Chapter XXXIX: Act I: Scene 1

_The scene is triangular, representing a corner of the living-room of
No. 137, Burnley Road, Hindle, a house rented for about 7s. 6d. a
week. In the left-hand wall, low down, there is a door leading to the
scullery. In the same wall, but further away from the spectator, is a
window looking on to the backyard. A dresser stands in front of the
window. About half-way up the right-hand wall is the door leading to
the hall or passage. Nearer, against the same wall, a high cupboard
for china and crockery. The fire-place is not visible, being in one of
the walls not represented. However, down in the L. corner of the stage
is an arm-chair, which stands by the hearth. In the middle of the room
is a square table, with chairs on each side. The room is cheerful and
comfortable. It is nine o'clock on a warm August evening. Through the
window can be seen the darkening sky, as the blind is not drawn.
Against the sky an outline of roof tops and mill chimneys. The only
light is the dim twilight from the open window. Thunder is in the air.
When the curtain rises, Christopher Hawthorn, a decent, white-bearded
man of nearly fifty, is sitting in the arm-chair, smoking a pipe. Mrs.
Hawthorn, a keen, sharp-faced woman of fifty-five, is standing, gazing
out of the window. There is a flash of lightning and a rumble of
thunder far away._

_Mrs. Hawthorn._ It's passing over. There'll be no rain.

_Christopher._ Ay! We could do with some rain.
(_There is a flash of lightning._)

_Chris._ Pull down the blind and light the gas.

_Mrs. H._ What for?

_Chris._ It's more cozy-like with the gas.

_Mrs. H._ You're not afraid of the lightning?

_Chris._ I want to look at that railway guide.

_Mrs. H._ What's the good. We've looked at it twice already. There's
no train from Blackpool till half-past ten, and it's only just on nine
now.

_Chris._ Happen we've made a mistake.

_Mrs. H._ Happen we've not. Besides, what's the good of a railway
guide? You know trains run as they like on Bank Holiday.

_Chris._ Ay! Perhaps you're right. You don't think she'll come round
by Manchester!

_Mrs. H._ What would she be doing coming round by Manchester?

_Chris._ You can get that road from Blackpool.

_Mrs. H._ Yes. If she's coming from Blackpool.

_Chris._ Have you thought she may not come at all?

_Mrs. H._ (_Grimly_.) What do you take me for?

_Chris._ You never hinted.

_Mrs. H._ No use putting them sort of ideas into your head.
(_Another flash and a peal of thunder._)

_Chris._ Well, well, those are lucky who haven't to travel at all on
Bank Holiday.

_Mrs. H._ Unless they've got a motor car, like Nat Jeffcote's lad.

_Chris._ Nay, _he's_ not got one.

_Mrs. H._ What? Why I saw him with my own eyes setting out in it last
Saturday week after the mill shut.

_Chris._ Ay! He's gone off these Wakes with his pal George Ramsbottom.
A couple of thick beggars, those two!

_Mrs. H._ Then what do you mean telling me he's not got a motor car?

_Chris._ I said he hadn't got one of his own. It's his father's. You
don't catch Nat Jeffcote parting with owt before his time. That's how
he holds his lad in check, as you might say.

_Mrs. H._ Alan Jeffcote's seldom short of cash. He spends plenty.

_Chris._ Ay! Nat gives him what he asks for, and doesn't want to know
how he spends it either. But he's _got_ to ask for it first. Nat can
stop supplies any time if he's a mind.

_Mrs. H._ That's likely, isn't it?

_Chris._ Queerer things have happened. You don't know Nat like I do.
He's a bad one to get across with.
(_Another flash and gentle peal. Mrs. H. gets up._)

_Mrs. H._ I'll light the gas.
(_She pulls down the blind and lights the gas._)

_Chris._ When I met Nat this morning he told me that Alan had
telegraphed from Llandudno on Saturday asking for twenty pounds.

_Mrs. H._ From Llandudno?

_Chris._ Ay! Reckon he's been stopping there. Run short of brass.

_Mrs. H._ And did he send it?

_Chris._ Of course he sent it. Nat doesn't stint the lad. (_He laughs
quietly._) Eh, but he _can_ get through it, though!

_Mrs. H._ Look here. What are you going to say to Fanny when she
comes?

_Chris._ Ask her where she's been?

_Mrs. H._ Ask her where she's been. Of course we'll do that. But
suppose she won't tell us?

_Chris._ She's always been a good girl.

_Mrs. H._ She's always gone her own road. Suppose she tells us to mind
our own business?

