CHAPTER V

FROM SUBJECT TO PLOT: PROPORTIONING THE MATERIAL: NUMBER AND LENGTH OF ACTS

A dramatist, proportioning his rough story for performance in the limited space of time the stage permits, faces at once the question: "How many acts?" If inexperienced, noting the number of changes of set his story seems to demand he finds himself in a dilemma: to give an act to each change of scene is to break the play into many scrappy acts of a few minutes each; to crowd all his needed scenes into five acts is to get scenes as scrappy as the eight which make the fifth act of Shakespeare's _Macbeth_ or the ten in Act IV of _Henry VI_, Part II. In either case, if he gives his numerous scenes adequate treatment, he is likely to find their combined length forces him beyond the time limit the theatre allows--about two hours and a half.

Let him rid himself immediately of any feeling that custom or dramatic dignity calls for any preference among three, four, or five acts. The Elizabethan drama put such a spell upon the imagination of English-speaking peoples that until recently the idea was accepted: "Five is dignity, with a trailing robe, whereas one, two, or three acts would be short skirts, and degrading."[1] Today a dramatist may plan for a play of three, four, or five acts, as seems to him best.

Why, if no change of scene be required, is not a play of one long act desirable? At first sight, there would seem to be a gain in the unbroken movement. The power of sustained attention in audiences is, however, distinctly limited. Any one who has seen a performance of _The Trojan Women_[2] by Euripides, or von Hofmannsthal's _Electra_[3] needs no further proof that though each makes a short evening's entertainment it is exhausting because of uninterrupted movement from start to finish. To plays of one long act most audiences become unresponsive from sheer physical fatigue. Consequently, use has confined one-act plays to subjects that may be treated in fifteen minutes to an hour, with an average length of from twenty to forty-five minutes. Strindberg has stated well the problem which the play in one long act involves: "I have tried," he wrote in his Introduction to _Miss Julia_, "to abolish the division into acts. And I have done so because I have come to fear that our decreasing capacity for illusion might be unfavorably affected by intermissions during which the spectator would have time to reflect and to get away from the suggestive influence of the author-hypnotist. My play will probably last an hour and a half, and as it is possible to listen that length of time, or longer, to a lecture, a sermon, or a debate, I have imagined that a theatrical performance could not become fatiguing in the same time. As early as 1872, in one of my first dramatic experiments, _The Outlaw_, I tried the same concentrated form, but with scant success. The play was written in five acts, and wholly completed, when I became aware of the restless, scattered effect it produced. Then I burned it, and out of the ashes rose a single, well-built act, covering fifty printed pages, and taking an hour for its performance. Thus the form of the present play is not new, but it seems to be my own, and changing aesthetical conventions may possibly make it timely.

"My hope is still for a public educated to a point where it can sit through a whole-evening performance in a single act. But that point cannot be reached without a great deal of experimentation."[4]

The difficulty with a play of only two acts is similar. If the piece is to fill an evening, each act must last an hour or more. _The Winter's Tale_ is really a two-act play: Act I is the story of _Hermione_ and _Leontes_, Act II the story of _Florizel_ and _Perdita_, with _Time_ as Chorus separating the acts. Division of this play into five acts and use of modern scenery have given it the effect of breaking to pieces midway, where Time speaks. When each of the two parts is played uninterruptedly, as in Mr. Granville Barker's recent revival, this effect disappears and it becomes clear that the original division is artistically right. However, so long is each of the two parts that _The Winter's Tale_, when seen in this way, badly strains the attention of a present-day audience.

Contrastingly, to use more than five acts in the space of two hours and a half is either to carry the performance over into a second day, as with the two-part play of Elizabeth's time--something we cannot now tolerate; or to write such scrappy acts that the frequent shifting of scenery and dropping of the curtain spoil desired illusion. If it be remembered that there is nothing essentially wrong in a play of one, two, six, or even more acts, and that changing tastes or the necessities of particular subjects may in very rare instances make any of these divisions desirable, it can be said that three, four, or five acts are today the normal divisions for plays.

An objection to long plays of one or two acts is that when the piece lasts only an hour and a half, as in the case of _Miss Julia_, the evening must be filled out with something else. In the first place, it is by no means easy to arrange a mixed program in which each play shows to complete advantage. Nor are audiences usually fond of adjusting themselves to new characters and new plots two or three times in an evening. On the professional stage, Barrie's short plays have done something to make the general public more ready to shift their interest to fresh subjects in the course of an evening, but a mixed program of plays is rarely popular except in theatres of the so-called "experimental" class.

