Chapter XXVII: Act I: ends. Even in Act II, the fan is kept before the public. Just

before Mrs. Erlynne enters, we have:

_Lady Windermere._ Will you hold my fan for me, Lord Darlington?
Thanks.

* * * * *

_Lady Windermere._ (_Moves up._) Lord Darlington, will you give me
back my fan, please? Thanks.... A useful thing, a fan, isn't it?

When Mrs. Erlynne enters, Lady Windermere "clutches at her fan, then lets it drop on the floor":

_Lord Darlington._ You have dropped your fan, Lady Windermere. (_Picks
it up and hands it to her._)

Such careful emphasizing makes sure that Lord Windermere's instant recognition of the significance of finding the fan in Lord Darlington's rooms, in the critical scene of the third act, will be immediately shared by any audience.

Mr. Augustus Thomas, in Act II of _As a Man Thinks_, wishes his audience to feel instantly the full significance of the opera libretto picked up by Hoover, as he watches Elinor enter the apartment of De Lota. Therefore, earlier in the act he emphasizes as follows:

_Elinor._ (_To Burril._) Here's a libretto of Aida. Find that passage
of which you spoke.

_Burril._ There were several.

_Mrs. Seelig._ Our coffee won't interfere with your cigars.

_De Lota._ Do you mind?

_Elinor._ This room is dedicated to nicotine. (_To Mrs. Seelig._)
Besides, we're going to take Dr. De Lota to the piano.

_De Lota._ Are you?

_Elinor._ (_To Vedah._) Aren't we?

_Vedah._ We are.

_Burril._ Here's one place. (_His pencil breaks._) Ah!

_Clayton._ (_Offering a pencil attached to his watch chain._) Here.

_Burril._ (_Giving libretto to Clayton._) Just mark that passage--"My
native land," etc. (_To Elinor._) Now follow that when Aida sings
Italian and note how the English stumbles.[25]

Two pages later, as Elinor goes out to the automobile, in order that the audience may see the libretto of which we have heard so much pass into the hands of De Lota, we have this:

_Elinor._ Take this for me. (_Hands libretto to De Lota._)

Later in the act, when Judge Hoover is telling Clayton that he saw some woman with De Lota as he was entering the apartment, the dialogue runs:

_Clayton._ You spoke to him?

_Hoover. Called_ to him.

_Clayton._ Called?

_Hoover._ Yes--I was forty feet away.

_Clayton._ Had your nerve with you.

_Hoover._ The girl dropped something--I thought it was a fan.

_Clayton._ Well?

_Hoover._ 'Twasn't--but that's why I called De Lota.

_Clayton._ How do you know it wasn't?

_Hoover._ I picked it up.

_Clayton._ What was it?

_Hoover._ A libretto.

_Clayton._ What libretto?

_Hoover._ Don't know--but grand opera--I remember that and libretto--

_Clayton._ You threw it away?

_Hoover._ No--kept it.

_Clayton._ Where is it?

_Hoover._ Overcoat pocket.

_Clayton._ (_Pause._) I'd like to see it. Think I could have some fun
with De Lota.

_Hoover._ (_Going up the hallway._) My idea too--fun and word of
caution. (_Gets coat and returns, feeling in pocket for libretto._)

_Clayton._ Caution--naturally.

_Hoover._ Here it is. (_Reads._) Aida.

_Clayton._ (_Taking libretto savagely._) Aida--let me see it.

_Hoover._ What's the matter? (_Puts coat on a chair._)

_Clayton._ (_In sudden anger, throws book._) The dog! Damn him--damn
both of them!

_Hoover._ What is it? See here--Who's with Dick?

_Clayton._ Not his mother--no! (_Points to libretto on the floor._)
Marked. _I_ did that myself, not an hour ago, and gave it to her.

_Hoover._ To Elinor?

_Clayton._ (_Calling as he rushes to the hall._) Sutton! Sutton!

