One-Act Plays by Modern Authors
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Title: One-Act Plays by Modern Authors
Editor: Helen Louise Cohen
Release date: October 24, 2010 [eBook #33907]
Language: English
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Produced by Joseph R. Hauser, Christine P. Travers and the
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ONE-ACT PLAYS
BY MODERN AUTHORS
EDITED BY
HELEN LOUISE COHEN, Ph.D.
Chairman of the Department of English in the
Washington Irving High School in the
City of New York
Author of "The Ballade"
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
_All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form, by mimeograph or any other
means, without permission in writing from the publisher._
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. BY
QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, INC.
RAHWAY, N. J.
To
M. S. S.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Had not both authors and publishers acted with the greatest
generosity, this collection could not have been made. Though the
editor cannot adequately express her sense of obligation, she wishes
at least to record explicitly her indebtedness to Mr. Harold
Brighouse, Lord Dunsany, Mr. John Galsworthy, Lady Gregory, Mr. Percy
MacKaye, Miss Jeannette Marks, Miss Josephine Preston Peabody,
Professor Robert Emmons Rogers, Mr. Booth Tarkington, and Professor
Stark Young. The editor also desires to thank Chatto & Windus,
Duffield & Company, Gowans & Gray, Ltd., Harper & Brothers, Little,
Brown & Company, John W. Luce & Company, G. P. Putnam's Sons, Charles
Scribner's Sons, and The Sunwise Turn, for permissions granted
ungrudgingly.
Through the courtesy of Mr. T. M. Cleland, director of the Beechwood
Players, the pictures of the Beechwood Theatre appear. Miss Mary W.
Carter, chairman of the Department of English in the High School in
Montclair, New Jersey, contributed the photographs of the Garden
Theatre. Other illustrations appear through the kindness of _Theatre
Arts Magazine_, and of The Neighborhood Playhouse.
The editor is grateful to Mrs. John W. Alexander, Mr. B. Iden Payne,
and Mrs. T. Bernstein for the privilege of personal conferences on the
subject of the book. To Mr. Robert Edmond Jones, who has allowed three
of his designs to be reproduced and who has read and corrected that
part of the Introduction that deals with The New Art of the Theatre,
the editor takes this opportunity of expressing her warm appreciation.
Finally, the editor wishes to thank her friend, Helen Hopkins Crandell
for her indefatigable work on the proofs of this book.
PREFACE
Perhaps the student who is going to read the plays in this collection
may have felt at some time or other a gap between the "classics" that
he was working over in school and the contemporary literature that he
heard commonly discussed, but he does not know that until recently few
books were studied in the high school that were less than half a
century old. Consciousness of the gap often drove him to trashy
reading. He recognized Addison as respectable but remote, and yet he
had no guide to the good literature which the writers of his own day
were producing and which would be especially interesting to him,
because its ideas and language would be more nearly contemporary with
his own.
Even though the greatest literature has the quality of universality,
it has been almost invariably my experience that, only as one grows
older, is one quite ready to appreciate this quality. When one is
young, it is easier to enjoy literature written from a point of view
nearer to one's own life and times. Reading good contemporary
literature is likely also to pave the way for a deeper appreciation of
the great masterpieces of all time.
This is a collection of one-act plays, some of them less than five
years old, chosen both because their appeal seems not to be limited to
the adult audiences for which they were originally written, and
because they may well serve the purpose of introducing the student to
contemporary dramatists of standing. Some of them, it is true, make
use of old stories and traditions, but the treatment is in all cases
modern, if we except the literary fashion that we find in Josephine
Preston Peabody's _Fortune and Men's Eyes_. This, though it is a
one-act play, a modern development, is written more or less in the
Shakespearian convention; but whether we are bookish or not, we can
hardly help having a knowledge of Shakespeare's plays, because,
popular with all kinds of people, they are continually being revived
on the stage, and quoted in conversation.
The plays in this book, though intended for class-room study, may be
acted as well as read. The general introduction will be found helpful
to groups who produce plays, to those who live in cities and go to the
theatre often, and to those who like to experiment with dramatic
composition. For this book was planned to encourage an understanding
attitude towards the theatre, to deepen the love that is latent in the
majority of us for what is beautiful and uplifting in the drama, and
to make playgoing a less expensive, more regular, and more intelligent
diversion for the generation that is growing up.
H. L. C.
Washington Irving High School,
New York, 1 February, 1921.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION Page
The Workmanship of the One-Act Play xiii
Theatres of To-day
The Commercial Theatre and the Repertory Idea xx
The Little Theatre xxiii
The Irish National Theatre xxvi
The New Art of the Theatre xxix
Playmaking xxxiv
The Theatre in the School l
ROBERT EMMONS ROGERS
THE BOY WILL xxxviii
BOOTH TARKINGTON
Introduction 3
BEAUTY AND THE JACOBIN 5
ERNEST DOWSON
Introduction 53
THE PIERROT OF THE MINUTE 55
OLIPHANT DOWN
Introduction 77
THE MAKER OF DREAMS 79
PERCY MACKAYE
Introduction 97
GETTYSBURG 99
A. A. MILNE
Introduction 113
WURZEL-FLUMMERY 115
HAROLD BRIGHOUSE
Introduction 139
MAID OF FRANCE 141
LADY GREGORY
Introduction 157
SPREADING THE NEWS 159
JEANNETTE MARKS
Introduction 179
WELSH HONEYMOON 181
JOHN MILLINGTON SYNGE
Introduction 195
RIDERS TO THE SEA 198
LORD DUNSANY
Introduction 211
A NIGHT AT AN INN 213
STARK YOUNG
Introduction 226
THE TWILIGHT SAINT 227
LADY ALIX EGERTON
Introduction 241
THE MASQUE OF THE TWO STRANGERS 244
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
Introduction 265
THE INTRUDER 268
JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY
Introduction 287
FORTUNE AND MEN'S EYES 289
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Introduction 323
THE LITTLE MAN 325
ILLUSTRATIONS
Page
_Twelfth Night_ on the stage of the Theatre du Vieux
Colombier in New York xxiv
Design for _The Merchant of Venice_ by Robert Edmond Jones xxx
Design for _Good Gracious Annabelle_ by Robert Edmond Jones xxxii
Design for _The Seven Princesses_ by Robert Edmond Jones xxxiv
The Beechwood Theatre. Exterior and Interior lviii
The Garden Theatre. The original site, and the theatre as it
looks to-day lx
Setting for _The Maker of Dreams_ at The Neighborhood Playhouse
designed by Aline Bernstein 79
Costumes for _The Masque of the Two Strangers_ designed at the
Washington Irving High School.
Plate 1 240
Plate 2 253
Setting for _The Intruder_ designed by Sam Hume 268
INTRODUCTION
THE WORKMANSHIP OF THE ONE-ACT PLAY
The one-act play is a new form of the drama and more emphatically a
new form of literature. Its possibilities began to attract the
attention of European and American writers in the last decade of the
nineteenth century, those years when so many dramatic traditions
lapsed and so many precedents were established. It is significant that
the oldest play in the present collection is Maeterlinck's _The
Intruder_, published in 1890.
The history of this new form is of necessity brief. Before its vogue
became general, one-act plays were being presented in vaudeville
houses in this country and were being used as curtain raisers in
London theatres for the purpose of marking time until the late-dining
audiences should arrive. With the exception of the famous Grand
Guignol Theatre in Paris, where the entertainment for an evening might
consist of several one-act plays, all of the hair-raising,
blood-curdling variety, programs composed entirely of one-act plays
were rare. Sir James Matthew Barrie is usually credited with being the
first in England to write one-act plays intended to be grouped in a
single production. A program of this character has been uncommon in
the commercial theatre in America, but three of Barrie's one-act
plays, constituting a single program, have met with enthusiastic
response from American audiences.
There are two new developments in the history of the theatre that have
encouraged and promoted the writing of one-act plays: the one is the
Repertory Theatre abroad and the other is the Little Theatre movement
on both sides of the Atlantic. The repertory of the Irish Players, for
example, is composed largely of one-act plays, and American Little
Theatres are given over almost exclusively to the one-act play.
The one-act play is in reality so new a phenomenon, in spite of the
use that has been made of the form by playwrights like Pinero,
Hauptmann, Chekov, Shaw, and others of the first rank, that it is
still generally ignored in books on dramatic workmanship.[1] None the
less, the status of the one-act play is established and a study of the
plays of this length, which are rapidly increasing in number,
discloses certain tendencies and laws which are exemplified in the
form itself. Clayton Hamilton sums up the matter well when he says:
"The one-act play is admirable in itself, as a medium of art. It shows
the same relation to the full-length play as the short-story shows to
the novel. It makes a virtue of economy of means. It aims to produce a
single dramatic effect with the greatest economy of means that is
consistent with the utmost emphasis. The method of the one-act play at
its best is similar to the method employed by Browning in his dramatic
monologues. The author must suggest the entire history of a soul by
seizing it at some crisis of its career and forcing the spectator to
look upon it from an unexpected and suggestive point of view. A
one-act play in exhibiting the present should imply the past and
intimate the future. The author has no leisure for laborious
exposition; but his mere projection of a single situation should sum
up in itself the accumulated results of many antecedent causes.... The
form is complete, concise and self-sustaining; it requires an
extraordinary force of imagination."[2]
[Footnote 1: See, however, Clayton Hamilton, _Studies in
Stagecraft_, New York, 1914, and B. Roland Lewis, _The
Technique of the One-Act Play_, Boston, 1918.]
[Footnote 2: Clayton Hamilton, _Studies in Stagecraft_, New
York, 1914, pp. 254-255.]
To follow for a moment a train of thought suggested by Mr. Hamilton's
timely and appreciative comment on the technique of the one-act play:
All writers on the short-story agree that, to use Poe's phrase, "the
vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity of effect" is
indispensable to the successful short-story. This singleness of effect
is an equally important consideration in the structure of the one-act
play. A short-story is not a condensed novel any more than a one-act
play is a condensed full-length play. There is no fixed length for the
one-act play any more than there is for the short-story. The one-act
play must have its "dominant incident" and "dominant character" like
the short-story. The effect of the one-act play, as of the
short-story, is measured by the way it makes its readers and
spectators feel. Neither the short-story nor the one-act play need
necessarily "be founded on one of the passionate _cruces_ of life,
where duty and inclination come nobly to the grapple." One has but to
consider the short-stories of Henry James or the one-act plays of
Galsworthy or of Maeterlinck to be convinced that a _violent_ struggle
is not necessary to the art of either form.
This point is further illustrated in what Galsworthy himself says in
general about drama in his famous essay, _Some Platitudes Concerning
the Drama_, which should be read in connection with his satirical
comedy, _The Little Man_. In that essay Galsworthy writes: "The plot!
A good plot is that sure edifice which slowly rises out of the
interplay of circumstance on temperament, and temperament on
circumstance, within the enclosing atmosphere of an idea. A human
being is the best plot there is.... Now true dramatic action is what
characters do, at once contrary, as it were, to expectation, and yet
because they have already done other things.... Good dialogue again is
character, marshaled so as continually to stimulate interest or
excitement." This commentary of Galsworthy's on dramatic technique
offers to the student of _The Little Man_ an unusual opportunity to
verify a great critic's theory by a great playwright's practice. It is
indeed the _character_ of the Little Man that is the plot in this
case; the plot may be said to begin when, according to stage
direction, the hapless Baby wails, and to be well launched with the
Little Man's deprecatory, "Herr Ober! Might I have a glass of beer?"