The advantage in three acts is that each allows a longer space than does the division into four or five acts in which characterization may develop before the eyes of the audience, or a larger number of illustrative actions bearing on the central purpose of the act may be shown. The offset is that three acts provide only two breaks by which the passing of time may be suggested. Neither four nor three acts have any essential superiority over each other, or over five acts. Five acts, in and of themselves, have no superiority over four or three; nor, as some persons have seemed to think, are they the only divisions in which a drama in verse may be written. Avoidance of awkward changes of scene within an act may compel use of four or five acts rather than three. The more episodes in the story to be dramatized, the more aspects of character to be shown by action, the more acts or scenes the dramatist must use. If long spaces of time must be allowed for because they are part of the story or marked changes of character demand them, the dramatist will need more _entr'acte_ space, and, consequently, more acts. It is, then, necessary change of place and passage of time which are the chief factors in determining choice among three, four, or five acts.

For centuries theoretical students of the drama have worried themselves about the two unities: place and time. Practising dramatists, however, have usually found that generalizations in regard to them help little and that in each individual play they must work out the place and time problems for themselves. Practice as to shifting scenes has depended most, and always will, upon whether the physical conditions of the stage permit many real or imagined shifts. The Greek stage, with its fixed background and its chorus nearly always present, forced an attempt at unity of place, though the Greeks often broke through it.

Unity of action was the first dramatic law of the ancients; unity of time and place were mere consequences of the former which they would scarcely have observed more strictly than exigency required had not the combination with the chorus arisen. For since their actions required the presence of a large body of people and this concourse always remained the same, who could go no farther from their dwellings nor remain absent longer than it is customary to do from mere curiosity, they were almost obliged to make the scene of the action one and the same spot and confine the time to one and the same day. They submitted bona fide to this restriction; but with a suppleness of understanding such that in seven cases out of nine they gained more than they lost thereby. For they used this restriction as a reason of simplifying the action and to cut away all that was superfluous, and thus, reduced to essentials, it became only the ideal of an action which was developed most felicitously in this form which required the least addition from circumstances of time and place.

The French, on the contrary, who found no charms in true unity of action, who had been spoilt by the wild intrigues of the Spanish school, before they had learnt to know Greek simplicity, regarded the unity of time and place not as consequences of unity of action, but as circumstances absolutely needful to the representation of an action, to which they must therefore adapt their more complicated and richer actions with all the severity required in the use of chorus, which, however, they had totally abolished. When they found, however, how difficult, nay at times impossible this was, they made a truce with the tyrannical rules against which they had not the courage to rebel. Instead of a single place they introduced an uncertain place, under which we could imagine now this now that spot; enough if the places combined were not too far apart and none required special scenery, so that the scenery could fit the one about as well as the other. Instead of the unity of a day, they substituted unity of duration, and a certain period during which no one spoke of sunrise or sunset, or went to bed, or at least did not go to bed more than once, however much might occur in this space, they allowed to pass as a day.[5]

The Elizabethan author writing, in his public performances, for an audience accustomed to build imaginatively a setting from hints given by properties, signs on the stage, or descriptions in the text, changed the scene at will. Recall the thirteen changes in Act III of _Antony and Cleopatra_.

On the modern stage such frequent change is undesirable for three reasons: the expense of constructing and painting so many scenes; the time consumed in making the changes, which may reduce decidedly the acting time of the play; and the check in sustained interest on the part of the audience caused by these many changes. The growth of the touring system also has led to reduction in the number of scenes, for transportation of numerous and elaborate sets is too expensive. Moreover, the interest in extreme realism has carried us more and more into such scenes of simple or sordid living as call for only one to three sets in a play.

At times it is easy, or at least possible with ingenuity, to have for a play, whatever its length, but one setting. Von Hofmannsthal's _Electra_ is an illustration. Another is _The Servant in the House_, a play in five acts by Rann Kennedy.

The scene, which remains unchanged throughout the play, is a room in the vicarage. Jacobean in character, its oak-panelling and beamed-ceiling, together with some fine pieces of antique furniture, lend it an air of historical interest, whilst in all other respects it speaks of solid comfort, refinement, and unostentatious elegance.[6]

Hervieu's _Connais-Toi_, a play of three acts, is another instance of one setting throughout.[7]

Not infrequently it is comparatively simple to confine a play to one set for each act, or even less. _The Great Divide_, by William Vaughn Moody, and _The Weavers_, by Hauptmann, show a new setting for each act. In _The Truth_, by Clyde Fitch, Acts I and II have the same setting: "At _Mrs. Warder's_. An extremely attractive room in the best of taste"; Acts III and IV are in "_Mr. Roland's_ rooms in _Mrs. Crespigny's_ flat in Baltimore." In the four acts of _The Witching Hour_, by Augustus Thomas, there is a change of set only for Act II.[8] Such reducing of possible settings to two or three for a play of four or five acts requires practice, and, in some cases, decided ingenuity. In present-day use the safest principle is this: a set to an act, if really needed, but no change of set within the act unless there be unavoidable reason for it.

What, then, is the would-be dramatist to do when faced by six or more settings to a five-act play, or two or three settings within what he believes should be an act? Often what seems a necessary early scene is but clumsy exposition: skilful handling would incorporate it with the scene immediately following. Scene 1, Act III, of Dryden's _The Spanish Friar_ is in the street. Lorenzo, in friar's habit, meeting the real friar, Dominic, bribes him to introduce him into the chamber of Elvira. The scene is merely the easiest way of making the audience understand why the two men enter together very early in the next scene.

