Chapter XLIV: Prologue

_A study; to the left a balcony; on the right a door; in the middle a
table strewn with papers and books, and a lighted lamp upon it.
Towards the right a sofa. Night._

SCENE 1.

_Ernest._ (_Seated at a table and preparing to write._)
Nothing--impossible. It is striving with the impossible. The idea is
there; my head is fevered with it; I feel it. At moments an inward
light illuminates it, and I see it. I see it in its floating form,
vaguely outlined, and suddenly a secret voice seems to animate it, and
I hear sounds of sorrow, sonorous sighs, shouts of sardonic
laughter--a whole world of passions alive and struggling--They burst
forth from me, extend around me and the air is full of them. Then,
then I say to myself: "'Tis now the moment." I take up my pen, stare
into space, listen attentively, restraining my very heart-beats, and
bend over the paper--Ah, but the irony of impotency! The outlines
become blurred, the vision fades, the cries and sighs faint away--and
nothingness, nothingness encircles me--The monotony of empty space, of
inert thought, of dreamy lassitude! and more than all the monotony of
an idle pen and lifeless paper that lacks the life of thought! Ah, how
varied are the shapes of nothingness, and how, in its dark and silent
way, it mocks creatures of my stamp! So many, many forms. Canvas
without color, bits of marble without shape, confused noise of chaotic
vibrations. But nothing more irritating, more insolent, meaner than
this insolent pen of mine (_throws it away_), nothing worse than this
white sheet of paper. Oh, if I cannot fill it, at least I may destroy
it--vile accomplice of my ambition and my eternal humiliation. Thus,
thus--smaller and still smaller. (_Tears up paper. Pauses_.) And then!
How lucky that nobody saw me! For in truth, such fury is absurd and
unjust. No, I will not yield. I will think and think until I have
conquered or am crushed. No, I will not give up. Let me see, let me
see--if in that way--[50]

Such soliloquy, even if conventionally justifiable in its own time, is rarely, if ever, necessary. Scene 2 of Echegaray's play shows Ernest and Don Julian discussing the former's difficulty in working. What could be easier, then, than to cut the scene just cited to Ernest seated at a writing table and showing by his pantomime how impossible he finds composition? Why should he not act out the lines, "I take up my pen, stare into space, listen attentively,--bend over the paper ... and nothingness, nothingness"? If as a climax he throws away his pen and tears up his paper, it certainly should be clear that he is thoroughly exasperated with his failure to write what he wishes. In Scene 2 a very slight change or amplification in the phrasing will permit him to bring out whatever of importance in Scene 1 the suggested revision has omitted.

Doubtless it would not be so easy to get rid of the soliloquies of the Cardinal, Iago, and Emilia, but ingenuity in handling the scene preceding and the scene following soliloquies will usually dispose of all or most of them. When _Lady Windermere's Fan_ of Wilde first appeared, hardly any one seriously objected to its soliloquies. They were an accepted convention of the stage. When Miss Margaret Anglin revived the play very successfully a year or two ago, she rightly felt these soliloquies to be outworn. By use of pantomime, in some cases hardly more than the pantomime called for in the stage directions, she disposed of all except an occasional line or two of the original soliloquies. The instances cited from her prompt book of the play show one soliloquy cut to stage directions and two lines of the original, and the second cut to mere stage direction.