These words distinguish him immediately from his bullying companions
in the buffet. The highest point of interest, like the beginning of
the plot, is to be found in the play of the Little Man's personality,
at the point where he is left alone with the Baby, now a typhus
suspect, and after an instant's wavering, bends all his puny energies
to pacifying its uneasy cry. Again, the end of the plot comes with the
tribute of the bewildered but adoring mother to the ineffably gentle
Little Man.
But a one-act play that has any pretensions to literature must be
looked upon as a law unto itself and should not be expected to conform
to any set of arbitrary requirements. As a matter of fact, there are
only a very few generalizations that can be made with regard to the
structure or to the classification of the one-act play. Even this book
contains plays that are not susceptible of any hard and fast
classification. _The Intruder_ and _Riders to the Sea_ are indubitably
tragedies, but _Fortune and Men's Eyes_, dealing, as it does, with the
tragic theme of love's disillusionment, belongs not at all with the
plays of Maeterlinck and Synge, shadowed, as they are, by death. And
though the deaths are many and bloody in _A Night at an Inn_, the
unreality of the romance is so strong that there is no such wrenching
of the human sympathies as we associate with tragedy. _The Pierrot of
the Minute_ is superficially a Harlequinade, but Dowson's insistence
on the theme of satiety brings it narrowly within the range of satire.
_Beauty and the Jacobin_ is rich in comedy; so is Lady Gregory's
_Spreading the News_, and in both, the situations change imperceptibly
from comedy to farce and from farce back to comedy.
The laws of the structure of the one-act play are in the nature of
dramatic art no less flexible. It can be said that in order to secure
that singleness of impression that is as essential to the one-act play
as to the short-story, a single well sustained theme is necessary, a
theme announced in some fashion early in the play. Indeed since the
one-act play is a short dramatic form, it may be said in regard to the
announcing of the theme that, "'Twere well it were done quickly." In
_Spreading the News_, the curtain is barely up before Mrs. Tarpey is
telling the magistrate: "Business, is it? What business would the
people here have but to be minding one another's business?" And at
approximately the same moment in the action of _The Intruder_, the
uncle, foreshadowing the theme of the mysterious coming of death,
says: "When once illness has come into a house, it is as though a
stranger had forced himself into the family circle."
The single dominant theme for its dramatic expression calls also for a
single situation developing to a single climax. In the case of
_Fortune and Men's Eyes_, it is the ballad-monger, who in crying his
wares,
"Plays, Play not Fair,
Or how a _gentlewoman's_ heart was took
By a player, that was King in a stage-play,"
gives us in the first few minutes of the play his ironical clue to the
theme. And this theme is worked out in Mary Fytton's shallow intrigue
with William Herbert, which culminates in the shattering of the
Player's dream on that autumn day in South London at "The Bear and the
Angel."
The single situation exemplifying the theme of _The Intruder_ is found
in the repeatedly expressed premonitions of the blind Grandfather,
stationary in his armchair, whose heightened senses detect the
presence of the Mysterious Stranger. The unity of effect secured in
this play is only rivaled, not surpassed, by the wonderful totality of
impression experienced by the reader of _The Fall of the House of
Usher_. The unity of effect in _The Intruder_ is secured also by
Maeterlinck's description of the setting, which reminds the playgoer
or the reader inevitably of Stevenson's familiar words: "Certain dark
gardens cry aloud for murder; certain old houses demand to be
haunted."
In general, as has been said, the plot of the one-act play, because of
the time limitations, admits of no distracting incidents. For the same
reason the characterization must be swift and direct. By Bartley
Fallon's first speech in _Spreading the News_, Lady Gregory
characterizes him completely. He needs but say: "Indeed it's a poor
country and a scarce country to be living in. But I'm thinking if I
went to America it's long ago the day I'd be dead," and the
fundamental part of his character is fixed in the minds of the
audience. From that moment it is just a question of filling in the
picture with pantomime and further dialogue.
The characterization of the Player in _Fortune and Men's Eyes_ begins
at the moment that he enters the tavern, when Wat, the bear-ward,
calls out:
"I say, I've played.... There's not one man
Of all the gang--save one.... Ay, there be one
I grant you, now!... He used me in right sort;
A man worth better trades."
Wat's verdict on the fair-mindedness of Master William Shakespeare of
the Lord Chamberlain's company is borne out by the Player's own,
"High fortune, man!
Commend me to thy bear."
[_Drinks and passes him the cup._]
The entrance of the ballad-monger gives Master Will an opening for a
punning jest and, the action continuing, shows him sympathetic to the
strayed lady-in-waiting, tender to the tavern boy, magnanimous to the
false friend and falser love.
One method of characterization which the author allows herself to use
in this play, no doubt to heighten the Elizabethan illusion, is rare
in the contemporary drama: when this "dark lady of the sonnets" flees
"The Bear and the Angel," the Player breaks forth into the
self-revealing soliloquy, found so frequently in his own plays, and
continuing as a dramatic convention until the last quarter of the
nineteenth century.[3]
[Footnote 3: The Elizabethan platform stage survived until
then in the shape of the long "apron," projecting in front of
the proscenium. The characters were constantly stepping out
of the frame of the picture; and while this visual convention
maintained itself, there was nothing inconsistent or jarring
in the auditory convention of the soliloquy. See William
Archer, _Play-Making_, Boston, 1912, pp. 397-405.]
Characterization rests in part on pantomime. In _The Little Man_, the
Dutch Youth is dumb throughout the play, but he is sufficiently
characterized by his foolish demeanor and his recurrent laugh. The
part of the Little Man himself is one long gesture of humility and
dedication. In those one-act plays in which the old characters of the
Harlequinade reappear, like _The Maker of Dreams_ and _The Pierrot of
the Minute_, pantomime transcends dialogue as a method of
characterization. In the plays of the Irish dramatists, Synge, Yeats,
and Lady Gregory, pantomime and dialogue contribute equally to the
characterization, which is of a very high order, since all these
dramatists were close observers of the Irish peasant characters of
their plays.
Synge, especially, illustrates the following critical theory of
Galsworthy: "The art of writing true dramatic dialogue is an austere
art, denying itself all license, grudging every sentence devoted to
the mere machinery of the play, suppressing all jokes and epigrams
severed from character, relying for fun and pathos on the fun and
tears of life. From start to finish good dialogue is hand-made, like
good lace; clear, of fine texture, furthering with each thread the
harmony and strength of a design to which all must be subordinated." A
study of the dialogue of _Riders to the Sea_ reveals just this harmony
between the dialogue and the inevitability of the plot, the dialogue
and the simplicity of the characters.
The dialogue in _The Little Man_ is the very idiom one would expect to
issue from the mouth of the German colonel, the Englishman with the
Oxford voice, or the intensely national American, as the case may be.
The characters, though they have type names, are, as Mr. Galsworthy
would probably be the first to explain, highly individualized. The
author does not intend us to think that all Americans are like this
loud-voiced traveler, or all Englishmen like the pharisaical gentleman
who gives his wife the advertisements to read while he secures the
news sheet for himself.
The function of dialogue is the same both in the long and in the short
play. For, of course, both forms have many things in common. For
instance, as in the full-length play it is necessary for the dramatist
to carry forward the interest from act to act, to provide a "curtain"
that will leave the audience in a state of suspense, so in the one-act
play, the interest must be similarly relayed though the plot is
confined to a single act. In _The Intruder_, every premonition
expressed by the Grandfather grips the audience in such a way that
they await from minute to minute the coming of the mysterious
stranger. The tension is high in _A Night at an Inn_ from the moment
the curtain rises. In _Riders to the Sea_, the beginning of the
suspense coincides with the opening of the play and lasts. "They're
all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me,"
says Maurya, and the audience experiences a rush of relief and a sense
of release that the last words, "No man at all can be living for ever,
and we must be satisfied," seem only to deepen.
A one-act play, then, has many structural features in common with the
short-story; its plot must from beginning to end be dominated by a
single theme; its crises may be crises of character as well as
conflicts of will or physical conflicts; it must by a method of
foreshadowing sustain the interest of the audience unflaggingly, but
ultimately relieve their tension; it must achieve swift
characterization by means of pantomime and dialogue; and its dialogue
must achieve its effects by the same methods as the dialogue of longer
plays, but by even greater economy of means. But when all is said and
done, the success of a one-act play is judged not by its conformity to
any set of hard and fast rules, but by its power to interest,
enlighten, and hold an audience.
THEATRES OF TO-DAY
THE COMMERCIAL THEATRE AND THE REPERTORY IDEA
The term "Commercial Theatre" is rarely used without disparagement.
The critic or the playwright who speaks of the Commercial Theatre
usually does so either for the purpose of reflecting on the cheapness
of the entertainment afforded, or in order to call attention to
spectacular receipts.
In this country the Commercial Theatre stands for that form of big
business in the theatrical world that produces dividends on the money
invested comparable to those earned by the most prosperous of the
large industries. This system has been, on the whole, a bad thing for
the drama, because managers with their eye on attractions that should
yield a return, let us say, of over ten per cent on the investment,
have been unable to produce the superior play with an appeal to a
definite, though perhaps limited audience, and have had to offer to
the public the kind of play that would draw large audiences over a
long period of time. The "longest run for the safest possible play" is
thus conspicuously associated with the Commercial Theatre. As Clayton
Hamilton says: "The trouble with the prevailing theatre system in
America to-day is not that this system is commercial; for in any
democratic country, it is not unreasonable to expect the public to
defray the cost of the sort of drama that it wishes, and that,
therefore, it deserves. The trouble is, rather, that our theatre
system is devoted almost entirely to big business; and that in
ignoring the small profits of small business it tends to exclude not
only the uncommercial drama, but the non-commercial drama as well."[4]
Here he makes a distinction between an "uncommercial" play, that is, a
play that is a failure with all kinds of audiences, and the
"noncommercial" play, which is capable of holding its own financially
and yielding modest returns.
[Footnote 4: Clayton Hamilton, _The Non-Commercial Drama_.
_The Bookman_, May, 1915.]
In the days before the pooling of theatrical interests in this
country there were indeed long runs, but in many of the large
American cities "stock companies," composed of groups of actors and
actresses all of about the same reputation and ability, were
maintained that kept a number of plays, a "repertory," before the
public in the course of a season and gave scope for experiment with
various kinds of plays. But the "star system," which has now become
common, has tended to drive out the "stock company" idea, with the
result that the average company rests on the reputation of the "star"
and dispenses with distinction in the "support." With the decay of the
stock company, the repertory system, in the form in which it did once
exist here in the Commercial Theatre, has also declined.
Both in Great Britain and in America the repertory system, long
established on the Continent, has been reintroduced in order to combat
the practices of the Commercial Theatre. For the most part the new
repertory theatres have been endowed either by the State or by private
individuals. "Absolute endowment for absolute freedom,"[5] has seemed
to at least one American the only means of delivering the drama from
commercial bondage. This phrase of Percy MacKaye's expresses his
cherished belief that endowed civic theatres, which should encourage
the participation of whole communities in a community form of drama,
are what is needed in a democracy. John Masefield, in the following
lines from the prologue written for the opening of the Liverpool
Repertory Theatre, has found a poetic theme in this idea of an endowed
theatre:
"Men will not spend, it seems, on that one art
Which is life's inmost soul and passionate heart;
They count the theatre a place for fun,
Where man can laugh at nights when work is done.