ACT III. SCENE 1. _The Street_

_Enter Lorenzo, in Friar's habit, meeting Dominic_

Here follow some fifteen speeches in which the arrangements are made. Then:

SCENE 2

_Enter Elvira, in her chamber_

_Elvira._ He'll come, that's certain; young appetites are sharp, and seldom need twice bidding to such a banquet;--well, if I prove frail,--as I hope I shall not till I have compassed my design,--never woman had such a husband to provoke her, such a lover to allure her, or such a confessor to absolve her. Of what am I afraid, then? not my conscience that's safe enough; my ghostly father has given it a dose of church opium to lull it; well, for soothing sin, I'll say that for him, he's a chaplain for any court in Christendom.

_Enter Lorenzo and Dominic_

O father Dominic, what news? How, a companion with you! What game have you on hand, that you hunt in couples?

_Lorenzo._ (_Lifting up his hood._) I'll show you that immediately.

_Elvira._ O my love!

_Lorenzo._ My life!

_Elvira._ My soul! (_They embrace._)

_Dominic._ I am taken on the sudden with a grievous swimming in my head and such a mist before my eyes that I can neither hear nor see.[9]

All the needed exposition given in Scene 1 could, with very little difficulty, be transferred to Scene 2. Were the two men to enter, not to Elvira, but by themselves, they could quickly make their relationship clear. The conduct and speech of Elvira could be made to illustrate what she now states in soliloquy just before the two men enter.

In the original last act[10] of Lillo's _George Barnwell_, the settings are: "A room in a prison," "A dungeon." The whole act could easily have been arranged to take place in some room where prisoners could see friends. Today we should in many cases exchange a number of settings as used in eighteenth century plays for one setting.

Scenes, which in the original story occurred upstairs or downstairs, inside or outside a house, may often be easily interchanged or combined. _The Clod_, by Lewis Beach, a one-act success of the Washington Square Players, in its first draft showed a setting both upstairs and downstairs. This unsightly arrangement was quickly changed so that all the action took place in a lower room. At one time Bulwer-Lytton thought seriously of changing what is now Scene 1, Act I, of his _Richelieu_, an interior, to an exterior scene. To Macready he wrote:

Let me know what you mean about omitting altogether the scene at Marion de Lorme's.

Do you mean to have no substitute for it?

What think you of merely the outside of the House? Francois, coming out with the packet and making brief use of Huguet and Mauprat [who figure in the interior scene]. Remember you wanted to have the packet absolutely given to Francois.[11]

Greek plays, because of the fixed backing, provide many illustrations of interior scenes brought outdoors:

...The dramatic action was necessarily laid in the open air--usually before a palace or temple.... In general the dramatists displayed an amazing fertility of invention in this particular, as a few illustrations will suffice to show. In the _Alcestis_ Apollo explains his leaving Ametus' palace on the ground of the pollution which a corpse would bring upon all within the house (Euripides' _Alcestis_, 22 f.) and Alcestis herself, though in a dying condition, fares forth to look for the last time upon the sun in heaven (_ibid._ 206). Oedipus is so concerned in the afflictions of his subjects that he cannot endure making inquiries through a servant but comes forth to learn the situation in person (Sophocles' _Oedipus Rex_, 6 f.). Karion is driven out of doors by the smoke of sacrifice upon the domestic altar (Aristophanes' _Plutus_, 821 f.). In Plautus' _Mostellaria_ (1, ff.) one slave is driven out of doors by another as the result of a quarrel. Agathon cannot compose his odes in the winter time, unless he bask in the sunlight (Aristophanes' _Thesmophoriazuae_, 67 f.). The love-lorn Phaedra teases for light and air (Euripides' _Hippolytus_, 181). And Medea's nurse apologizes for her soliloquizing before the house with the excuse that the sorrows within have stifled her and caused her to seek relief by proclaiming them to earth and sky (Euripides' _Medea_, 56 ff.).[12]

When it is not easy to see how a number of settings may be cut down, a dramatist should carefully consider this: May episodes happening to the same person or persons in the same settings, but apparently demanding separate treatment because they occur at widely different times, be brought together? The dramatizer of a novel faces many opportunities for this telescoping of scenes. Any one adapting _A Tale of Two Cities_, if he uses Jerry Cruncher, will probably combine the two scenes in his home. To bring together incidents happening to the same person or persons at the same place, but at different times, is the easiest method of cutting down possible scenes.