_Chris._ I reckon it _is_ my business to know what she's been up to.

_Mrs. H._ Don't you forget it. And don't let her forget it either. If
you do, I promise you I won't.

_Chris._ All right. Where's that post-card?

_Mrs. H._ Little good taking heed of that.

(_Christopher rises and gets a picture post-card from the dresser._)

_Chris._ (_Reading._) She'll be home before late on Monday. Lovely
weather. (_Looking at the picture._) North Pier, Blackpool. Very like,
too.

_Mrs. H._ (_Suddenly._) Let's have a look. When was it posted?

_Chris._ It's dated Sunday.

_Mrs. H._ That's nowt to go by. Any one can put the wrong date. What's
the postmark? (_She scrutinizes it._) "August 5th, summat P.M." I
can't make out the time.

_Chris._ August 5th. That was yesterday all right. There'd only be one
post on Sunday.

_Mrs. H._ Then she was in Blackpool till yesterday, that's certain.

_Chris._ Ay!

_Mrs. H._ Well, it's a mystery.

_Chris._ (_Shaking his head._) Or summat worse.

_Mrs. H._ Eh? You don't think _that_, eh?

_Chris._ I don't know what to think.

_Mrs. H._ Nor me neither.

(_They sit silent for a time. There is a rumble of thunder, far
away. After it has died away, a knock is heard at the front door.
They turn and look at each other. Mrs. Hawthorn rises and goes out
in silence. In a few moments, Fanny Hawthorn comes in, followed by
Mrs. Hawthorn._)[5]

What usually keeps a writer from passing to well characterized dialogue from dialogue merely clear as to essential facts is that he is so bound to his facts that he sees rather than feels the scene. The chief trouble with the dialogue of the John Brown play was an attempt to keep so close to historical accounts of the particular incident that sympathetic imagination was benumbed. One constantly meets this fault in the earlier Miracle Plays before writers had come to understand that audiences care more for the human being in the situation than for the situation itself, and that only by representing a situation not for itself but as felt by the people involved can it be made fully interesting. At the left is a speech of Mary in _The Crucifixion_ of the York Cycle; at the right is her speech in the Hegge or so-called Coventry Plays.

_Mary_. Alas! for my sweet _Mary_, O my son, my son! my darling
son, I say, dear!
That dolefully to deed thus is What have I defended [offended] thee?
dight, Thou hast spoke to all of those that
Alas! for full lovely thou lay be here,
In my womb, this worthely wight And not a word thou speakest to me.
Alas! that I should see this To the Jews thou art full kind,
sight Thou hast forgiven all here
Of my son so seemly to see, misdeed;
Alas! that this blossom so And the thief thou hast in mind,
bright For once asking mercy heaven is his
Untruly is tugged to this tree, meed.
Alas! Ah! my sovereign lord, why wilt thou
My lord, my life, not speak
With full great grief, To me that am thy mother in pain for
Hanges as a thief, thy wrong?
Alas! he did never trespass.[6] Ah, heart, heart why wilt thou not
break?
That I were out of this sorrow so
strong![7]

The writer of the Hegge speech had discovered long before Ralph Waldo Emerson that the secret of good dialogue is "truth carried alive into the heart by passion." The second requisite, then, of good dialogue is that it must be kindled by feeling, made alive by the emotion of the speaker. For the would-be dramatist the secret is so to know his characters that facts are not mere facts, but conditions moving him because they move the characters he perfectly understands. As he interprets between character and audience, he must be like Planchette or the clairvoyant, the creature of another's will, whose ideas and emotions rather than his own he tries with all the power that is in him to convey. In brief, then, though it is absolutely necessary that dialogue give the facts as to what happens, who the people are, their relations to one another, etc., it is better dialogue if, while doing all this, it seems to be busied only with characterization.

Unassigned dialogue usually makes a reader or hearer promptly recognize his preference for characterized rather than uncharacterized speech. When a group, as in many stage mobs, speaks in chorus, or at best in sections, the result is unreality for many hearers and absurdity for the more critical. Every hearer knows that people do not really, when part of a mob, say absolutely the same thing, and rarely speak in perfect unison. Common sense cries out for individualization among the possible speakers. When we read the following extract from Andreiev's _Life of Man_, we may agree with what is apparently the author's idea, that it makes no difference which one of the speakers delivers a particular line or sentence; but the moment the scene is staged everything changes.