If it were only that, 'twould be worth while
To subsidize a thing which makes men smile;
But it is more; it is that splendid thing,
A place where man's soul shakes triumphant wing;
A place of art made living, where men may see
What human life is and has seemed to be
To the world's greatest brains....
O you who hark
Fan to a flame through England this first spark,
Till in this land there's none so poor of purse
But he may see high deeds and hear high verse,
And feel his folly lashed, and think him great
In this world's tragedy of Life and Fate."[6]
[Footnote 5: Percy MacKaye, _The Playhouse and the Play_, New
York, 1909, p. 86.]
[Footnote 6: Quoted by Percy MacKaye in _The Civic Theatre_,
New York, 1912, p. 114.]
In Great Britain repertory is associated with the interest and
generosity of Miss A. E. F. Horniman, who will be mentioned in
connection with the Irish National Theatre, and through whom, after
some preliminary experiment, the Gaiety Theatre at Manchester was
opened as the first repertory house in England, in the spring of 1908.
Fifty-five different plays were produced in a little over two
years--"twenty-eight new, seventeen revivals of modern English plays,
five modern translations, and five classics."[7] In Miss Horniman's
own words, her interest was in a Civilized Theatre. "A Civilized
Theatre," she has written, "means that a city has something of
cultivation in it, something to make literature grow; a real theatre,
not a mere amusing toy. What we want is the opportunity for our men
and women, our boys and girls to get a chance to see the works of the
greatest dramatists of modern times, as well as the classics, for
their pleasure as well as their cultivation.... Young dramatists
should have a theatre where they can see the ripe works of the masters
and see them well acted at a moderate price. There should be in every
city a theatre where we can see the best drama worthily treated."[8]
Owing to war conditions, the Manchester project has had to be
abandoned, and so, for the most part, have other similar enterprises.
They rarely became self-supporting, but depended on subsidy of one
kind or another, which under new economic conditions is no longer
forthcoming. The Birmingham Repertory Theatre continues, however,
under the direction of John Drinkwater, and has become famous through
its production of his _Abraham Lincoln_. "John Drinkwater, I see, has
recently defined a Repertory Theatre," writes William Archer, in his
latest article on the subject, "as one which 'puts plays into stock
which are good enough to stay there.'" Enlarging this definition, I
should call it a theatre which excluded the long unbroken run; which
presents at least three different programs in each week (though a
popular success may be performed three or even four times a week
throughout a whole season); which can produce plays too good to be
enormously popular; which makes a principle of keeping alive the great
drama of the past, whether recent or remote; which has a company so
large that it can, without overworking its actors, keep three or four
plays ready for instant presentation; which possesses an ample stage
equipped with the latest artistic and labor-saving appliances; and
which offers such comfort in front of the house as to encourage an
intelligent public to make it an habitual place of resort.
[Footnote 7: P. P. Howe, _The Repertory Theatre_, New York,
1911, p. 59.]
[Footnote 8: A. E. F. Horniman, _The Manchester Players_,
_Poet Lore_, Vol. XXV, No. 3, p. 212; p. 213.]
"That there exists in every great American city an intelligent public
large enough to support one or more such playhouses is to my mind
indisputable. But the theatre might have to be run at a loss for two
or three opening seasons, until it had attracted and educated its
habitual supporters. For even a public of high general intelligence
needs a certain amount of special education in things of the theatre."
This testimony is in a highly optimistic vein.
A talk with B. Iden Payne, once director of the Manchester Players,
reveals the fact that in England at the present time the repertory
idea is being taken over with more promise of success by the small
groups that represent the Little Theatre movement in that country. The
repertory theatre there did succeed in arousing in the locality in
which, for the time being, it existed an interest in intelligent
plays, but it was not equally successful in confirming a distaste for
unintelligent plays. The study of these experiments will repay
Americans who are interested in seeing the repertory idea fostered
over here by endowment or otherwise.
THE LITTLE THEATRE
The year 1911 saw the beginning in the United States of the Little
Theatre movement, which has grown with phenomenal rapidity and has
spread in all directions. The first Little Theatres in this country
were located in large cities; but in the course of time the idea has
penetrated to small towns and rural communities all over the United
States. Barns, wharves, saloons, and school assembly halls have been
transformed into intimate little playhouses. There were European
precedents for this idea. The Theatre Libre, opened in Paris in 1887
by Andre Antoine as a protest against the kind of play then in favor,
is generally called the first of this type. In the years from 1887 to
1911 Little Theatres were opened in Russia, in Belgium, in Germany, in
Sweden, in Hungary, in England, in Ireland, and in France. In Europe
these theatres came into being, generally speaking, in order to give
freer play to the new arts of the theatre or for the purpose of
encouraging a more intellectual type of drama than was being produced
in the larger houses.
There are two conceptions of the Little Theatre current in the United
States. According to one, it is a theatrical organization housed in a
simple building, that makes its productions in the most economical
way, does not pay its actors, does not charge admission, and uses
scenery and properties that are cheaply manufactured at home.
[Illustration: _Twelfth Night_ on the stage of the Theatre du Vieux
Colombier, New York.]
The Little Theatre is, however, more commonly conceived of as a
repertory theatre supported by the subscription system, producing its
plays on a small stage in a small hall, selecting for production the
kind of play not likely to be used by the Commercial Theatre, most
frequently the one-act play, and committed to experiments in stage
decoration, lighting, and the other stage arts. The Little Theatre and
the one-act play have developed each other reciprocally, for the
Little Theatre has encouraged the writing of one-act plays in Europe
and in this country. The one-act play is the natural unit of
production in the Little Theatre, both because it requires a less
sustained performance from the actors, who have frequently been
amateurs, and because it has offered in the same evening several
opportunities to the various groups of artists collaborating in the
productions of the Little Theatre. Though the movement has had the
effect of stimulating community spirit and has been the means of
solving grave community problems, the Little Theatre is not, in the
technical sense, a community theatre; in the sense, that is, in which
Percy MacKaye uses the word. It is not, in fact, so portentous an
enterprise, because it does not enlist the participation of every
member of a community. The community theatre is an example of civic
co-operation on a large scale; the Little Theatre, of the same kind
of co-operation on a small scale.
Notably artistic results have been achieved by such Little Theatres as
The Neighborhood Playhouse in New York, built in 1914 by the Misses
Irene and Alice Lewisohn, in connection with the social settlement
idea, to provide expression for the talents of a community that had
been previously trained in dramatic classes for some years; by the
Chicago Little Theatre, founded in 1911, now no longer in existence,
but for a few years under the direction of Maurice Browne, a disciple
of Gordon Craig's; by the Detroit Theatre of Arts and Crafts, once
under the direction of Mr. Sam Hume, also a follower of Gordon
Craig's; by the Washington Square Players, who during several seasons
in New York gave a remarkable impetus to the writing of one-act plays
in America; by the Provincetown Players, whose first productions were
made on Cape Cod, who later opened a small playhouse in New York, and
who gave the public an opportunity to know the plays of Eugene
O'Neill; by the Portmanteau Theatre of Stuart Walker, that uses but
one setting in its productions, but varies the effect with different
colored lights, and as its name implies, is portable, one of the few
of its kind in the world; by the 47 Workshop Theatre that has arisen
as the result of the course in playwriting given at Harvard University
by Professor George Pierce Baker, and the productions of which have
served to introduce many new writers; and by the Theatre du Vieux
Colombier, that came to New York from Paris in 1917, and remained for
two seasons to illustrate the best French practice. These theatres
also enjoy the distinction of having experimented with repertory.
The Theatre du Vieux Colombier was organized and is directed by
Jacques Copeau. It is no casual amateur experiment. Its actors are
professionals and its director is a scholar and an artist. In
preparation for the original opening the company went into the country
and established a little colony. "During five hours of each day they
studied repertoire but they did far more. They performed exercises in
physical culture and the dance: they read aloud and acted improvised
dramatic scenes. They worked thus upon their bodies, their voices and
their actions: made them subtle instruments in their command." They
learned that in an artistic production every gesture, every word,
every line, and every color counted. Naturally no group of amateurs or
semi-professionals can approach the results of a company trained as M.
Copeau's is. When he was over here, he was much interested in our
Little Theatres. He said in one of his addresses: "All the _little
theatres_ which now swarm in America, ought to come to an
understanding among themselves and unite, instead of trying to keep
themselves apart and distinctive. The ideas which they possess in
common have not even begun to be put into execution. They must be
incorporated into life."[9]
[Footnote 9: The kind of co-operation to which he looked
forward is beginning. For instance, the New York Drama League
announces a Little Theatre membership. "Its purpose is to
serve the needs of the large and constantly growing public
that is interested in the activities of the semi-professional
and amateur community groups who read or produce plays. Under
this new Membership there will be issued monthly, for ten
issues a Play List of five pages, giving a concise but
complete synopsis of new plays, both one-act and longer
plays. It will show the number of characters required; the
kind of audience to which the play would be likely to appeal;
the royalty asked for production rights; the production
necessities and other information of value to production
groups or individuals. One page will be devoted to three or
four standard older plays treated with the same detail of
information. The Little Theatre Supplement ... will continue
to be issued each month, but will hereafter be a feature of
the Little Theatre Membership only. It will contain the
programs of the Little Theatres throughout the country; short
accounts of what is going on among the various groups, and
articles on Little Theatre problems, with hints on new,
effective and economical methods of production."]
The native Little Theatres, much simpler affairs than the Vieux
Colombier, persist. They have made a place for themselves in American
life, among the farms, in the suburbs, in the small towns, and in the
cities. Sometimes, no doubt, they are like the one in Sinclair Lewis's
Gopher Prairie; or they hardly outlast a season. But new ones spring
up to replace those that have gone out of existence, and meanwhile the
ends of wholesome community recreation are being served.
THE IRISH NATIONAL THEATRE
About 1890 began the movement which has since been known as the Celtic
Renaissance, a movement that had for its object the lifting into
literature of the songs, myths, romances, and legends treasured for
countless generations in the hearts of the Irish peasantry. In the
same decade in Great Britain and on the Continent, tendencies were at
work looking to the reform of the drama and its rescue from commercial
formulas. The genesis of the Irish National Theatre, a pioneer in the
field of repertory in Great Britain, and one of the first of the
Little Theatres, is due to both of these influences.