It is, of course, possible to bring together circumstances which happened at different places at different times, but to the same persons. A notable instance is Irving's compacting of two scenes in Tennyson's _Becket_: he places at Montmirail what is essential in both Scene 2, Act II, Montmirail. "The Meeting of the Kings," and Scene 3, 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

PROLOGUE

_Flourish. Enter Chorus_

_Chorus._ Now all the youth of England are on fire, And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies. Now thrive the armourers, and honour's thought Reigns solely in the breast of every man. They sell the pasture now to buy the horse, Following the mirror of all Christian kings, With winged heels, as English Mercuries. For now sits Expectation in the air, And hides a sword from hilts unto the point With crowns imperial, crowns, and coronets, Promis'd to Harry and his followers. The French, advis'd by good intelligence Of this most dreadful preparation, Shake in their fear, and with pale policy Seek to divert the English purposes. O England! model to thy inward greatness, Like little body with a mighty heart, What mightst thou do, that honour would thee do, Were all thy children kind and natural! But see thy fault! France hath in thee found out A nest of hollow bosoms, which he fills With treacherous crowns; and three corrupted men, One, Richard Earl of Cambridge, and the second, Henry Lord Scroop of Masham, and the third, Sir Thomas Grey, knight, of Northumberland, Have, for the gilt of France,--O guilt indeed!-- Confirm'd conspiracy with fearful France; And by their hands this grace of kings must die, If hell and treason hold their promises, Ere he take ship for France, and in Southampton. Linger your patience on, and we'll digest The abuse of distance, force a play. The sum is paid; the traitors are agreed; The King is set from London; and the scene Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton. There is the playhouse now, there must you sit; And thence to France shall we convey you safe, And bring you back, charming the narrow seas To give you gentle pass; for, if we may, We'll not offend one stomach with our play. But, till the King come forth, and not till then, Unto Southampton do we shift our scene. (_Exit._) _Henry V._

As audiences, becoming more interested in characterization and less in mere story, grew to expect that each act would show the central figure growing out of the preceding act and into the next, they balked more and more at hearing of changes instead of seeing them. They insisted that the effective forces must work before their eyes. Hence the disappearance of Dumb Show and Chorus. With _Lady Bountiful_[31] the public did not object strongly to what was supposed to happen between the fourth and fifth acts, because it took the whole play as a mere story. But in _Iris_, when the author asked it to accept all the important stages in the moral breakdown of Iris as taking place between the fourth and fifth acts, there was considerable dissent. Contrast the greater satisfactoriness when an auditor can watch important changes, as he may with Sophy Fullgarney in the third act of the _Gay Lord Quex_,[32] or with Mrs. Dane in the fourth act of _Mrs. Dane's Defence_. To assume that a lapse of time stated to have passed in a just preceding _entr'acte_, and a change of environment there, have produced marked difference in character is not today enough. A dramatist may assume that only as much time has passed between acts as he makes entirely plausible by the happenings and characterization of the next act. For any needed statement of what has happened since the close of a preceding act he must depend only on deft exposition within the act in question.

Recent usage no longer insists that acts may not somewhat overlap. "Toward the end of Act II of Eugene Walter's _Paid in Full_, Emma Brooks is disclosed making an appointment with Captain Williams over a telephone. In the next act we are transferred to Captain Williams's quarters, and the dramatic clock has, in the meanwhile, been turned back some fifteen minutes, for presently the telephone bell rings, and the same appointment is made over again. In other words, Act II partly overlaps Act I in time, but the scene is different."[33] There is a similar use in _Under Cover_. At the beginning of the last act, a group, sleepily at cards, is startled by the burglar alarm. The climax of the preceding act was that same alarm.

The most difficult kind of off-stage time to treat comes not within or between the acts. It is the time before the play begins in which events took place which must be known as soon as the play opens, if auditors are to follow the play understandingly. Every dramatist, as he turns from his story to his plot, faces the problem: How plant in the mind of the audience past events and facts concerning the characters which are fundamental in understanding the play. The Chorus and the Dumb Show again were, among early dramatists, the clumsy solution of this problem.

THE PROLOGUE

In Troy, there lies the scene. From isles of Greece The princes orgillous, their high blood chaf'd, Have to the port of Athens sent their ships, Fraught with the ministers and instruments Of cruel war. Sixty and nine, that wore Their crownets regal, from the Athenian bay Put forth toward Phrygia; and their vow is made To ransack Troy, within whose strong immures The ravish'd Helen, Menelaus' queen, With wanton Paris sleeps; and that's the quarrel. To Tenedos they come, And the deep-drawing barks do there disgorge Their warlike fraughtage. Now on Dardan plains The fresh and yet unbruised Greeks do pitch Their brave pavilions. Priam's six-gated city, Dardan, and Timbria, Helias, Chetas, Troien, And Antenorides, with massy staples And corresponsive and fulfilling bolts Spar up the sons of Troy. Now expectation, tickling skittish spirits, On one and other side, Troyan and Greek, Sets all on hazard; and hither am I come A prologue arm'd, but not in confidence Of author's pen or actor's voice, but suited In like conditions as our argument, To tell you, fair beholders, that our play Leaps o'er the vaunt and firstlings of those broils, Beginning in the middle, starting thence away To what may be digested in a play. Like or find fault; do as your pleasures are. Now good or bad; 'tis but the chance of war.[34]

A growing technique led the dramatists from Dumb Show and Chorus to soliloquy, in order to provide this necessary preliminary exposition. Is Richard, Duke of Gloucester, at the opening of _Richard III_, much more than a re-christened Chorus?