_A profound darkness within which nothing moves. Then there can be
dimly perceived the outlines of a large, high room and the grey
silhouettes of Old Women in strange garments who resemble a troop of_
_grey, hiding mice. In low voices and with laughter to and fro the
Old Women converse_.

* * * * *

When they sent him to the drug store for some medicine he rode up and
down past the store for two hours and could not remember what he
wanted. So he came back.

(_Subdued laughter. The crying again becomes louder and then dies
away. Silence_.)

What has happened to her? Perhaps she is already dead.

No, in that case we should hear weeping. The doctor would run out and
begin to talk nonsense, and they would bring out her husband
unconscious, and we should have our hands full. No, she is not dead.

Then why are we sitting here?

Ask Him. How should we know?

He won't tell.

He won't tell. He tells nothing.

He drives us here and there. He rouses us from our beds and makes us
watch, and then it turns out that there was no need of our coming.

We came of our own accord. Didn't we come of our own accord? You must
be fair to Him. There, she is crying again. Aren't you satisfied?

Are _you_?

I am saying nothing. I am saying nothing and waiting.

How kind-hearted you are!

(_Laughter. The cries become louder_.)[8]

Of course every rule has its exception, and it may be urged that the final lines of David Pinski's _The Treasure_ need no assigning to special speakers. This, if true, results from the fact that Mr. Pinski, as the last touch in his study of the universal perversion of man through lust for money, wishes to represent even all the dead as sharing in this greed. Even here, however, Mr. Pinski is careful, by his headings "Many" and "The Pious Rabbi," to distinguish among speeches to be given by one person, the chorus, and a figure he wishes specially to individualize, the Rabbi.

_The Dead_

(_In shrouds and praying shawls appear singly and in groups amid the
graves. They whisper and breathe their words._) Swiftly into the
synagogue!... Hasten!... The hour of midnight is long past....
Hasten....

(_They hasten to the gate. One sees only their silhouettes in the
dim light of the veiled moon._)

I thought we would not come out today at all.

The dead fear the breath of the living.

We fear them more than they do us. There is no peace betwixt life and
death....

No peace ... no peace....

Indeed life vexed me grievously today.

Vexed is not the word. I lived in their life so really that I
shuddered and feared.

Shuddered with fear or with longing? Did you feel a yearning for your
money?

(_Ghostly laughter shakes the rows of the dead._)

The distinguished and the wealthy must surely have had a bad day.

It fairly smelled of money and they had to lie with the worms.

It almost threw them out of their graves.

_Many_

Money ... money ... money.... (_Ghostly laughter._)

But you poor devils hadn't a much better time either. It smelled of
money and you couldn't even beg. (_Laughter._)

It is high time for all of you to be forgetting life.... Come quickly
into the synagogue.... (_Many of the dead vanish._)

It gave me really an exalted feeling to see how little fear of us they
felt.

Don't flatter yourself. We would have been no better. We were no
better either.

_Many_

(_At the same time._) Money ... Money ... Money....

_Others_

And that is life ... that is life ... that is life....

It exalted me in my grave too. So many women walked about here
today. Young ones and pretty ones, I wager.... (_Laughter._)

Who speaks thus? Who opens his mouth to speak such ugly words?

It's the petty field surgeon who lies buried by the wall.

_The Pious Rabbi_

(_In passing. His praying shawl hangs but loosely over his left
shoulder._) They have dug up my whole grave.... They have dug away my
right arm. Woe, how shall I now put on my praying shawl? How shall I
appear before God? (_To a group._) Will not some one help me to put on
my praying shawl?

(_They surround and help him. They show signs of deep feeling at the
sight of the missing arm. Murmurs of astonishment and compassion._)

_Many_

Woe ... woe ... woe....

_Others_

Money ... money ... money....

_The Rabbi_

Now will I go and appear before God.... Now I will ask him.... (_He
vanishes through the gate._)

_Many_

He will get no answer ... he will get no answer.

_One of the Dead_

(_With feeling._) They who are in life still stand at the same point.
Generation dies after generation and all remains as it has been. As it
was aforetime, so it was in my time and so it is today.

_Many_

Money ... money ... money....
And yet it must lead to something. Surely there must be a goal.
Only God knows that....
And man must learn what it is.
That will be his greatest victory.
Man's greatest victory.

_Several_

Man's....

_Others_

The living one's.... And we?

(_A ghostly breathing of laughter and sighing_.)

_The First_

Man's greatest victory ...