Its first form was the Irish Literary Theatre, founded in 1899 by
Edward Martyn, the author of _The Heather Field_ and _Maeve_, George
Moore, and William Butler Yeats. The first play produced by this
organization was Yeats's _Countess Cathleen_. This enterprise employed
only English actors, and did not assume to be purely national in
scope. It came to an end in October, 1901. It was in October, 1902,
that in _Samhain_, the organ of the Irish National Theatre, William
Butler Yeats made the following announcement: "The Irish Literary
Theatre has given place to a company of Irish actors." The nucleus of
this new Irish National Theatre was certain companies of amateurs that
W. G. Fay had assembled. These companies were composed of people who
were unable to give full time to their interest in the drama, but who
came from the office or the shop to rehearse at odd moments during the
day and in the evening. The Irish National Theatre really developed
from these amateur companies. It was strictly national in scope. The
advisers, who were to include Synge, Lady Gregory, Padraic Colum,
William Butler Yeats, and others, looked to the Irish National Theatre
to bring the drama back to the people, to whom plays dealing with
society life meant nothing. They intended also that their plays
"should give them [the people] a quite natural pleasure, should either
tell them of their own life, or of that life of poetry where every man
can see his own magic, because there alone does human nature escape
from arbitrary conditions." This program has been carried out with
remarkable success.
October, 1902, is the date for the beginning of the Irish National
Theatre. At first W. G. Fay, and his brother, Frank Fay, were in
charge of the productions, the former as stage manager. Frank Fay had
charge of training a company, in which the star system was unknown. He
had studied French methods of stage diction and gesture, and the Irish
Players are generally said to show the results of his familiarity with
great French models. In 1913 a school of acting was organized in
order to perpetuate the tradition created by the Fays.
Among the most famous playwrights who have written for the Irish
National Theatre are Padraic Colum, John Millington Synge, William
Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, St. John G. Ervine, AE (George W. Russell),
and Lord Dunsany. At one time the theatre sent out, in a circular
addressed to aspiring authors who showed promise, the following
counsel: "A play to be suitable for performance at the Abbey should
contain some criticism of life, founded on the experience or personal
observation of the writer, or some vision of life, of Irish life by
preference, important from its beauty or from some excellence of
style, and this intellectual quality is not more necessary to tragedy
than to the gayest comedy."[10]
[Footnote 10: Lady Gregory, _Our Irish Theatre_, New York,
1913, p. 101.]
In 1904 the Irish National Theatre was housed for the first time in
its own playhouse, the Abbey Theatre. This change was made possible by
the generosity of Miss A. E. F. Horniman, who saw the Irish Players
when they first went to London in 1903. It was she who obtained the
lease of the Mechanics' Institute in Dublin, increased its capacity,
and rebuilt it, giving it rent free to the Players from 1904 to 1909,
in addition to an annual subsidy which she allowed them. In 1910 the
Abbey Theatre was bought from her by public subscription. The next
year, the Irish Players paid their famous visit to the United States.
The Irish National Dramatic Company was organized as a protest against
current theatrical practices. Its founders purposed to reform the
various arts of the theatre. By encouraging native playwrights they
hoped to do for the drama of Ireland what Ibsen and other writers had
done for the drama in Scandinavian countries, where people go to the
theatre to think as well as to feel. It was not intended in any sense
that these new Irish players were to serve the purpose of propaganda;
truth was not to be compromised in the service of a cause. Acting,
too, was to be improved: redundant gesture was to be suppressed;
repose was to be given its full value; speech was to be made more
important than gesture. Yeats in particular had theories as to the way
in which verse should be spoken on the stage; he advocated a cadenced
chant, monotonous but not sing-song, for the delivery of poetry. The
simplification of costume and setting was also included in their
scheme, for both were to be strictly accessory to the speech and
movement of the characters.
They have been faithful to their ideals. The performances at the Abbey
Theatre continue, although from time to time certain of the most
eminent actors of the company have withdrawn, some to migrate to
America. Among the plays produced in 1919 and 1920 by the National
Theatre Society at the Abbey Theatre are W. B. Yeats's _The Land of
Heart's Desire_, G. B. Shaw's _Androcles and the Lion_, Lady Gregory's
_The Dragon_, and Lord Dunsany's _The Glittering Gate_.
THE NEW ART OF THE THEATRE
There are certain facts about the artistic transformation that the
theatre is undergoing in the twentieth century with which students of
the drama need to be familiar in order to picture for themselves how
plays can be interpreted by means of design, color, and light. The
transformation is definitely connected with a few famous names. In
Europe two men, Edward Gordon Craig and Max Reinhardt, stand out as
reformers in matters connected with the construction, the lighting,
and the design of stage settings. In this country the artists of the
theatre are, generally speaking, disciples of one or both of these
great Europeans and their colleagues. The new stage artist studies the
characterization and the situations in the play, the production of
which he is directing, and tries to make his setting suggestive of the
physical and emotional atmosphere in which the action of the drama
moves.
Gordon Craig has written several books and many articles embodying his
ideas on play production. In all his writings he emphasizes the
importance of having one individual with complete authority and
complete knowledge in charge of coordinating and subordinating the
various arts that go to make the production of a play a symmetrical
whole, his theory being that there is no one art that can be called to
the exclusion of all others _the_ Art of the Theatre: not the acting,
not the play, not the setting, not the dance; but that all these
properly harmonized through the personality of the director become the
Art of the Theatre.
The kind of setting that has become identified in the popular mind
with Gordon Craig is the simple monochrome background composed either
of draperies or of screens. It is unfortunate that this popular idea
should be so limited because, of course, the name of Gordon Craig
should carry with it the suggestion of an infinite variety of ways of
interpreting the play through design. His screens, built to stand
alone, vary in number from one to four and sometimes have as many as
ten leaves. They are either made of solid wood or are wooden frames
covered with canvas. The screens with narrow leaves may be used to
produce curved forms, and screens with broad leaves to enclose large
rectangular spaces. The screens are one form of the setting composed
of adjustable units, which can be adapted in an infinite variety of
ways to the needs of the play.
The new ideas in European stagecraft began to be popularized in
America in the year 1914-15, when under the auspices of the Stage
Society, Sam Hume, now teaching the arts of the theatre at the
University of California, and Kenneth Macgowan, the dramatic critic,
arranged an exhibition that was shown in New York, Chicago, and other
great centres, of new stage sets designed by Robert Edmond Jones, Sam
Hume, and others who have since become famous. The models displayed on
this occasion brought before the public for the first time the new
method of lighting which, as much as anything else, differentiates the
new theatre art from the old. It introduced the device of a concave
back wall made of plaster, sometimes called by its German name
"horizont," and a lighting equipment that would dye this plaster
horizon with colors that melted into one another like the colors in
the sky; a stage with "dimmers" for every circuit of lights, and
sockets for high-power lamps at any spot from the stage.
In the same year that the Stage Society showed Robert Edmond Jones's
models, he was given an opportunity to design the settings and
costumes for Granville Barker's production of Anatole France's _The
Man Who Married a Dumb Wife_, which may be said to have advertised the
new practices in America more than any other single production.
[Illustration: _The Merchant of Venice._ A room in Belmont. Design by
Robert Edmond Jones. A great round window framed in the heavy molding
of Mantegna and the pale clear sky of Northern Italy.]
Writing of his own work shortly after, Mr. Jones says: "While the
scenery of a play is truly important, it should be so important that
the audience should forget that it is present. There should be
fusion between the play and the scenery. Scenery isn't there to be
looked at, it's really there to be forgotten. The drama is a fire, the
scenery is the air that lifts the fire and makes it bright.... The
audience that is always conscious of the back drop is paying a
doubtful compliment to the painter.... Even costumes should be the
handiwork of the scenic artist. Yes, and if possible, he should build
the very furniture."[11] Robert Edmond Jones has not only designed
settings and costumes for poetic and fantastic forms of drama, but he
has also been called upon to plan the productions of realistic modern
plays.
[Footnote 11: Robert Edmond Jones, _The Future Decorative Art
of the Theatre_, _Theatre Magazine_, Vol. XXV, May, 1917, p.
266.]
Three of his designs introducing three different aspects of his work
have been here reproduced. The model for Maeterlinck's _The Seven
Princesses_ is an example of an attempt to present the essential
significant structure of a setting in the simplest way conceivable and
by so doing to stimulate the imagination of the spectator to create
for itself the imaginative environment of the play. His design for a
room in Belmont for _The Merchant of Venice_ shows a great round
window framed in the heavy molding of Mantegna and the pale, clear sky
of Northern Italy. The scene for _Good Gracious Annabelle_ is a
corridor in an hotel. This scene is a typical example of a more or
less abstract rendering of a literal scene. It was designed primarily
with the idea of giving as many different exits and entrances as
possible, in order that the action of the drama might be swift and
varied.[12]
[Footnote 12: Robert Edmond Jones himself has suggested the
phrasing of these descriptions.]
When Sam Hume was connected with the Detroit Theatre of Arts and
Crafts, he used a symbolic and suggestive method for the setting of
poetic plays the scene of which was laid in no definite locality. In
this theatre he installed a permanent setting, including the following
units: "Four pylons [square pillars], constructed of canvas on wooden
frames, each of the three covered faces measuring two and one-half by
eighteen feet; two canvas flats each three by eighteen feet; two
sections of stairs three feet long, and one section eight feet long,
of uniform eighteen-inch height; three platforms of the same height,
respectively six, eight, and twelve feet long; dark green hangings as
long as the pylons; two folding screens for masking, covered with the
same cloth as that used in the hangings, and as high as the pylons;
and two irregular tree forms in silhouette.
"The pylons, flats, and stairs, and such added pieces as the arch and
window, were painted in broken color ...[13] so that the surfaces
would take on any desired color under the proper lighting."[14] The
economy of this method is illustrated by the fact that in one season
nineteen plays were given in the Arts and Crafts Theatre at Detroit,
and the settings for eleven of these were merely rearrangements of the
permanent setting. This kind of setting is sometimes called
"plastic"--a term which refers to the fact that the separate units are
in the round, and not flat. The effect secured in settings
representing outdoor scenes was made possible only by the use of a
plaster horizon of the general type described in connection with the
exhibition of the Stage Society.
[Footnote 13: See p. xxxiii.]
[Footnote 14: Sheldon Cheney, _The Art Theatre_, New York,
1917, pp. 167-168.]
[Illustration: _Good Gracious Annabelle._ A corridor in a hotel.
Design by Robert Edmond Jones. A typical example of a more or less
abstract rendering of a literal scene. It was designed primarily with
the idea of giving as many different exits and entrances as possible
in order that the action of the drama might be swift and varied.]
Robert Edmond Jones and Sam Hume are two of an increasingly large
number of artists in America, among whom should be mentioned
Norman-bel Geddes, Maurice Browne, and Lee Simonson, who are
experimenting with design, color, and light. Underlying the work of
all of these is the belief that the whole production, the play, the
acting, the lighting, and the setting, should be unified by some one
dominating mood. In the work of these new artists, there is no place
for the old-fashioned painted back drop, the use of which emphasizes
the disparity between the painted and the actual perspective, though
their backgrounds are by no means necessarily either screens or
draperies. Another new style of background is the skeleton setting, a
permanent structural foundation erected on the stage, which through
the addition of draperies and movable properties, or the variation of
lights, or the manipulation of screens, may serve for all the scenes
of a play. A permanent structure of this sort, representing the Tower
of London, was used by Robert Edmond Jones in a recent production of
_Richard III_ in New York, at the Plymouth Theatre. When Jacques
Copeau conducted the Theatre du Vieux Colombier in New York he had a
permanent structure built on the stage of the Garrick Theatre, that
he used for all the plays he produced; at times the upper half of the
stage was masked, at times the recess back of the two central columns
was used. The aspect of the stage was often completely changed by the
addition of tapestries, stairs, panels, screens, and furniture.