ACT I. SCENE I. (_London. A street._)

_Enter Richard, Duke of Gloucester, solus_

_Gloucester._ Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean buried. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; Our bruised arms hung up for monuments; Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visag'd War hath smooth'd his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I, that am not shap'd for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp'd, and want love's majesty To strut before a wanton ambling nymph; I, that am curtail'd of this fair proportion, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform'd, unfinish'd, sent before my time Into this breathing world, scarce half made up, And that so lamely and unfashionable That dogs bark at me as I halt by them; Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace, Have no delight to pass away the time, Unless to see my shadow in the sun And descant on mine own deformity. And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover To entertain these fair well-spoken days, I am determined to prove a villain And hate the idle pleasures of these days. Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous, By drunken prophecies, libels, and dreams, To set my brother Clarence and the King In deadly hate the one against the other; And if King Edward be as true and just As I am subtle, false, and treacherous, This day should Clarence closely be mew'd up About a prophecy, which says that G Of Edward's heirs the murderer shall be. Dive, thoughts, down to my soul; here Clarence comes.

Led by Shakespeare, dramatists have come to understand that such information should, if in any way possible, be conveyed not by soliloquy but within the play itself. It should, too, be so incorporated with the text that it is acquired almost unconsciously by an auditor held absorbed by the immediate dramatic action.

Sometimes, however, it is well-nigh impossible thus to incorporate needed exposition with the dramatic action. For instance, a play depicted the fortunes of a Jacobite's daughter. All that is dramatic in her story as a young woman is predetermined by terrible scenes attending the death of her father, when she was a child of six. Somehow the audience must be made to understand very early in the play what these scenes were which made a lasting, intense impression on the child. That the young woman, when twenty, should recall the scenes with such minuteness as to make the audience perfectly understand their dramatic values is hardly plausible. To have some one come out of the past to reawaken the old memories is commonplace, and likely, by long descriptions to clog the movement of the act. Facing this problem, present-day dramatists, avoiding chorus, soliloquy, and lengthy description, have chosen to put such needed material into a division which, because it is preliminary, they have at will distinguished from the other acts as the Induction or more frequently the Prologue. The latter term is a confusing use. Historically, it signifies the single figure or group of figures who, before the curtain, bespeak the favor of the audience for the play to follow. Very rarely, the Prologue partook a little of the nature of Chorus, stating details that must be understood, were the play to have its full effect. Dramatists, feeling that the relation of this introductory division to the other divisions is not so close as are the inter-relations of the other divisions, have called this preliminary action, not _Act I_, but _Prologue_. A similar situation exists for what has been dubbed Epilogue. Historically, a figure from the play just ended, or an entirely new figure, strove, often in lines not written by the dramatist, to point the story or, at least, to win for it the final approval of the audience. Today, when a dramatist wishes to point the meaning of a play which he seems to have brought to a close, or to include it in some larger scheme, he writes what he prefers to call, not an additional act, but an Epilogue.

A dramatist should be very careful that what he calls Prologue or Epilogue is not merely an additional act. An act does not cease to be an act, and become a prologue or an epilogue, because its length is shorter than that usual for an act. True it is that most prologues and epilogues are short, but that is not their distinguishing characteristic. If they are brief, it is because the dramatist wants to move as quickly as possible from his induction or prologue to his main story, or knows that when the play proper is ended, he cannot with his epilogue hold his audience long. Not always, however, are prologues, or epilogues short. That of _Madame Sans Gene_[35] has the same number of pages as Act II, seventeen. The Prologue of _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_[36] fills some sixty-two pages. The Epilogue of the same play covers fifty-six pages. An act in this play makes seventy-eight pages. In _A Celebrated Case_[37] the Prologue covers twenty-one pages; the subsequent acts run from eight to twelve pages each.

Nor is an act changed into a prologue or epilogue because the space of time between it and the other divisions is longer than between any two of them. Does an act cease to be an act and become a prologue or epilogue, when the space of time between it and the other acts is twenty-five years, or should it be thirty? The absurdity of making the use of the words Prologue or Epilogue depend upon the space of time between one division and another is evident. It is true that the Prologue of _Madame Sans Gene_ takes place nineteen years before the three acts which follow, but it concerns the same people. It might equally well be called Act I. _The Passing of the Third Floor Back_ might just as correctly be announced as a play in three acts instead of "An idle fancy in a Prologue, a Play, and an Epilogue." Recently _A Successful Calamity_ was stated to be in two acts, each preceded by a Prologue. Except for the novel appearance of the statement in the program, it might more correctly have been called a play in four acts. Little except the will of the dramatist settled that the last division of Pinero's _Letty_ should be called an Epilogue. It occurs only two years and a half after the preceding act. It presents the same people. Similarly the Prologue to Tennyson's _Becket_ might just as well be called Act I, except that this nomenclature would give the play six acts. In the stage version by Henry Irving, the four acts and a Prologue might correctly be called five acts.