_Curtain_[9]

Staging this, several facts will confront us. We certainly shall not let different actors of the group speak different lines on successive nights. That is, each supernumerary will be given one speech or more. If certain speeches seem to belong together, they will be given to one actor, and characterization will emerge as he speaks his lines. Unquestionably, too, if speeches which seem in themselves uncharacterizing are given to marked physical types, such as stout, very thin, very tall, or very short people, persons of markedly quick or slow physical movement, some of the speeches may seem unfitting. Rarely, then, is there any value in the unassigned speech. It may pass in the reading, as has been admitted, but the public prefers the assigned speech, and still more the speech so characterized that it must be assigned. Compare this passage from _Julius Caesar_ with its assignments to the First, the Second, the Third, and the Fourth Plebeian with the passage from Andreiev's play. Can there be any question that Shakespeare's assigned speeches are somehow clearer, more dramatic?

SCENE III. _A Street_

_Enter Cinna the poet, and after him the Plebeians_

_Cinna._ I dreamt tonight that I did feast with Caesar,
And things unluckily charge my fantasy.
I have no will to wander forth of doors.
Yet something leads me forth.

_1. Plebeian._ What is your name?

_2. Plebeian._ Whither are you going?

_3. Plebeian._ Where do you dwell?

_4. Plebeian._ Are you a married man or a bachelor?

_2. Plebeian._ Answer every man directly.

_1. Plebeian._ Ay, and briefly.

_4. Plebeian._ Ay, and wisely.

_3. Plebeian._ Ay, and truly, you were best.

_Cinna._ What is my name? Whither am I going? Where do I dwell? Am I a
married man or a bachelor? Then, to answer every man directly and
briefly, wisely and truly: wisely I say, I am a bachelor.

_2. Plebeian._ That's as much as to say, they are fools that marry.
You'll bear me a bang for that, I fear. Proceed; directly.

_Cinna._ Directly, I am going to Caesar's funeral.

_1. Plebeian._ As a friend or an enemy?

_Cinna._ As a friend.

_2. Plebeian._ That matter is answered directly.

_4. Plebeian._ For your dwelling,--briefly.

_Cinna._ Briefly, I dwell by the Capitol.

_3. Plebeian._ Your name, sir, truly.

_Cinna._ Truly, my name is Cinna.

_1. Plebeian._ Tear him to pieces; he's a conspirator.

_Cinna._ I am Cinna the poet, I am Cinna the poet.

_4. Plebeian._ Tear him for his bad verses, tear him for his bad
verses.

_Cinna._ I am not Cinna the conspirator.

_4. Plebeian._ It is no matter, his name's Cinna. Pluck but his name
out of his heart and turn him going.

_3. Plebeian._ Tear him, tear him! Come, brands, ho! fire-brands! To
Brutus', to Cassius'; burn all! Some to Decius' house, and some to
Casca's; some to Lingarius'. Away, go! (_Exeunt._)[10]

It may almost be stated as a general principle that assigning a speech is the first step in focusing the attention of an audience on that speech. The value of such focusing has been discussed earlier under "Characterization." In exceptional cases, as the citation from _The Treasure_ shows, there may be some justification for unassigned speeches, but in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, when any lines of the play seem not to need assigning to any particular person, they lack the characterization which belongs to them.

The thesis play or the problem play, which have been so current in the last few years, have brought into special prominence a common fault in so-called dramatic dialogue. The speeches narrate, describe, expound or argue, and well, but not in the character of the supposed speaker. Rather the author himself is speaking. Such dialogue, whether it be as clever as some in Mr. Shaw's plays, as beautiful as certain passages by George Chapman, or as commonplace as in many modern instances, should be rewritten till the author can state the desired idea or facts as the imagined speaker would have stated them. This was the fault with the extract from the John Brown play, and whether it has its source in an intense desire of the author to present his own ideas, or to phrase his sense of beauty, in lack of characterizing power or in mere carelessness, it is reprehensible. In the following instance, the writer is so absorbed in his own ideas that he forgets characterization.

_Senator Morse._ ... What great motive--?

_Mary._ One more imperious than empires or coalitions--(_Mary turns to
Mrs. Morse_)--one that mothers know--(_Mary turns to Senator
Morse_)--and fathers, too. It is the commonest thing in the world, and
the one most completely overlooked. Woman's love and faith and charity
are the motives of that great, imperious impulse by which nature is
trying to rule this world and perpetuate the human soul. Individual
self-control and the governance of the world are themselves in
embryo.... Creation is from God and _it_ is _divine_. It is the thing
and the only thing that kills wantonness and makes love pure. The
higher modesty is the peculiar inheritance of our race. It is our duty
to understand it, respect it, make it sacred, and have it raised out
of the darkness of ignorance and mystery in its true dignity as
patriotic impulse and made the true basis of society, its government,
and its provision for the general welfare.