In the description of the equipment of the Detroit Theatre of Arts and
Crafts, reference has been made to a method of painting the plastic
units in broken color. This is so important a principle that it should
be more generally understood by those who are interested in the
theatre. The principle was put into operation by the Viennese
designer, Joseph Urban. In practice it means that a canvas painted
with red and with green spots upon which a red light is played, throws
up only the red spots blended so as to produce a red surface, and that
the same canvas under a green light shows a green surface; and, if
both kinds of lights are used, then both the green and red spots are
brought out, according to the proportion of the mixture of green and
red in the light.
Color is being used now not only for decorative purposes, but also
symbolically. The decorative use of color on the stage is, obviously,
like the decorative use of color in the design of textiles, or stained
glass, or posters. The symbolic use of color is less easy to
interpret, but it is plain that in most people's minds red is
connected with excitement and frenzy, and blues and grays, with an
atmosphere of mystery. This is a very bald suggestion of some of the
very subtle things that have been done with color on the modern stage.
The new methods of stage lighting make possible all kinds of color
combinations and effects. The use of the plaster horizon (or of the
cyclorama, a cheaper substitute, usually a straight semi-circular
curtain enclosing the stage, made of either white or light blue
cloth), combined with high-powered lights set at various angles on the
stage, makes outdoor effects possible, the beauty of which is new to
the theatre.[15] Nowadays footlights are not invariably discarded, but
where they are used they are wired so that groups of them can be
lighted when other sections are dimmed or darkened. When the setting
shows an interior scene with a window, though the scene may be lighted
from all sides, the window seems to be the source of all light. A
good deal of the lighting on the stage is what is known in the
interior decoration of houses as indirect lighting; colored lights are
produced most simply by the interposition between the source of light
and the stage of transparent colored slides, gelatine or glass.
[Footnote 15: For a description of modern lighting equipment
for a Little Theatre compare the section on the Theatre in
the School in this introduction.]
In any production that is made under the influence of the new
stagecraft, the costumes, like the setting of the play, are considered
in connection with the resources of lighting. The costumes, whether
historically correct or historically suggestive, whether of a period
or conventionalized, are conceived in their three-fold relation to the
characters of the play, the background, and the scheme of lights, by
the designer or the director under whose general supervision the play
is staged.
In general, American audiences are hardly conscious of the existence
of these reforms. Here and there, it is true, the manager of a
commercial theatre or an opera house has called in an artist to
supervise his productions and has thus given publicity to the new way
of making the arts of the theatre work together. Certain Little
Theatres, also, have educated their followers in the significance of
the new use of light and design to represent the mood of a play. The
demands that the new method makes on craftsmanship have also commended
it to students in schools and colleges interested in play production.
Both the Little Theatres and the school theatres are doing a real
service when they educate their communities in these new arts, for not
only will this education increase the capacity of these particular
audiences to enjoy the good things of the theatre, but the influence
of these groups is bound in the long run to popularize the new
stagecraft.
PLAYMAKING
Shortly before the death of William Dean Howells, he related the
experience that he had had of being circularized by a correspondence
school that offered to teach him the art of writing fiction in a
phenomenally short time at a ridiculously low rate. In this instance,
there was something wrong with the mailing list, but the fact remains
that in universities successful courses in writing short-stories and
plays are given and the best of these courses actually have turned out
writers who achieve various degrees of success financially and
artistically It is plain that a brief treatise like the present one
makes no such pretensions; it means merely to suggest some of the most
obvious points of departure for students in the drama who wish to
exercise themselves in the composition of the one-act play, much as a
student of poetry will try his hand at a _ballade_ or a sonnet without
taking himself or his metrical exercises too seriously.
[Illustration: _Courtesy of Theatre Arts Magazine_
_The Seven Princesses._ Design by Robert Edmond Jones. An example of
the attempt to present the essential significant structure of a
setting in the simplest way conceivable and by so doing to stimulate
the imagination of the spectator to create for itself the imaginative
environment of the play.]
In the famous Perse School in Cambridge, England, the boys begin at
the age of twelve to practise playmaking as an aid to the fuller
understanding of Shakespeare's dramatic workmanship, and this work is
developed throughout the rest of the course. The boys, having learned
that Shakespeare himself used stories that he found ready to hand,
discover in their own reading a story that will lend itself to
dramatization. The story is told and retold from every angle. The
class is then divided up into committees to every one of which is
entrusted some part of the dramatization. One little committee busies
itself with the setting, another with the structure, another with the
comic characters, another with the songs that are interspersed and so
on. These committees prepare rough notes to be presented in class.
These notes may propose an outline of successive scenes, present the
part of some principal character, or the "business" (illustrative
action) of some minor part. Lessons of this sort are followed by
composition rehearsals, where the dramatic and literary value of the
proposed plot, characterization, pantomime, and dialogue are tested,
and subjected to the criticism of teacher and boys. In the next
lessons, the teacher brings to bear on the special problems on which
the boys are working all the criticism that his wider range of reading
and experience can suggest. In the light of his suggestions the
various points are debated and the boys then proceed to careful
fashioning, shaping, and writing. A rehearsal of the nearly finished
product is held, followed by a final revision of the text. The work
then goes forward to a public performance given with all due ceremony.
In the higher classes playmaking is taught more especially in
connection with writing and the boys are trained to imitate the style
of various dramatists. Synge was used as a model at one time for, as
one of the masters of the school explained: "The style of Synge is
easy to copy because it is so largely composed of a certain
phraseology. The same words, phrases, and turns of sentence occur
again and again. Here are a few taken at random; the reader will find
them in a context on almost any page of the plays: _It's myself_ --
_Is it me fight him?_ -- _I'm thinking_ -- _It's a poor_ (_fine,
great, hard_, etc.) _thing_ -- _A little path I have_ -- _Let you
come_ -- _God help us all_ -- _Till Tuesday was a week_ -- _The end of
time_ -- _The dawn of day_ -- _Let on_ -- _Kindly_ -- _Now_, as in
_Walk out now_ -- _Surely_ -- _Maybe_ -- _Itself_ -- _At all_ --
_Afeard_ -- _Destroyed_ -- _It curse_. Synge is also mighty fond of
the words _ditch_ and _ewe_. And there are certain forms of rhythm
about Synge's prose which are used with equal frequency, and are quick
and easy to catch. So far from this imitation of style being an
artificial method, the fact is that once a boy of sixteen or over has
read a play or two of Synge's, if he has any power of style in him, it
will be all but impossible to stop him writing like Synge for a few
weeks." Learning playwriting from models recalls the method of
Benjamin Franklin and Robert Louis Stevenson who in their youth wrote
slavish imitations of the great masters in order to form their own
prose style. Of course, it is not claimed that this work at the Perse
School makes playwrights, only that it gives the boys a deeper
appreciation of dramatic workmanship and furnishes a new kind of
intellectual game to add to the joy of school life.
The one-act plays contained in this collection are, as has been
suggested in what has been said about their construction, illustrative
of various kinds of workmanship. Certain of them are excellent models
for those who are experimenting with playwriting. The one-act play,
not nearly so difficult a form as the full-length play, offers
undergraduates in school and college and inexperienced writers
generally unlimited scope for experiment.
The testimony of Lord Dunsany is to the effect that his play is made
when he has discovered a motive. Asked whether he always began with a
motive, "'Not always,' he said; 'I begin with anything or next to
nothing. Then suddenly, I get started, and go through in a hurry. The
main point is not to interrupt a mood. Writing is an easy thing when
one is going strong and going fast; it becomes a hard thing only when
the onward rush is impeded. Most of my short plays have been written
in a sitting or two.'"[16] This passage is quoted because insight
into the practice of professional writers is always helpful to
amateurs. Dunsany uses "motive," it seems, as a convenient term for
denoting the idea, the character, the incident or the mood that impels
the dramatist to start writing a play. Such material is to be found
everywhere. Many professional writers accumulate vast stores of such
themes against the day when they may have the necessary leisure,
energy, and insight to develop them.
[Footnote 16: Clayton Hamilton, _Seen on the Stage_, New
York, 1920, p. 239.]
It has been pointed out that there are only thirty-six possible
dramatic situations in any case, and that no matter how the plot
shapes itself, it is bound to classify itself somehow or other as one
of the inescapable thirty-six. There is comfort also in the suggestion
that Shakespeare drew practically all the dramatic material that he
used so transcendently direct from the familiar and accessible
narrative stores of his day. The young or inexperienced playwright
need have no hesitation, then, in turning to such sources as the Greek
myths for inspiration. Quite recently a highly successful one-act play
of Phillip Moeller's proved that Helen of Troy is as eternally
interesting as she is perennially beautiful. Maurice Baring draws on
the old Greek stories, too, for several of his _Diminutive Dramas_.
The Bible has proved dramatically suggestive to Lord Dunsany and to
Stephen Phillips. The old ballads of _Fair Annie_ and _The Wife of
Usher's Well_ have been found dramatically available. The myths of the
old Norse Gods, used by Richard Wagner for his music dramas, contain
much unmined dramatic gold. John Masefield and Sigurjonsson have
converted Saga material to the uses of the drama. In old English
literature, in _Widsith_, in the _Battle of Brunanburh_, the seeking
dramatist may find. The romances of the Middle Ages, the fairy lore of
all peoples, and the old Hindu animal fables are fertile in suggestion
to the intending dramatist. What a wonderful one-act play, steeped in
the mellow atmosphere of the Renaissance in Italy, might be made out
of Browning's _My Last Duchess!_ At least one new literary precedent
has recently been created by the author who wrote a sequel to _Dombey
and Son_. Certainly many famous novels and plays may be conceived as
calling out for similar treatment at the hands of the experimental
playwright. Famous literary and historic characters offer themselves
as promising dramatic material. When Robert Emmons Rogers, author of
the well-known play, _Behind a Watteau Picture_, was a sophomore at
Harvard, he wrote the following charming little play on Shakespeare
which is reprinted here, with the author's permission, as a pleasing
example of a promising piece of apprentice work:[17]
[Footnote 17: Robert Emmons Rogers, President of the Boston
Drama League and Assistant Professor, specializing in modern
literature and drama in the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, was born in Haddonfield, New Jersey, in 1888. He
writes that his Anne Hathaway "was a particularly wild
idealization based on Miss Adams as Peter Pan," and that even
at eighteen he knew that his portrait of the girl, who was to
be Shakespeare's wife, was not historically correct.
Permission to perform the play must be secured from the
author.]
THE BOY WILL
_Within the White Luces Inn on a late afternoon in spring, 1582. The
room is of heavy-beamed dark oak, stained by age and smoke, with a
great, hooded fireplace on the left. At the back is a door with the
upper half thrown back, and two wide windows through whose open
lattices, overgrown with columbine, one can see the fresh country side
in the setting sun. Under them are broad window seats. At the right, a
door and a tall dresser filled with pewter plates and tankards. A
couple of chairs, a stool and a low table stand about. ANNE, a slim
girl of sixteen, is mending the fire. MASTER GEORGE PEELE, a bold and
comely young man, in worn riding dress and spattered boots, sprawls
against the disordered table. GILES, a plump and peevish old rogue in
tapster's cap and apron, stands by the door looking out._
PEELE [_rousing himself_]. Giles! Gi-les!