The anonymous play, _The Taming of a Shrew_,[38] on which Shakespeare founded his farce-comedy of similar title, shows a good use of Prologue and Epilogue. By a practical joke, _Christopher Sly_ the beggar is made to believe he is a Lord. As a part of the joke, the play is acted before him. Now and again, in the course of it, he comments on it. He and his group finish the performance in a sort of Epilogue. When Shakespeare uses Sly, only to let him shortly withdraw for good, the arrangement seems curiously incomplete and unsatisfactory. _Romance_, by Edward Sheldon, shows right use of so-called epilogue and prologue. As the curtain falls on the brief prologue, the aged Bishop is telling his grandson the story of his love for the Cavallini. Then the play, which is the Bishop's story, unrolls itself for three acts. In turn they fade into the epilogue, in which the grandson, as the Bishop finishes his story, goes off in spite of it to marry the girl he loves. By means of the epilogue and prologue Mr. Sheldon gains irony and contrast, relates the main play to larger values, and answers the inevitable question of his audience at the end of his third act: What happened to them afterward? Not to have used the so-called epilogue and prologue here would have forced total reconstruction of the material and probably a clumsier result. Such setting of a long play within a very brief play is one of the conditions for the legitimate use of the so-called prologue and epilogue.

Another legitimate use, though perhaps not so clear-cut, is illustrated by the Prologue to _A Celebrated Case_.[39] The play might, perhaps, be written without it, but, if it were, the scene of Act I in which Adrienne recognizes the convict as her father, would be filled with much more exposition, and the present emphasis on the powerful emotions of the moment would be somewhat blurred by the emotions called up by exposition of the past. Clearly, the play gains rather than loses by the presence of the prologue. Obviously the latter stands somewhat apart from the three acts which follow, less definitely related to them than they are to one another. So it may, perhaps, better be called a prologue than an act.

Of course, the distinction between prologue and act is a matter of nomenclature, not of effectiveness in acting. Look at _My Lady's Dress_, by Edward Knobloch. Scene 1, Act I, and Scene 3, Act III, have the same setting, a boudoir, and are more closely related to each other than to the rest of the play.[40] Indeed, what stands between are one-act plays making the dream of Anne. According to present usage, Mr. Knobloch could have called these scenes Prologue and Epilogue, and treated all that stands between as the play proper. That he did or didn't makes no difference in the acting. The growing use of the two words, Prologue and Epilogue, merely marks an increasing sense of dramatic technique which tries by nomenclature to emphasize for a reader nice differences which the dramatist discerns in the inter-relations of his material.

To sum up, there is real significance, though present confusion, in recent use of the words, Prologue and Epilogue. The use rests on a fact: that sometimes a play is best proportioned, when it has at the beginning or end, or both, a brief division related to the story and essential to it, but not so closely related to any act as are the acts to one another. The names Prologue and Epilogue should not, however, be used interchangeably for acts. They should be kept for their historical use--verse or prose spoken in front of the curtain before or at an end of the play, in order to win or intensify sympathy for it. We should find different names for these divisions,--perhaps, Induction and Finale?

What should be the length of an act? There can be no rule as to this. Naturally, the work of the first and last acts differs somewhat from the intervening acts, whether one or three in number. While it is the chief business of the intervening acts to maintain and increase interest already created, the first act must obviously create that interest as swiftly as possible, and the last act bring that interest to a climactic close. The first act, because in it the characters must be introduced, necessary past history stated, and the story well started, is likely to be longer than the other acts. The last act, inasmuch as even at its beginning we are usually not distant from the climax of the play, is most often the shortest division, for as soon as the climax is reached, we should drop the curtain as quickly as possible. A glance at certain notable plays of different periods will show, however, that the length of an act most depends, not on any given rule, but on the skill of the dramatist in accomplishing what he has decided the particular act must do. In the Cambridge edition of Shakespeare's _Lear_ (printed in two columns of fine type) the acts run as follows:

Act I 9-1/2 pages Act II 7 pages Act III 6-1/2 pages Act IV 6-1/4 pages Act V 5-1/4 pages

_Kismet_, a play modeled on the Elizabethan, shows this division:

Act I 48 pages Act II 33 pages Act III 22-1/2 pages

For three plays of Richard Steele it is possible to give the exact playing-time:[41]

_The Funeral_ _The Conscious Lovers_ _The Tender Husband_ Act I 30 min. Act I 33 min. Act I 25 min. Act II 36 min. Act II 28 min. Act II 22 min. Act III 20 min. Act III 24 min. Act III 14 min. Act IV 20 min. Act IV 28 min. Act IV 15 min. Act V 20 min. Act V 31 min. Act V 18 min.

