doubled all his obligations; the pride, the joy of his
alliance, sir, would warm your heart, as he has conquered mine.

_Mr. Sealand._ How laudable is love, when born of virtue! I burn to
embrace him--

_Indiana._ See, sir, my aunt already has succeeded, and brought him to
your wishes.

(_Enter Isabella, with Sir John Bevil, Bevil Junior, Mrs. Sealand,
Cimberton, Myrtle, and Lucinda._)

_Sir John Bevil._ (_Entering._) Where! where's this scene of wonder!
Mr. Sealand, I congratulate, on this occasion, our mutual
happiness.[24]

The inexperienced dramatist sending a servant out for wraps, brings him back so speedily that, apparently, in a well-ordered Fifth Avenue or Newport residence, garments lie all about the house or replace tapestries upon the walls. The speed with which servants upon the stage do errands shows that they have been trained in a basic principle of drama: "Waste no time." A more experienced dramatist, realizing that such speed destroys illusion, writes a brief scene which seems to allow time for the errand.

The telephone and the automobile have been godsends to the young dramatist. By use of the first, a lover can telephone from the drug-store just around the corner, run all the way in his eagerness, take an elevator, and be on the scene with a speed that saves the young dramatist any long Cover Scene. Of course, if said lover be rich or extravagant enough to own an automobile, the distance from which he may telephone increases as the square of the horse-power of his machine. In the old days, and even today, if the truth be regarded, something must be taking place on the stage sufficient to allow time for a lover, however ardent, to cover the distance between the telephone booth and the house.

Here, however, a dramatist meets his Scylla and Charybdis. He yields to Scylla, if he does not write any such scene; to Charybdis, if he writes such a scene but does not advance his play by it--that is, if he merely marks time. In a recent play, whenever a time space was to be covered, a group of citizens talked. What they said was not uninteresting. The characters were well sketched in. But the scene did not advance the story at all. Bulwer-Lytton faced this difficulty in writing _Money_:

I think in the first 3 acts you will find little to alter. But in Act
4--the 2 scenes with Lady B. & Clara--and Joke & the Tradesman don't
help on the Plot much--they were wanted, however, especially the last
to give time for change of dress & smooth the lapse of the theme from
money to dinner; you will see if this part requires any amendment.[25]

The principle here is this: Whatever is written to cover a time space, long or short, must help the movement of the play to its climax. It may be said that the fourth act of neither _Macbeth_ nor _Hamlet_ complies with this statement; but more careful thought will show that in each case the act is very important to the whole story. The title of each play, and present-day interest in its characterization rather than its story, make us miss greatly the leading figure, wholly absent in the act. Therefore we hasten to declare, not recognizing that story was of first importance in Shakespeare's day, that because this act is not focused on Macbeth or Hamlet the act in question clogs the general movement.

Otway, in _Venice Preserved_, handles passage of time admirably. Toward the end of the first act, Pierre makes an appointment with Jaffier to meet him that night on the Rialto at twelve. Exit Pierre. Immediately Belvidera enters to Jaffier. Their talk, only about four pages in length, is so passionately pathetic that a hearer loses all accurate sense of time. There is an _entr'acte_, and then a scene between Pierre and Aquilina. Again it is brief, only three and a half pages, but it is dramatic, and complicates the story. Consequently, when Jaffier does meet Pierre on the Rialto, we are quite ready to believe that considerable time has passed and it is now twelve o'clock. Otway has used three devices to cover a time space: an absorbing emotional scene, an _entr'acte_, and a Cover Scene.[26]

All the methods just described have had to do with representing time on stage. When time necessary for the telling of a story may be treated as passing off stage, other devices may be used. Most of them gather about a dropping of the curtain. Recently there has been much use of the curtain to denote, without change of set, the passing of some relatively brief time. When a group of people leave the stage for dinner, the curtain is dropped, to rise again as the group, returning from dinner, take up the action of the play. Just this occurs in Act I of Pinero's _Iris_.[27] Mr. Belasco, in _The Woman_, dropped the curtain at the beginning of a cross examination, to raise it for the next act as the examination nears its climax. In _The Silver Box_,[28] dropping the curtain twice in Act I makes it possible to see the Barthwicks' dining-room "just after midnight," "at eight-thirty A.M.," and at "the breakfast hour of Mr. and Mrs. Barthwick." Such curtains, though justifiable, have one serious objection. They bring us back with a jolt from absorbed following of the play to the disturbing truth that we are not looking at life, but at life selectively presented under obvious limitations of the stage. Scene 1 of _The Silver Box_, which began "just after midnight," lasts only a few minutes; yet when the curtain "rises again at once," we are to understand that eight hours have elapsed.

The simplest method of handling time off stage is to treat it as having elapsed between acts or on the dropping of a curtain within an act.[29] In how many, many plays--for instance, Sir Arthur Pinero's early _Lady Bountiful_--has the hero, in whatever length of time between the fourth and fifth acts the dramatist has preferred, become the regenerated figure of the last act! All that is needed in _The Man Who Came Back_, as produced, to change the dope-ridden, degenerating youth into a firm character, even into a landed proprietor, is a sea voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu--and an _entr'acte_! What takes place between acts is far too often--medicinally, morally, dare we say dramatically?--more significant than what we see. Yet why deride this refuge of the dramatist? Such use is merely an extension of what we permit any dramatist who, writing two plays on the same subject or person, implies or states that very many years have elapsed between the two parts. No one seriously objects when thousands of years are supposed to elapse between the _Prometheus Bound_ and the _Prometheus Unbound_ of Aeschylus.[30] Surely, it is logical to treat spaces between acts like spaces between plays on related subjects. The trouble lies, not in the time supposed to have elapsed, but in the changes of character said to have taken place. As long as our drama was primarily story, and not, as it has come to be increasingly, a revealer of character, we were content, if each act contained a thrilling dramatic incident, to be told that this or that had happened between the acts. The early drama did this by the Dumb Show and the Chorus.

ACT II