GILES [_hurries to him_]. What more, zur? Wilt ha' the pastry or--?
PEELE. Another quart of sack.
GILES. Yus, zur! Anne, bist asleep? [_The girl rises slowly._]
ANNE [_takes the tankard_]. He hath had three a'ready.
PEELE [_cheerfully_]. And shall have three more so I will. This
player's life of mine is a weary one.
ANNE [_pertly_]. And a thirsty one, too, methinks.
GILES [_scandalized_]. Come, wench! Ha' done gawking about, and haste!
[_ANNE goes at right._] 'Er be a forrard gel, zur, though hendy. I be
glad 'er's none o' mine, but my brother's in Shottery. He canna say I
love 'is way o' making wenches so saucy.
PEELE. A pox on you! The best-spirited maid I ha' seen in
Warwickshire, I say. Forward? Man alive, wouldst have her like your
blowsy wenches here, that lie i' the sun all day? I have seen no one
so comely since I left London.
GILES [_feebly_]. But 'ere, zur, in Stratford--
PEELE [_hotly_]. Stratford? I doubt if God made Stratford! Another day
here and I should die in torment. Your grass lanes, your rubbly
houses, fat burgesses, old women, your young clouter-heads who have no
care for a bravely acted stage-play. [_Bitingly._] "Can any good come
out of Stratford?"
GILES. Noa, Maister Peele! Others ha' spoke more fairly--
PEELE [_impatiently_]. My sack, man! Is the girl a-brewing it?
GILES. Anne! Anne! (I'll learn she to mess about.) Anne!
ANNE [_hurries in and serves PEELE_]. I heard you.
GILES. Then whoi cunst thee not bustle? Be I to lose my loongs over
'ee?
ANNE [_simply_]. Mistress Shakespeare called me to the butt'ry door.
Will hath not been home all day, and she is fair anxious. She bade me
send him home once I saw him.
PEELE [_drinking noisily_]. Who is it? [_ANNE is clearing the table._]
GILES [_shortly_]. Poor John Shakespeare's son Will.
PEELE. A Stratford lad? A straw-headed beater of clods!
GILES. Nay, zur. A wild young un, as 'ull do noa honest work, but
dreams the day long, or poaches the graaet woods wi' young loons o'
like stomach.
ANNE [_indignantly, dropping a dish_]. It's not true! He is no
poacher.
PEELE [_grinning_]. What a touchy lass! No poacher, eh?
ANNE. Nay, sir, but the brightest lad in Stratford. He hath learning
beyond the rest of us--and if he likes to wander i' the woods, 'tis
for no ill--he loves the open air--and you should hear the little
songs he makes!
PEELE. Do all the lads find in you such a defender, or only--? [_She
turns away._] Nay, no offense! I should like to see this Will.
GILES [_grumpily_]. 'E 'ave noa will to help 'is father in these sorry
times, but ever gawks at stage-plays. 'E 'ull come to noa good end.
[_The player starts up._]
PEELE. Stage-plays--no good end? Have a care, man!
GILES. Nay, zur--noa harm, zur! I--I--canna bide longer. [_Backs
out._]
ANNE [_at the window, wonderingly_]. He should be here. He hath never
lingered till sunset before. [_PEELE comes up behind her._]
PEELE. Troubled, lass?
ANNE. Nay, sir, but--but--[_Suddenly_] Listen!
PEELE [_blankly_]. To what? [_A faint singing without._]
ANNE [_eagerly_]. Canst hear nothing--a lilt afar off?
PEELE [_nodding_]. Like a May-day catch? I hear it.
ANNE. 'Tis Will! Cousin, Will is coming. [_GILES comes back._]
GILES [_peevishly_]. I canna help it. Byunt 'e later'n common?
A VOICE. [_The clear, boyish singing is coming very near._]
When springtime frights the winter cold, 5
(Hark to the children singing!)
The cowslip turns the fields to gold,
The bird from 's nest is winging--
PEELE. Look you! There the boy comes.
ANNE [_leaning out the window_]. Isn't he coming here? Will! Will!
[_He passes by the window singing the last words_
Young hearts are gay, while yet 'tis May,
Hark to the children singing!
_and leaps in over the lower part of the door, a sturdy, ruddy boy,
with merry face and a mop of brown hair. ANNE greets him with
outstretched hands._]
ANNE [_reproachfully_]. Will! Thy mother was so anxious!
WILL. I did na' think. I ha' been in the woods all day and forgot
everything till the sun set.
ANNE. All the day long? Thou must be weary.
WILL [_frankly_]. Nay, not very weary--but hungry.
ANNE. Poor boy. He shall have his supper now.
GILES [_protesting_]. 'E be allus eating 'ere, and I canna a-bear it.
Let him sup at his own whoam.
WILL [_shaking his head_]. I dare na go home, for na doubt my
father'll beat me rarely. I'll bide here till he be asleep. [_He
places himself easily in the armchair by the fire._]
GILES [_going sulkily_]. Thriftless young loon!
ANNE [_laying the table_]. Hast had a splendid day?
WILL [_absently_]. Aye. In the great park at Charlecote. There you can
lie on your back in the grass under the high arches of the trees,
where the sun rarely peeps in, and you can listen to the wind in the
trees, and see it shake the blossoms about you, and watch the red deer
and the rabbits and the birds--where everything is lovely and still.
[_His voice trails off into silence. ANNE smiles knowingly._]
ANNE. Thou'lt be making poetry before long, eh, Will?--Will? [_To
PEELE_] The boy hath not heard a word I spoke.
PEELE [_coming forward_]. Would he hear me, I wonder! Boy!
WILL [_starting_]. Sir? [_PEELE looks down on him sternly._]
PEELE. Dost know thou'rt in my chair?
WILL [_coolly_]. Thine? Indeed, 'tis very easy.
PEELE. Hark 'ee! Dost know my name?
WILL. I canna say I do.
PEELE [_distinctly_]. Master George Peele.
WILL. I thank thee, sir.
PEELE. Player in my Lord Admiral's Company.
WILL. [_His whole manner changes and he jumps up eagerly._] A player?
Oh--I did not know. Pray, take the seat.
PEELE [_amused_]. Dost think players are as lords? Most men have other
views. [_Sits. WILL watches him, fascinated._]
WILL. Nay, but--oh, I love to see stage-plays! Didst not play in
Coventry three days agone, "The History of the Wicked King Richard"?
PEELE. Aye, aye. Behold in me the tyrant.
WILL. Thou? Rarely done! I mind me yet how the hump-backed king
frowned and stamped about--thus [_imitating_]. Ha! Ha! 'Twas a brave
play!
ANNE. Thy supper is ready, Will.
PEELE [_amused_]. The true player-instinct, on my soul!
WILL [_flattered_]. Dost truly think so? [_ANNE plucks his sleeve._]
ANNE. Will, where are thy wits? Supper waits.
WILL [_apologetically_]. Oh--I--I--did na hear thee. [_He tries to
eat, but his attention is ever distracted by the player's words._]
PEELE. Is my reckoning ready, girl?
ANNE. Reckoning now, sir? Wilt thou--?
PEELE. Yes, yes, I go to-night. To-morrow Warwick, then the long road
to Oxford, playing by the way--and London at last!
ANNE. And then? [_WILL listens intently._]
PEELE. Then back to the old Blackfriars, where all the city will flock
to our tragedies and chronicles--a long, merry life of it.
ANNE [_interested_]. And does the Queen ever come?
PEELE. Nay, child, we go to her. Last Christmas I played before her at
court, in the great room at Whitehall, before the nobles and
ambassadors and ladies--oh, a gay time--and the Queen said--
WILL [_starting up_]. What was the play?
ANNE. Eat thy supper, Will.
WILL [_impatiently_]. I want no more.
PEELE. So my young cockerel is awake again. Will, a boy of thy stamp
is lost here in Stratford. Thou shouldst be in London with us. By cock
and pie, I have a mind to steal thee for the company! [_Rises to pace
the floor._]
WILL [_breathlessly_]. To play in London?
ANNE. Nay, Will, he but jests. Thou'rt happier here than traipsing
about wi' the players. [_GILES appears at back._]
GILES. Nags be ready, zur, at sunset as thee'st bid. Shall I put the
gear on?
PEELE [_sharply_]. Well fed and groomed? Nay, I will see them myself.
[_GILES vanishes. PEELE turns at the door._] Hark'ee, lass. Thy lad
could do far worse than become a player. Good meat and drink, gold in
's pouch, favor at court, and true friends. I like the lad's spirit.
[_He goes. ANNE drops into his chair by the fire. Twilight is coming
on rapidly. WILL stands silent at the window looking after the
player._]
ANNE [_troubled_]. Will, what is it? Thou'rt very strange to-night.
WILL [_wistfully_]. I--I--Oh, Anne, I want to go to London. I am
a-weary of rusting in Stratford, where I can learn nothing new, save
to grow old, following my father's trade.
ANNE. But in London?
WILL [_kindling_]. In London one can learn more marvels in a day than
in a lifetime here; for there the streets are in a bustle all day
long, and the whole world meets in them, soldiers and courtiers and
men of war, from France and Spain and the new lands beyond the sea,
all full of learning and pleasant tales of foreign wars and the
wondrous things in the colonies. My schoolmaster told me of it. You
can stand in St. Paul's and the whole world passes by, mad for
knowledge and adventure. And then the stage-plays--!
ANNE. Oh, Will, why long for them?
WILL. Think how splendid they must be when the Queen herself loves to
see 'em. If I were like this player-fellow, and acted with the
Admiral's company! He laughed that he would take me with him--to be a
player and perchance _write_ plays, interludes, and noble tragedies!
Think of it, Anne--to live in London and be one of all the rare
company there, to write brave plays wi' sounding lines for all to
wonder at, and have folk turn on the streets when I passed and
whisper, "That be Will Shakespeare, the play-maker"--to act them even
at court and gain the Queen's own thanks! Anne, London is so great and
splendid! It beckons me wi' all its turmoil of affairs and its noble
hearts ready to love a new comrade. [_Disconsolately_] And I must bide
in Stratford?
ANNE [_gently_]. Come now, Will. No need to be so feverish. Sit down
by me. What canst thou know of play-making? What canst thou do in
London?
WILL [_he sits down by the hearth at her feet, looking into the
firelight_]. I'll tell thee, Anne. Thy father and half the village
call me a lazy oaf, that I stray i' the woods some days instead of
helping my father. I canna help it. The fit comes on me, and I must be
alone, out i' the great woods.
ANNE [_gladly_]. Then thou dost not poach?
WILL [_hastily_]. No, no--that is--sometimes I am with Hodge and
Diccon and John a' Field, and 'tis hard not to chase the deer. Nay,
look not so grave--I try to do no harm.
ANNE [_quietly_]. And when thou'rt alone?
WILL. Then I lie under the trees or wander through the fields, and
make plays to myself, as though I writ them in my mind, and cry the
lines forth to the birds--they sound nobly, too--or make little songs
and sing them i' the sunshine. They are but dreams, I know, but
splendid ones--and the player looked wi' favor on me, and said I might
make a good player, and he would take me with him.
ANNE. But he only jested.
