Chapter XLVII: 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 _Polonius._ Farewell. How now
Ofelia, what's the news with you? Ophelia, what's the matter?

_Ophelia._ O my Lord, my Lord,
_Ofelia._ O my deare father, I have been so affrighted.
such a change in nature,
So great an alteration in a _Polonius._ With what i'th
Prince, name of God?
So pitifull to him, fearefull to
mee, _Ophelia._ My Lord, as I was
A maiden's eye ne're looked on. sowing in my closset,
Lord Hamlet with his doublet
_Corambis._ Why, what's the all unbrac'd,
matter my Ofelia? No hat upon his head, his
stockins fouled,
_Ofelia._ O yong Prince Hamlet, Ungartred, and downe gyved to
the only floure of Denmark, his ancle,
Hee is bereft of all the wealth Pale as his shirt, his knees
he had, knocking each other,
The Jewell that adorn'd his And with a look so pittious in
feature most purport
Is filcht and stolne away, his As if he had been loosed out
wit's bereft him. 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?