Does this sound like an individual woman or like the author using one of his characters for the sounding phrases of his own thinking?

In the next illustration, from _George Barnwell_, the colorlessness comes from the lack of quickening sympathy with character which marks most of Lillo's work.

_Thorowgood._ Thou know'st I have no heir, no child but thee; the
fruits of many years successful industry must all be thine. Now, it
would give me pleasure great as my love, to see on whom you would
bestow it. I am daily solicited by men of the greatest rank and merit
for leave to address you; but I have hitherto declin'd it, in hopes
that by observation I shou'd learn which way your inclination tends;
for as I know love to be essential to happiness in the marriage state,
I had rather my approbation should confirm your choice than direct it.

_Maria._ What can I say? How shall I answer, as I ought, this
tenderness, so uncommon even in the best of parents? But you are
without example; yet had you been less indulgent, I had been most
wretched. That I look on the croud of courtiers that visit here with
equal esteem, but equal indifference, you have observed, and I must
needs confess; yet had you asserted your authority, and insisted on a
parent's right to be obey'd, I had submitted and to my duty sacrificed
my peace.

_Thor._ From your perfect obedience in every other instance, I fear'd
as much; and therefore wou'd leave you without a byass in an affair
wherein your happiness is so immediately concern'd.

_Ma._ Whether from a want of that just ambition that wou'd become your
daughter, or from some other cause, I know not; but I find high birth
and titles don't recommend the man who owns them to my affections.

_Thor._ I wou'd not that they shou'd, unless his merit recommends him
more. A noble birth and fortune, tho' they make not a bad man good,
yet they are a real advantage to a worthy one, and place his virtues
in the fairest light.

_Ma._ I cannot answer for my inclinations, but they shall ever be
submitted to your wisdom and authority; and, as you will not compel me
to marry where I cannot love, so love shall never make me act
contrary to my duty. Sir, I have your permission to retire?

_Thor._ I'll see you to your chamber. (_Exeunt_.)[11]

Too often even somewhat skilled dramatists are led astray by the belief that to write in a style approved at the moment, or which they themselves hold beautiful, is better than to let the characters speak their own language. Examining the early plays of John Lyly--_Alexander and Campaspe_, _Sapho and Phao_, _Endymion_[12] (1579-1590)--we find in the more serious portions both action and characterization subordinated to standards of expression supposed at the time to be best. Contrasting the lovers' dialogue of _Love's Labor's Lost_ with the scenes of Orsino and Viola in _Twelfth Night_, we see perfect illustration of the greater effectiveness of dialogue growing out of the characters as compared with dialogue which puts style first. The Heroic Drama of the second half of the seventeenth century rested upon theory rather than reality. Here is the way in which Almahide and Almanzor state strong feeling.

_Almahide._ Then, since you needs will all my weakness know,
I love you; and so well, that you must go.
I am so much oblig'd, and have withall
A heart so boundless and so prodigal
I dare not trust myself, or you, to stay,
But, like frank gamesters, must foreswear the play.

_Almanzor._ Fate, thou art kind to strike so hard a blow;
I am quite stunn'd, and past all feeling now.
Yet--can you tell me you have pow'r and will
To save my life, and at that instant, kill![13]

All that these two worthy people are trying to say is

_Almahide._ I love you; and so well that I dare not trust myself or
you to stay.

_Almanzor._ Can you tell me you have power and will to save my life
and at that instant kill!

Dryden makes Almahide describe her own emotional condition and, as is proper at any critical moment in Heroic Drama, drop into simile. Almanzor, too, confidently diagnoses his own condition and apostrophizes fate. All this was quite correct in its own day, not for real life, but for the people of the myth land conjured up by the dramatic theories of the _litterati_. Did people under such circumstances speak in this way? Surely not.

This scene from _George Barnwell_, 1731, illustrates the same substitution of an author's idea of what is effective because "literary" for a phrasing that springs from the real emotion of perfectly individualized figures.

SCENE 7. _Uncle. George Barnwell at a distance_

_Uncle._ O Death, thou strange mysterious power,--seen every day, yet
never understood but by the incommunicative dead--what art thou? The
extensive mind of man, that with a thought circles the earth's vast
globe, sinks to the centre, or ascends above the stars; that worlds
exotick finds, or thinks it finds--thy thick clouds attempts to pass
in vain, lost and bewilder'd in the horrid gloom; defeated, she
returns more doubtful than before; of nothing certain but of labour
lost.