WILL. No jest to me! I'll take him at his word and go with him to
London. [_He starts up eagerly._]
ANNE [_troubled_]. Will, Will! [_PEELE enters at the back._]
PEELE. Hark 'ee, Giles, I go in half an hour!
WILL. Master Peele! [_Catches at his arm._]
PEELE. Well, youngster?
WILL [_slowly_]. Thou--thou saidst I had a good spirit and would do
well in London--in a stage company. Thou wert in jest, but--I will go
with thee, if I may.
PEELE [_taken all aback_]. Go with me?
WILL [_earnestly_]. With the player's company--to London.
PEELE [_laughing_]. 'S wounds! Thou hast assurance! Dost think to
become a great player at once?
WILL [_impatiently_]. Oh, I care not for the playing. Let me but be in
London, to see the people there and be near the theatre. I'll be the
players' servant, I'll hold the nobles' horses in the street--I'll do
anything!
PEELE [_seriously_]. And go with us all over England on hard journeys
to play to ignorant rustics?
WILL. Anywhere--I'll follow on to the world's end--only take me with
you to London! [_As he speaks GILES and MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE, a kindly
faced woman of middle age, dressed in housewife's cap and gown, appear
at the door._]
GILES. There 'e be, Mistress Shixpur.
MISTRESS S. [_as she enters_]. Oh, Will. [_He turns sharply._]
WILL [_confusedly_]. Mother! I--I--did not know thou wert here.
MISTRESS S. Why didst not come home--and what dost thou want with this
stranger?
ANNE. He would go to London with him.
MISTRESS S. [_aghast_]. To London. My Will?
WILL [_quietly_]. Thou knowest, mother, what I ha' told thee, things I
told to no other, and now the good time has come that I can see more
of England.
MISTRESS S. But I canna let thee go. Oh, Anne, I knew the boy was
restless, but I did not think for it so soon. He is only a boy.
WILL [_coloring_]. In two years I shall be a man--I am a man now in
spirit. I canna stay in Stratford. [_MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE sinks down
in a chair._]
MISTRESS S. What o' me? And, Will, 'twill break thy father's heart!
[_WILL looks ashamed._]
WILL. I know, he would not understand. 'Tis hard. He must not know
till I be gone.
MISTRESS S. [_To PEELE_]. Oh, sir, how could you wish to lead the lad
away? Hath not London enough a'ready?
PEELE [_who has been listening uncomfortably, faces her gravely_]. I
but played with the lad at first, till I saw how earnest he was; then
I would take him, for I loved his boldness. But, boy, I'll tell thee
fairly, thou'lt do better here. Thou'st seen the brave side of it, the
gay dresses, the good horses, the cheering crowds and the court-favor.
But 'tis dark sometimes, too. The pouches often hang empty when the
people turn away--the lords are as the clouded sun, now smiling, now
cold--and there come the bitter days, when a man has no friends but
the pot-mates of the moment, when every man's hand is against him for
a vagabond and a rascal, when the prison-gates lay ever wide before
him, and the fickle folk, crying after a _new_ favorite, leave the old
to starve.
ANNE. Will, canst not see? Thou'rt better here--
WILL [_bravely_]. I know--all this may wait me--but I must go.
MISTRESS S. [_alarmed_]. Must go, Will? [_He kneels by her side._]
WILL. [_tenderly_]. Hush, mother, I'll tell thee. 'Tis not entirely my
longing, for this morning the keeper of old Lucy--
GILES. Ha, poaching again, young scamp!
WILL. Brought me before him--I was na poaching, I'll swear it, not so
much as chasing the deer--but Sir Thomas had no patience, and bade me
clear out, else he would seize me. I--I--dare na stay.
MISTRESS S. I feared it; thy father forbade thee in the great park.
And now--Oh, Will, Will--I know well how thou'st longed to go from
here--and now thou must--what shall I do, lacking thee?
PEELE [_frankly_]. Will, if thou must go, thou must. London is greater
than Stratford, and there is much evil there, but thou'rt
true-hearted, and--by my player's honor--I will stand by thee, till
the hangman get me. But we must go soon. 'Tis a dark road to
Warwick--I'll see to the horses. Is it a compact? [_WILL gives him his
hands._]
WILL [_huskily_]. A compact, sir--to the end. [_PEELE hurries out._]
GILES. Look at 'e now, breaking 'is mother's heart, and mad wi' joy to
revel in London. 'Tis little 'e recks of she.
WILL [_hotly_]. Thou liest. [_Bending over her_] Mother, 'tis not
true. I do love thee and father, I love Stratford. I'll never forget
it. But 'tis so little here, and I must get away to gain learning and
do things i' the world, that I may bring home all I get; fame, if God
grant it, money, if I gain it, all to those at home.
ANNE. Thou'rt over-confident.
WILL. Aye, because I'm young. God knows there is enough pain in
London, and I'll get my share--but I'm _young_! Mother, thou'rt not
angry?
MISTRESS S. I knew 'twas coming, and 'tis not so hard. We will always
wait for thee at home, when thou'rt weary.
GILES [_at the door_]. The horses are waiting. 'Tis dark, Will.
WILL [_breaking down_]. Mother, mother!
MISTRESS S. The good God keep thee safe. Kiss me, Will. [_He bends
over her, then stumbles to the door, ANNE following._]
WILL [_turning_]. Anne--Anne--thou dost not despise me for deserting
Stratford. I _must_ go.
ANNE. Oh, I know. Thou'lt go to London and forget us all.
WILL. No, no, thou--I couldn't forget. I'll remember thee, Anne--I'll
put thee in my plays; all my young maids and lovers shall be thee, as
thou'rt now--and I'll bring thee rare gifts when I come home.
ANNE. I do na want them. Will--I--I--did na mean to be unkind. We were
good friends, and I trust in thee, for the future, that thou'lt be
great. Good-by--and do na forget the little playmate.
WILL. I will na forget [_kissing her_], and, Anne, be good to my
mother. [_She goes back to MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE, and he stands
watching them in the dusk._]
PEELE [_at the window_]. Come, come, Will! We must go.
WILL [_turning slowly_]. I--I'm coming, sir.
[THE CURTAIN.]
All the dramatic motives that have been enumerated so far have been
more or less literary in origin, but "A play may start from almost
anything: a detached thought that flashes through the mind; a theory
of conduct or an act which one firmly believes or wishes only to
examine; a bit of dialogue overheard or imagined; a setting, real or
imagined, which creates emotion in the observer; a perfectly detached
scene, the antecedents and consequences of which are as yet unknown; a
figure glimpsed in a crowd which for some reason arrests the attention
of the dramatist ... a mere incident--heard in idle talk or observed;
a story told only in barest outline or with the utmost detail."[18]
[Footnote 18: George Pierce Baker, _Dramatic Technique_,
Boston and New York, 1919, p. 47.]
The great dramatic critic, William Archer, has said that "the only
valid definition of the dramatic is: Any representation of imaginary
personages which is capable of interesting an average audience
assembled in a theater." For the purposes of the definition the Boy
Will of Robert Emmons Rogers's little piece and Drinkwater's Abraham
Lincoln are equally imaginary personages. In the case of the one-act
play the theatre in question is more often than not a Little Theatre
or a school theatre, the representation is more frequently at the
moment by amateur than by professional actors and the audience, being
small and close to the stage, is likely to assume a co-operative
attitude towards the playwright, the actor, and the other immediate
factors in the production. Since the success of a play depends on its
adaptability to the requirements of actor, theatre, and audience, it
is well for inexperienced playwrights to study the conditions under
which one-act plays are likely to be produced.
One very practical consideration to hold in mind is that the one-act
play has a shorter time in which to focus attention than the
full-length play and so the indispensable preliminary exposition must
be quickly disposed of and an urgent appeal to the emotional interest
of the audience must be made at the beginning. As has been said, every
artistic consideration that calls for singleness of impression in the
short-story is of equal importance in determining the unified
structure of the one-act play. For the reason that a one-act play is
almost never given by itself, if for no other, its effect will be
dissipated if plot, characterization, or atmosphere fails in unity.
The writer exercising himself in the art of play-making had best begin
with the procedure common to many professional playwrights. This first
step is the drawing up of a scenario, which is an outline showing the
course of the story, identifying the characters, indicating the
setting and atmosphere and explaining the nature of the play; that is,
whether, for example, it is to be a fantasy like _The Pierrot of the
Minute_, or a comedy of manners like _Wurzel-Flummery_.
Here for instance is such a scenario as might have been drawn up for
_The Boy Will_:
THE BOY WILL (Historical fantasy)
Scenario for a one-act play, by
Robert Emmons Rogers
CHARACTERS
(in order of their appearance)
MASTER GEORGE PEELE, player of the Admiral's Company.
GILES, a plump and peevish old rogue, a tapster.
ANNE HATHAWAY, at sixteen a slim girl, niece to Giles.
WILL SHAKESPEARE, a sturdy, ruddy boy, Anne's playmate.
MISTRESS SHAKESPEARE, a kindly faced woman of middle age, Will's mother.
Within the White Luces Inn on a late afternoon in spring, 1582. (Here
a description of the interior would follow.)
Peele is eating and drinking at the inn, waited on by Anne Hathaway.
Anne, scolded by Giles for her slowness, is commended as comely and
spirited by Peele.
Peele abuses Stratford as a sleepy hole.
Anne explains her delay in fetching ale by the fact that Mistress
Shakespeare has been at the back door inquiring for Will who has been
gone all day.
Giles explains Will to Peele as a young poacher.
Anne indignantly denies the charge and praises Will as the brightest
boy in Stratford.
Giles accuses him of gawking at plays and predicts a bad end for the
boy.
Peele resents the implication.
Singing a May-day catch, Will enters. Afraid to go home because he has
been wasting his day in Charlecote Park and fears father's scolding.
Goes off into a golden dream of his day in the woods.
Peele attracts his attention by announcing his profession.
Will shows his interest.
Is too distracted by Peele to eat.
Peele announces itinerary of his players and kindles Will's
imagination with a mention of the Queen.
Threatens to carry Will off to London.
Anne discourages the plan.
Peele draws glowing pictures of actor's profession.
Will is all on fire for London in spite of Anne.
Tells Anne he's tired of being nagged.
Makes Peele promise to take him to London.
His mother comes for him and is aghast at the news, but finally
consents to let Will go without his father's knowledge.
Peele then draws a picture of the actor as vagabond to discourage
Will.
Anne holds out against his going.
Will tells how, though he has not been poaching, he has been warned by
Sir Thomas Lucy to clear out.
His mother sees that he must go.
Will makes a compact with Peele.
Promises Anne rare gifts and kissing his mother goes.
The scenario drawn up, the next step is to develop the plot. The plot
of a one-act play, to be effective, must be extraordinarily compact.
The accepted laws of plot construction for all artistic narratives are
the same. The climax must be carefully prepared for, as in Synge's
_Riders to the Sea_, and the various devices used for heightening the
suspense should be discovered and applied.
Characterization is more difficult for the tyro to manage than plot.
Consistency of characterization is attained through discovering in the
beginning a motive that will sufficiently account for the part taken
by the character by means of speech and action, and through constantly
testing the characterization by this motive. Such consistency of
characterization is illustrated to perfection in Tarkington's _Beauty
and the Jacobin_. The writer of the one-act play does not use many
characters. "Examination of several hundred one-act plays has revealed
that the average number of characters to a play is between three and
four."[19]
[Footnote 19: B. Roland Lewis, _The Technique of the One-Act
Play_, Boston, 1918, p. 211.]