Total, 2 hrs. 6 min. Total, 2 hrs. 24 min. Total, 1 hr. 34 min.

Two recent plays divide thus:

_Candida_ _The Silver Box_ Act I 27 pages Act I 27 pages Act II 24 pages Act II 27 pages Act III 21 pages Act III 21 pages

The plays just cited are of very different lengths: _Kismet_[42] took nearly three hours in performance; _Candida_[43] and _The Silver Box_[44] are so short that they force a manager, if he is to provide an entertainment of the usual length, to a choice: he must begin his performance late, or allow long waits between the acts, or give a one-act piece with the longer play. Yet it is noteworthy that in all these plays except Steele's, the first is as long as any other act, or longer, and the last act is the shortest. However, the only safe principle is that of Dumas _pere_ already quoted: "First act clear, last act short, and everywhere interest."

In proportioning the whole material into acts, it should be remembered, of course, that the time allowed for a theatrical performance ranges from two hours to two hours and three quarters. Five to fifteen minutes should be allowed for each _entr'acte_ unless the usual waits are to be avoided by some mechanical device. Figure that a double-spaced type-written page takes in acting something more than a minute, though necessary dramatic pauses and "business" make it difficult to estimate exactly the playing time of any page. Speaking approximately, it may be said that a three-act play of one hundred and twenty typewritten pages will fill, with the _entr'actes_, at least two hours and a half. In apportioning the story into acts the first requisite is, then, that the total, even with the necessary waits between acts, shall not exceed the length of time during which the public will be attentive.

The length of each act must in every case be determined by the work in the total which it has to do. Since pre-Shakespearean days, the artistry of the act has been steadily developing. Until _circa_, 1595, what dramatists "strove to do was, not so to arrange their material that its inner relations should be perfectly clear, but to narrate a series of events that did not, of necessity, possess such inner relations. It is much to be doubted whether any thought of such relations ever entered their heads."[45] Influenced particularly by Shakespeare, the drama from that time has steadily improved in knowledge of what each act should do in the sum total, and how it should be done. The act is "more than a convenience in time. It is imposed by the limited power of attention of the human mind, or by the need of the human body for occasional refreshment. A play with a well-marked, well-balanced act-structure is a higher artistic organism than a play with no act-structure, just as a vertebrate animal is higher than a mollusc. In every crisis of real life (unless it be so short as to be a mere incident) there is a rhythm of rise, progress, culmination, and solution. Each act ought to stimulate and temporarily satisfy an interest of its own, while definitely advancing the main action."[46] Each act, then, should be a unit of the whole, which accomplishes its own definite work.

Here is Ibsen's rough apportioning of the work for each act in a play of which he was thinking.

Do you not think of dramatising the story of Faste? It seems to me that there is the making of a very good popular play in it. Just listen!

Act 1.--Faste as the half-grown boy, eating the bread of charity and dreaming of greatness.

Act 2.--Faste's struggle in the town.

Act 3.--Faste's victory in the town.

Act 4.--Faste's defeat and flight from the country.

Act 5.--Faste's return as a victorious poet. He has found himself.

It is a fine adventurous career to depict dramatically. But of course you would have to get farther away from your story first. You perhaps think this a barbarous and inhuman suggestion. But all your stories have the making of a drama in them.[47]

In _The Princess and the Butterfly_,[48] Act I not only disposes of preliminary necessary exposition, but depicts different kinds of restlessness in a group of women at or nearing middle age. Act II does the same for a group of men, and in the proposed duel provides what later may be made to reveal to Sir George how much Fay Zuliani cares for him. Act III complicates the story by showing that Fay is not the niece of Sir George, and illustrates the growing affection between the Princess and Edward Oriel. Act IV reveals to Sir George and Fay how much each cares for the other. The fifth act shows how Sir George and the Princess, who have tried to be wise and restrained, impulsively and instinctively choose the path of seeming unwisdom but immediate happiness.

In _The Trail of the Torch_,[49] Act I states the thesis of the play and offers the first great sacrifice by Sabine for her daughter, Marie-Jeanne. Sabine gives up Stangy in order to be with Marie-Jeanne, only to find that her daughter is in love with Didier. Act II illustrates that a mother will make every sacrifice for her children: Madame Fontenais, the grandmother, when her daughter Sabine begs her to sacrifice her fortune in order that Marie-Jeanne's anxiety as to the finances of Didier may be set at rest, refuses, thinking to protect Sabine's future. In turn, Sabine, putting aside all pride, calls Stangy back to her, believing that he will give her the aid she desires for Marie-Jeanne. Act III shows the extremes of sacrifice to which a mother may go,--here the forgery, and the sacrifice by Sabine of her mother to her daughter. Act IV illustrates the retribution for Sabine: the revelation by Stangy that, after Sabine sent him away, he married; Marie-Jeanne's announcement to her mother that she is to go to America with her father and that Sabine cannot go; and the death of Madame Fontenais caused, at least indirectly, by Sabine.