(_During this speech, Barnwell sometimes presents the pistol and
draws it back again; at last he drops it, at which his uncle starts
and draws his sword._)

_Barnwell._ Oh, 'tis impossible!

_Uncle._ A man so near me, arm'd and masqu'd!

_Barn._ Nay, then there's no retreat.
(_Plucks a poniard from his bosom, and stabs him._)

_Uncle._ Oh! I am slain! All-gracious heaven regard the prayer of thy
dying servant! Bless, with thy choicest blessings, my dearest nephew;
forgive my murderer, and take my fleeting soul to endless mercy!

(_Barnwell throws off his mask, runs to him, and, kneeling by him,
raises and chafes him._)

_Barn._ Expiring saint! Oh, murder'd, martyr'd uncle! Lift up your
dying eyes, and view your nephew in your murderer! O, do not look so
tenderly upon me! Let indignation lighten from your eyes, and blast
me e're you die!--By Heaven, he weeps in pity of my woes.
Tears,--tears for blood! The murder'd, in the agonies of death, weeps
for his murderer.--Oh, speak your pious purpose, pronounce my pardon
then--and take me with you!--He wou'd, but cannot. O why with such
fond affection do you press my murdering hand!--What! will you kiss
me! (_Kisses him. Uncle groans and dies._) He's gone forever--and oh!
I follow. (_Swoons away by his uncle's body._) Do I still live to
press the suffering bosom of the earth? Do I still breathe and taint
with my infectious breath the wholesome air! Let Heaven from its high
throne, in justice or in mercy, now look down on that dear murder'd
saint, and me the murderer. And, if his vengeance spares, let pity
strike and end my wretched being!--Murder the worst of crimes, and
parricide the worst of murders, and this the worst of parricides!
Cain, who stands on record from the birth of time, and must to its
last final period, as accurs'd, slew a brother, favour'd above him.
Detested Nero by another's hand dispatched a mother that he fear'd and
hated. But I, with my own hand, have murder'd a brother, mother,
father, and a friend, most loving and belov'd. This execrable act of
mine's without a parallel. O may it ever stand alone--the last of
murders, as it is the worst!

The rich man thus, in torment and despair,
Prefer'd his vain, but charitable prayer.
The fool, his own soul lost, wou'd fain be wise
For others good; but Heaven his suit denies.
By laws and means well known we stand or fall,
And one eternal rule remains for all.

_The End of the Third Act_.[14]

Have you noticed that people under stress of strong emotion stop to depict their emotional condition, to analyze it, or neatly to apostrophize fate or Providence? The more real the emotion the more compact and connotative, usually, is its expression. People under high emotional strain who can tell you just what they ought to feel, or who describe elaborately what they are feeling are usually "indeed exceeding calm." Dryden's Lyndaraxa builded better than she knew when she said:

By my own experience I can tell
Those who love truly do not argue well.

Bulwer-Lytton was thinking of the weakness of self-descriptive woe when he wrote Macready, while composing _Richelieu_, "In Act 4--in my last alteration, when Richelieu, pitying Julie, says, 'I could weep to see her thus--But'--the effect would I think be better if he felt the tears with indignation at his own weakness--thus:

'Are these tears?
O, shame, shame, Dotage'--"

Emotion, if given free way, finds the right words by which to express itself. When a character stands outside itself, describing what it feels, the speaker is really the author in disguise, describing what he is incompetent, from lack of sympathetic power, to phrase with simple, moving accuracy. M. de Curel has described perfectly the right relation of author to character and dialogue.

During the first days of work I have a very distinct feeling of
creation. Later I move on instinctively and that is much better. When
the sentiments of my characters are in question I am absolutely in
their skins, for my own part indifferent as to their griefs or joys. I
can be moved only later in re-reading, and then this emotion seems to
arise from the fact that I have to do with characters absolutely
strange to me. I experience sometimes, and then personally, a feeling
of irony, of flippancy, in regard to my characters who tangle
themselves up and get themselves into difficulties. That transpires
sometimes in the language of some other character who, at the moment,
ceases to speak correctly because he speaks as I should. As a result,
corrections later. At the end of a year, my play, when I re-read it,
seems something completely apart from me, written by another.[15]