_Hoover._ Hold on, Frank--there's some mistake.

_Clayton._ Get me a cab--never mind--I'll take Seelig's machine.
(_Disappears._) Here! Doctor Seelig says to take me to--
(_He goes out. Door bangs._)

_Sutton enters from the dining-room_

_Sutton._ Is Master Dick in danger, sir?

_Hoover._ (_Nervously._) I don't know, Sutton. Where's his mother?

_Sutton._ Opera, sir.

_Hoover._ With whom?

_Sutton._ Mr. De Lota.

Because of the emphasis given the libretto in the first quotation, the audience's suspicions are roused at the same time as Clayton's and his emotions are theirs. Yet, even in this last scene, note the care of Mr. Thomas to make all absolutely clear. He does not stop when Hoover says "A libretto," and "Of grand opera," but he lets the audience see the same libretto which passed from Elinor to De Lota pass from Hoover to Clayton, the latter identifying it in his cry, "Aida." That there may be absolutely no doubt in the evidence piling up against Elinor, he has Clayton point to the marked place with the words: "I did that myself."

Emphasis, as in these three instances, may come on some detail--handkerchief, fan, libretto--which is to be made important later in the development of the plot. It may come within a scene or act, or at the end of either to emphasize a part or the whole of the scene or act. The soliloquies of Iago referred to on page 183 are of this sort. Emphasis may stress little by little or with one blow what the play means. The significance of the whole play _Strife_--the utter uselessness of the conflict chronicled--is thus emphasized in the last lines of the play:

_Harness._ A woman dead; and the two best men both broken!

_Tench._ (_Staring at him--suddenly excited._) D'you know, sir--these
terms, they're the _very same_ we drew up together, you and I, and put
to both sides before the fight began? All this--all this--and--and
what for?

_Harness._ (_In a slow, grim voice._) That's where the fun comes in!
(_Underwood without turning from the door makes a gesture of assent._)

_The curtain falls_[26]

_The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_[27] illustrates the play in which emphasis little by little brings out the meaning of the whole piece. Examine even the first act. It is full of the feeling: "It cannot nor it will not come to good." Tanqueray himself says frankly, "My marriage is not even the conventional sort of marriage likely to satisfy society." Drummle coming in declares that George Orreyed is "a thing of the past," because he has married Mabel Hervey. The group of old friends show anxiety, and it is clear that to the mind of Cayley Drummle Tanqueray is but repeating the rash step of Orreyed. The whole act prepares for the finale of the play.

Hervieu's _The Trail of the Torch_ shows the emphasis which strikes one hard blow and leaves to the rest of the play illustration of what has been clearly stressed. About one third of the way through Act I, Maravon explains to Sabine the thesis which the entire play illustrates:

_Sabine._ (_Pointing to the two who have just gone._) Ah, my dear
Maravon, what an absurd friend I have there!

_Maravon._ Mme. Gribert, you mean?

_Sabine._ Haven't you noticed that she is beginning to look like a
governess? I suppose it's because she has been doing a governess' work
for so long that she has ceased to have any personal existence. She no
longer cares to possess anything of her own, everything belongs to her
daughter, and her husband works his fingers to the bone to pay for
Beatrice's dresses, while Beatrice lords it over both of them in a way
that is beginning to be just a trifle odious.

_Maravon._ I'm afraid I don't agree with you, Madame. With naively
natural beings, like these, I enjoy watching the family wheels
function with such simplicity. People of this kind conform to the law
which begins by demanding of the mother the flesh of her flesh, often
her beauty, her health, and, if need be, her life, for the formation
of the child. And then, for the profit of the newer generation, Nature
exerts herself to despoil the old. She exacts without stint from the
parents in the shape of labors, anxieties, expenses, gifts, and
sacrifices, all of their vital forces to equip, arm, and decorate
their sons and daughters who are descending into the plain of the
future. Take my own case, for instance. There was the question of my
son's position in life. Didier was able to persuade me very quickly
that my property would be better placed, for the future, in his hands.
To show you that Mme. Gribert and her daughter are merely following
out a tradition of the remotest antiquity, if you can endure the
pedantry of an old college professor, I will give you an example from
the classics.