In all three cases we have only the baldest outline of what the act must do. The illustrative dramatic action by which each act is to accomplish its task is either in hand as part of a clearly defined story in the mind of the dramatist, or must be found immediately. Granted that it has been discovered (see chap. III, pp. 47-72), then as each act is shaped up from this material it should have certain qualities. It should be clear. It should lead the hearer on to the acts which follow: in other words, it should at least maintain an interest already established, and in most cases should increase that interest. To put these requisites more briefly, each act should have clearness and movement. Movement in an act means that, while thoroughly interesting itself, the act leads a hearer on to its immediate successor and, above all, the finale. Good movement depends on clearness and right emphasis. The emphasis in each act and in the whole play should be such that ultimately it accomplishes the purpose of the dramatist. How may these qualities, clearness, right emphasis, and consequent movement be gained?

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Essay on Comedy_, p. 8. George Meredith. Copyright, 1897, by Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[2] _The Trojan Women._ Translated by Gilbert Murray. G. Allen & Sons, London.

[3] _Electra_. Von Hofmannsthal. Translated by A. Symons. Brentano, New York.

[4] Introduction to _Miss Julia_. Translated by E. Bjorkman. Copyright, 1912, by Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[5] _Hamburg Dramaturgy_, p. 370. Lessing. Bohn ed.

[6] P. 13. Harper & Bros., New York.

[7] _Chief Contemporary Dramatists_, pp. 517-546. T. H. Dickinson, ed. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

[8] For all these plays, _idem_.

[9] Belles-Lettres Series. W. Strunk, ed. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston and New York.

[10] In the seventh edition, a scene, "The place of execution," is inserted to replace the original brief final scene which apparently took place in the "room." Belles-Lettres Series. Sir A. W. Ward, ed. D. C. Heath & Co.

[11] _Letters of Bulwer-Lytton to Macready_, XXVIII. Brander Matthews, ed.

[12] _The Influence of Local Theatrical Conditions upon the Drama of the Greeks._ Roy C. Flickinger. _Classical Journal_, October, 1911.

[13] See p. 83.

[14] Introduction to _Macbeth_. Cambridge ed. Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston.

[15] Introduction to Marlowe's _Edward II_. Tatlock and Martin. The Century Co.

[16] See _Play Production in America_. A. E. Krows. Henry Holt & Co., New York.

[17] _Plays_, pp. 33, 42. G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

[18] J. W. Luce & Co., Boston.

[19] _Theatre Complet_, vol. I. Calmann Levy, Paris.

[20] Belles-Lettres Series. Sir A. W. Ward, ed. D.C. Heath & Co., Boston and New York.

[21] Not often does a dramatist succeed in making real and supposed time agree as well as does Sir Arthur Pinero in Act III of _The Gay Lord Quex_. From seven to nine pages of absorbing action come between one chiming of the quarter hour and the next. Though a stopwatch would quickly reveal the somewhat disordered condition of that boudoir clock, an auditor, absorbed in the action of the moment, merely feels his tension increase if he notes the passing of time.

[22] See p. 35.

[23] Eugene Scribe, adopted by Mrs. Burton Harrison. Dramatic Publishing Co., Chicago.

[24] Mermaid Series. Chas. Scribner's Sons, New York.

[25] _Letters of Bulwer-Lytton to Macready_, LXIII. Brander Matthews, ed.

[26] Belles-Lettres Series. C. F. McClumpha, ed. D. C. Heath & Co., Boston and New York.

[27] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[28] _Plays._ G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

[29] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[30] Everyman's Library. Plumptre, ed.

[31] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[32] R. H. Russell & Co., New York.

[33] _The Influence of Local Theatrical Conditions upon the Drama of the Greeks._ R. C. Flickinger. _Classical Journal_, October, 1911.

[34] _Troilus and Cressida._

[35] Samuel French, New York.

[36] Hurst & Blackett, Ltd., London.

[37] Penn Publishing Co., Philadelphia.

[38] _Shakespeare's Library_, vol. VI. W. C. Hazlitt, ed. Reeves & Turner, London.

[39] Penn Publishing Co., Philadelphia.

[40] Drama League Series. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

[41] _Life of Richard Steele_, vol. II, p. 368. G. Aitken. Wm. Isbister, London.

[42] Methuen & Co., Ltd., London.

[43] _Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant._ Brentano, New York.

[44] _Plays._ G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York.

[45] _A Note on Act Division as practiced in the Early Elizabethan Drama._ Bulletin of Western Reserve University.

[46] _Play-Making_, p. 136. Wm. Archer. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston.

[47] _Letters of Henrik Ibsen_, p. 236; to Jonas Lie.

[48] Walter H. Baker & Co., Boston; W. Heinemann, London.

[49] P. Hervieu. Drama League Series. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.