Allowing a character to express itself exactly raises inevitably the question of dialect. On the one hand it must be admitted that nothing more quickly characterizes a figure, as far as type is concerned, than to let him speak like a Yankee, a Scotchman, a Negro, etc. If the character utters phrases which an audience recognizes instantly as characteristic of his supposed type, there is special satisfaction to the audience in such recognition. On the other hand, very few audiences know any dialect thoroughly enough to permit a writer to use it with absolute accuracy. The moment dialect begins to show the need of a glossary, it is defeating its own ends. As a result a compromise has arisen, dating from the very early days of the drama--stage dialects. A character made up to represent Scotchman, Welshman, Frenchman, Negro, or Indian, speaks in a way that has become time-honored on the stage as representing this or that figure among these types. Till recently most dialect on the stage has been at best a mere popular approximation to real usage. Until within a few years the peasant dialogue of _Gammer Gurton's Needle_, the famous sixteenth-century Interlude, was supposed to represent dialect of its time in the neighborhood of Cambridge, England. Recently philologists have shown that the speech of these peasants is unlike any dialect of the period of the play, and was obviously a stage convention of the time. Study the Welshmen and other dialect parts in Shakespeare, and you will reach approximately the same conclusion. With our developing sense of historical truth and of realism, we have, in recent years, been trying to make our characters speak exactly as they would in real life. The plays of the Abbey Theatre are in large part a revolt from the Irish dialogue which the plays of Dion Boucicault had practically established as true to life. Today we try not only phonetically to represent the ways in which words are spoken by the people of a particular locality, but by the use of words and phrases heard among such people to make the characterization vivid and convincing. Here, in Mr. Sheldon's play, _The Nigger_, is care to reproduce phonetically the speech of negroes:

_Jinny._ (_Wearily._) I speck yo' right. Hev yo' got suthin' fo' me
t'night? Seems lak I might take it down wif me t' de cabin.

_Simms._ (_Grumbling._) Fo' dat young good-fo'-nuffin hawg-grubbah t'
swallow w'en he done come home? Laws me, w'y Marse Phil 'lows his
fried chicken en' co'n-braid t' feed dat wo'thles rap-scallion, I jes'
cain't see! Clar out o' heah, yo' ern'ry yallah gal!

_Jinny._ (_Crushingly._) Yallah gal--! Sho'! I was livin' heah fo' yo'
was bawn! Don' fo'get dat, yo' imperent, low-down li'tle niggah yo'!

_Simms._ (_Pacifically._) Hol' on, Jinny! I ain't said nuffin'. Dat I
ain't! Yo' g' long now en' I'll sen' down a gal t' yo' cabin wif a
basket.

_Jinny._ (_Turning away._) Yo' sho' will--er Marse Phil'd--

_Simms._ (_As he goes up the steps._) En' keep yo' gran'chillun out
dat saloom, Jinny, ef yo' don' want t' see 'em cross de Jo'dan ahead
o' yo'! Dat Joe! Lawd-a-massy! De white in him ain't done nobody no
good's fah's dis--'Scuse me, sah!

(_He stops suddenly and turns aside, bowing, on seeing Noyes and
Georgie, who have opened the door and come out._)

Here is equal care to represent the speech of Southerners.

_Noyes._ My fathah? Yes, he gave way t' his Comme'cial ambition by
sellin' powda an' bullets t' the Union--way back in '62. That got him
into a bunch o' trouble, but it wasn't what _sta'ted_ the--slight
fam'ly coolness!

_Georgie._ Wasn't it? Why, I always hea'd---

_Noyes._ No, it came befo' that. My gran'fathah an' Phil's--they were
brothahs-in-law, you know--they began it in the fo'ties.

_Georgie._ Why?

_Noyes._ (_Grimly._) I reckon the Morrows are tryin' now t' keep it
da'k. But Lawd!--I don't mind tellin'. It's the old thing--both losin'
theah heads ovah the same woman.

_Georgie._ (_Innocently._) How romantic! Phil's gran'mothah?

_Noyes._ (_After a pause._) No--niggah woman.

_Georgie._ (_In a low voice, turning away._) Oh--I didn't--realize--

_Noyes._ (_Clearing his throat._) Phil's gran'fathah--he won out. An'
that's the kick that sta'ted the Noyes fam'ly a-rollin' t' pe'dition.

_Georgie._ (_With difficulty._) But mos' people are willin' to
fo'get--at least they ought to be.

_Noyes._ (_Dryly._) Some ain't killed 'emselves tryin'. Howevah, on
lookin' ahead I saw Phil an' I might be in a position t' help each
othah, so we agreed t' sink it. I--I wish yo' mothah would follow
Phil, Miss Byrd. I ce'tainly do wish that!