_Sabine._ Oh! Please do.

_Maravon._ You have probably never heard of the "Lampadophories," have
you? Well, on certain solemn occasions the citizens of Athens placed
themselves at regular intervals, forming a sort of chain through the
city. The first one lighted a torch at an altar, ran to the second and
passed to him the light, and he to a third who ran to the fourth and
so on, from hand to hand. Each one of the chain ran onward without
ever looking back and without any idea except to keep the flame alight
and pass it on to the next man. Then, breathlessly stopping, each saw
nothing but the progress of the flaming light, as each followed it
with his eyes, his then useless anxiety, and superfluous vows. In that
Trail of the Torch has been seen a symbol of all the generations of
the earth, though it is not I, but my very ancient friend Plato, and
the good poet Lucretius, who made the analogy.

_Sabine._ That is not at all my idea of family relations. From my
point of view, receiving life entails as great an obligation as giving
it. There is a certain sort of link which makes the obligations
counter balance. Since Nature has not made it possible for children to
bring themselves into the world, of their own accord, I say that it
was her intention to impose upon them a debt to those who give them
life.

_Maravon._ They absolve that debt by giving life in turn to their
children.

_Sabine._ They absolve it by filial piety which has been the
inspiration of many deeds of heroism as you seem to forget.[28]

A recent editor of Hauptmann's _Gabriel Schilling's Flight_ writes of it: "His analysis is projected creatively in the characters of the two women--Evelyn Schilling and Hanna Elias. What is it, in these women, that--different as they are--menaces the man and the artist Schilling? It is a passion for possession, for absorption, a hunger of the nerves rather than of the heart. These modern women have abandoned the simple and sane preoccupations of their grandmothers; the enormous garnered nervous energy that is no longer expended in household tasks and in childbearing strikes itself, beak and clawlike, into man. But man has not changed. His occupations are not gone. He cannot endure the double burden. That is why Gabriel Schilling, rather than be destroyed spiritually by these tyrannies and exactions, seeks a last refuge in the great and cleansing purity of the sea.

'The modern malady of love is nerves.'"[29]

It is possible that all this may be derived from the play, but the Berlin audience which watched its first night left the theatre bewildered in more than one respect. There were a half-dozen opinions as to what this ugly story of a very weak man was meant to signify. Was it simply the tale of a weak man? Was it meant to show, as Professor Lewisohn thinks, that creation in an artist not naturally weak at first may be killed if he is pursued by women selfish in their love? Does the ending, however, show that Hanna is entirely selfish? Does the play signify that the man who chooses to follow women rather than his art is lost? Why is there so much emphasis on the awesomeness of Nature on the island? Have these conditions of Nature anything to do with Schilling's death? If so, do they not mitigate the effect upon him of the women? Lack of well-placed emphasis made _Gabriel Schilling's Flight_ a failure, interesting as were the questions it raised and masterly as is much of its characterization.

Too often young dramatists forget that the beginning and the ending of acts and plays emphasize even when the author does not so intend. As in real life, it is first and final impressions, rather than intermediate, which count most. An able young dramatist complained that though he wished one of his characters to dominate Act I she certainly failed to do this. The trouble was that an attractive old gardener, the character who took the act away from the young woman, opened the play attractively characterized and closed Act I with effective speech and pantomime, when the woman was busy only with unimportant pantomime. The prominence unintentionally given to the old gardener emphasized him at the expense of the young woman.

For the value of openings in emphasizing the meaning of the whole play, see Tennyson's _Becket_ as originally written, and as rearranged by Sir Henry Irving.[30] Tennyson's _Becket_ begins with Henry and the future Archbishop at chess, talking of matters in state and church.