_Georgie_. She's old-fashioned--oh, hopelessly so!--in things the
world now considers--trivial.

_Noyes._ (_Looking at his hands._) Such as--trade?

_Georgie._ (_Gently._) That's one of them.[16]

Lady Gregory, after writing a rough draft of one of her plays, goes among the people of her community and sets them talking of the subject she is treating. Noting their racy, apt, and highly individualized phrases, she gives them to her characters in the play as she re-writes. Such intimate, loving study of dialect as Lady Gregory, Mr. Yeats, and Synge have shown has given us an accurate representation of the Irish peasant, and may ultimately drive from the English stage the conventional absurdities of the past. Dialect, then, if carefully studied, is highly desirable if two or three facts are borne in mind. First of all, it should be accurate; but secondly it must be clear or must be made clear for any audience. Unquestionably, Mr. Stanley Houghton's memorable play _Hindle Wakes_ had a bad title away from its birthplace,--Manchester, England. In the United States, this title is perfectly meaningless. How many in any audience in this country could be expected to know that the title means certain "autumn week-end holidays in the town of Hindle." There could be no harm in using a different title away from the birthplace of the play. Recently, in a manuscript play, appeared a figure speaking a strange mixture of Negro and Irish dialects. He seemed to all readers a clumsy attempt by the author at a dialect part. Really, the figure was a portrait of a small political boss who, from boyhood on, had acquired in the saloons and purlieus of his district words and phrases of both the Negroes and the Irish. A little preliminary exposition at the right place cleared up this difficulty and turned what seemed inept characterization into a particularly individual figure of richly characterizing phrase. Obviously, then, dialect should, first, be written accurately. Then it should be gone over to see what in it may not be clear to most auditors. These words or phrases should be made clear because they are translated by other people on the stage or by the speaker, who himself sees or is told that some stage listener does not understand him. Only a little ingenuity is needed to do away with such vaguenesses. To substitute for such words and phrases others which, though incorrect, would be instantly understood by the audience is to botch the dialect and produce what is, after all, not different from the conventional stage dialect of the past. This raises a third point in regard to dialect, and one very frequently disregarded. Over and over again in plays using dialect certain speeches are passed over by the author in his final revision which neither phonetically nor in the words and phrases chosen comport with the context. Instantly the mood and the color of the scene are lost unless the actor supplies what the author failed to give. That is, dialect, if used, should be used steadily and consistently. The desiderata are, then, accuracy, persistent use, and clearness for the general public. Thus used, dialect is one of the chief aids to characterization.

If, in writing dialogue, a dramatist must not speak as himself but in character, must not be consciously or unconsciously literary if not in character, how may one surely choose the right words? Perhaps one or two illustrations will help here. The citation in the left-hand column from the first quarto _Hamlet_ states the facts clearly enough, but wholly uncolored by the emotion of the speaker. In the right-hand column the passionate sympathy of Shakespeare has given him perfect understanding of Hamlet's feeling.

_Hamlet._ O fie Horatio, and if _Hamlet._. O good Horatio, what a
thou shouldst die, wounded name
What a scandale wouldst thou Things standing thus unknowne,
leave behinde? shall I leave behind me?
What tongue should tell the If thou did'st ever hold me in
story of our deaths, thy hart,
If not from thee? O my heart Absent thee from felicity a
sinckes Horatio, while
Mine eyes have lost their sight, And in this harsh world drawe
my tongue his use: thy breath in paine
Farewell Horatio, heaven receive To tell my story; What warlike
my soule. noise is this?
(_Hamlet dies._) (_A march a farre off._)[17]

Speaking, not as the historian, not as the observer, but as Hamlet himself, Shakespeare by his quickened feeling finds a phrasing of which we may say what Swinburne said of some of the lines of John Webster: that the character says, not what he might have said, not what we are satisfied to have him say, but what seems absolutely the only thing he could have said.

When a dramatist works as he should, the emotion of his characters gives him the right words for carrying their feelings to the audience, and every word counts. Writing to Macready of _Money_, Bulwer-Lytton said of his play, "At the end of Act in your closing speech, will you remember to say, you 'would' refuse me ten pounds to spend on benevolence. Not you refuse me. The _would_ is important." [18]

In the left-hand column the complete sympathy of Heywood with his characters makes them speak simply, out of the fullness of their emotion. In the right-hand column, Heywood's collaborator, Rowley, lacking complete understanding of his characters, is thinking more of phrase for its own sake.