Facility in writing dialogue is gained like facility in plot
construction and in characterization only by the patient study of the
work of experienced and successful playwrights. Dialogue that is
witty, charming, ironical, or graceful is of dramatic value only as it
is in character.
A little experience on the stage is a great help. Such experience
teaches the value of skillfully planned exits and entrances for
characters; helps the beginner to distinguish between action that
should be related and action that should be seen; shows him how a
scene must be devised to occupy the time it takes for a character to
appear after he has telephoned that he is coming; and a variety of
other practical considerations.
Stage directions are likely to be over-elaborated by the
inexperienced. The best stage directions are those that deal only with
matters of setting, lighting and essential pantomime or action. They
should not, in general, be used for characterization.
But after all there can be no infallible recipes for dramatic writing.
With the successful professional playwright, apprenticeship is often
an unconscious stage. Plays succeed that break all the rules laid down
by critics and professors of dramatic literature, but after all those
rules were, to begin with, based on practices productive of success
under other conditions. In any case some insight into the mechanics of
dramatic art does make the reading of plays more interesting and does
give an added zest to theatre going.
THE THEATRE IN THE SCHOOL
The giving of plays in schools is no new thing. One of the earliest
English comedies, _Ralph Roister Doister_, was written in the middle
of the sixteenth century by Nicholas Udall, a schoolmaster, probably
to be performed at Westminister School at Christmas time. Many
generations of boys in the English public schools have presented the
plays of the Greek and Latin dramatists; and schools and colleges in
this country have also at times given performances of the classic
drama. But until recently Shakespeare and the comedies of Sheridan and
Goldsmith have been the chief dramatic fare both in the classroom and
on the stage in American schools.
Modern plays are coming, however, to be more generally introduced into
the course of study. The following significant list, prepared by Miss
Anna H. Spaulding, is in use in the senior classes in English in the
Brookline High School, at Brookline, Massachusetts:
Noah's Flood
Sacrifice of Isaac
Everyman
Everywoman
The Servant in the House
Ralph Roister Doister
Tales of the Mermaid Tavern
Merchant of Venice
Jew of Malta
Tragedy of Shakespeare
Comedy of Shakespeare
The Rivals
The Good Natured Man
She Stoops to Conquer
Caste
The Lady of Lyons
One Closet Drama
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray
One Comedy of Pinero
The Silver King
One Serious Play by Jones
Arms and the Man
Caesar and Cleopatra
John Bull's Other Island
The Doctor's Dilemma
Strife
Justice
The Tragedy of Nan
The Marrying of Ann Leete
Seven Short Plays
The Land of Heart's Desire, or
The Countess Cathleen, or
Cathleen Ni Houlihan
The Shadow of the Glen
Riders to the Sea
The Birthright
The Truth
The Witching Hour, or
As a Man Thinks
The Scarecrow
The Piper
Milestones
The Importance of Being Earnest
Thirty-five of these plays are distinctly modern. Another list, in use
as part of a course in contemporary literature given in the last half
of the third year at the Washington Irving High School and including
only modern plays, is reprinted below:
The Blue Bird
The Melting Pot
Milestones
Justice, or
The Silver Box
Pygmalion
The Piper
Prunella
Sherwood
The Land of Heart's Desire
Spreading the News
These plays are read and studied; that is to say, such topics as
dramatic workmanship, theme, setting, characterization, dialogue, and
diction are taken up in connection with each one and each one is made
the starting point for a new interest in the drama of to-day.[20]
[Footnote 20: Further interesting information on the reading
and the study of modern plays in the schools may be found in
the valuable article by F. G. Thompkins of the Central High
School, Detroit, called _The Play Course in High School_, in
_The English Journal_ for November, 1920, and in the same
issue, in the list of plays produced by St. Louis High
Schools, prepared by Clarence Stratton, Chairman, National
Council Committee on Plays.]
In another high school in New York, the Evander Childs, there is a
four years' course of two periods a week in classroom study of the
drama, old and new. All composition work is connected with this
special interest.
Another kind of work based on contemporary drama was carried on by a
group of first-year students in a certain high school who were much
interested in a program of one-act plays to be presented in the school
theatre. The teacher of English who had charge of this young class
discussed the subject of the theatre audience with them both before
and after the performance. The outcome of this analysis of the
interests of the audience was an outline. These fourteen-year old
girls said that the next time that they went to the theatre they would
keep in mind the following considerations:
I. In regard to the play:
A. Its title
B. Classification
C. Plot
D. Characterization
E. Dialogue
F. Theme
II. In regard to the actors:
A. Their intelligence
B. Clearness of speech
C. Ease of manner
D. Facial expression (appropriateness of make-up)
E. Pantomime or action
1. Posture
2. Gesture
3. Repose
F. Costumes
1. Appropriateness as an index to character
2. Color and design
3. Harmony with the setting
III. In regard to the setting:
A. The lighting
B. Color and design
C. Appropriateness as regards mood of play
D. Suggestiveness
E. Workmanship
One cannot help feeling that these young people were being effectively
trained to enjoy the best drama in the best way.
Not only is modern drama being read and studied in the English
classes, but the schools are becoming centres of Little Theatre
movements and leading their communities in pageants and dramatic
festivals. An editorial in _The New York Evening Post_ in 1918 put it
in this way: "As Froude states that in Tudor England there was acting
everywhere from palace to inn-yard and village green, so, the
prediction is made, future historians will record that in our America
there was acting everywhere--in neighborhood theatres, portable
theatres, church clubs, high schools and universities, settlements,
open amphitheatres, and hotel ballrooms."
One reason that amateur dramatics have taken on a new lease of life in
the schools is because other teachers besides teachers of English have
become interested in the project of giving a play. Students in physics
classes have planned and executed lighting systems for the school
theatre, students in carpentering and manual arts have built the
scenery from designs made in drawing classes, curtains have been
stenciled, costumes made and cloths dyed in domestic art classes,
programs printed by the school printing squad, music furnished by the
school orchestra and dances taught by the physical training
department. In most cases the line coaching and the general direction
of the play have been part of the work in English.
A concrete example will illustrate this kind of co-operation. Several
years ago the department of English at the Washington Irving High
School gave two plays, _Three Pills in a Bottle_, a product of the 47
Workshop, by Rachel Lyman Field, and _The Goddess of the Woven Wind_,
by Alice Rostetter. _The Goddess of the Woven Wind_ had grown out of
class-room work. The girls in an industrial course were studying the
origin of the silk industry. A pamphlet stated that the wife of
Hoangti, Si-Ling-Chi, was the first to prepare and weave silk. This
legend offered suggestive dramatic material peculiarly appropriate for
a girls' high school.
The work of obtaining the setting and the properties was divided
between two committees, each working under the direction of a
chairman. Since fifty dollars had been fixed as the limit of
expenditure for the two plays, the problem was rather a difficult one.
Fortunately, _Three Pills in a Bottle_ calls for a small cast. The
cast of The _Goddess of the Woven Wind_, however, included thirty-four
girls, most of whom had to be orientally clad and equipped. The
teacher who contemplates putting on a rather elaborate costume play in
his or her high school will be interested to learn that the amount was
so exactly fixed and the department so resourceful that fifty-one
dollars and nine cents was the total sum spent on the two plays. Then,
lest anyone think that there had been a miscalculation, let it be
added that this sum included the money spent for hot chocolate to
serve to the casts of the plays, between the afternoon and evening
performances.
The problem of staging _Three Pills in a Bottle_ was greatly
simplified by the fact that the frontispiece of the play gives a
simple, effective setting not difficult to copy. With the aid of some
amateur carpentering, the regular interior set was easily transformed
to suit the purpose. The problem of color was solved when the chairman
of the committee found a patchwork quilt in the attic, during a visit
to her mother's home; a conference with the janitress of her city
apartment developed the fact that she possessed a freshly scrubbed
wash-tub, which she was willing not only to donate to the cause, but
to have painted green.
The task of staging _The Goddess of the Woven Wind_ was difficult and
interesting, because it was decidedly a costume play, and because it
was a first production. Some of the difficulties that confronted the
chairman of the committee for that play were amusing.
For instance, after some perplexed thought on the subject, she tacked
the following list of costumes and properties on the Bulletin Board of
the English office:
WANTED:
Mulberry tree
Gardener's spade
Teakwood stool
Chinese necklaces
Large, colorful abacus
Mandarin coats and hats
Sky-blue Chinese bowl
Chinese gong
Bamboo rod
Silk cocoons
She also advertised the need of these things and many others in all
her classes. Within two weeks nearly everything had either appeared or
been promised, except a Chinese gong with a proper "whang" to it, an
unbreakable sky-blue bowl and the mulberry tree! A teacher in a
neighboring school lent the company a splendid gong, sometimes used in
their orchestra; a student transformed a wooden chopping bowl by means
of clay and tempera into an exquisite piece of pottery, copied from a
priceless bowl on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The mulberry tree was still an unsolved problem, when Dugald Stuart
Walker, the artist who has produced a number of plays at the
Christadora House in New York, was consulted. He suggested that the
tree be a conventionalized one of flat "drapes" of green and brown
poplin, with cocoons sewn on in a simple border design.
The staging of the play then became a project for members of a
third-year art class. During their English period they read the play,
recited on the subject of the China of remote dynasties, constructed a
miniature stage, and then, forming committees among themselves, worked
out the practical details. One group purchased the necessary paint,
another painted the vermilion sun. Her neighbor affixed it to a bamboo
rod. To emphasize the Chinese setting, two girls made a frame with a
dragon as head-piece and huge, colorful Chinese medallions to be sewn
on the side drapery. The design for the medallions was obtained from a
Chinese brass plate. Almost every girl in the class took part in the
project. Interest was easily aroused, as a number of girls in this
class took part in the play.
As for the costumes, for the thirty-four members of the cast, only
eight dollars' worth was hired. The rest were either borrowed or made
by the girls. The most successful one, perhaps, that worn by the
empress, was copied from an Edmund Dulac illustration of the Princess
Badoura. The astrologers' costumes were obtained from photographs of
_The Yellow Jacket_, lent by Mrs. Coburn. To complete the project, the
girls wrote a composition explaining how to organize the staging of a
costume play.
Meanwhile, the selection and coaching of the two casts was going on.
Competition for the parts was open to the girls of the entire school.
A great many girls were tried out before the two committees made a
choice. In fact, every girl who was recommended by her English teacher
was given an opportunity to read a part. In a number of cases two
girls were assigned for one part and it was not known until almost the
last moment who was to have the role or who was to understudy.
Rehearsals were held at least three times a week, for three weeks, and
a full-dress rehearsal was held two days before the final performance.
It was thought advisable to allow a day to elapse between the last
rehearsal and the real performance, in order to give the girls an
opportunity to rest.
In coaching the plays, an effort was made to have a girl read the line
properly without having it read to her. The members of the coaching
committee would explain the mood or frame of mind to the speaker; the
girl would then interpret the mood in her reading.
In addition to the coaching committee, several teachers sat at the
back of the auditorium during rehearsals, to warn the speakers when
they could not be heard.
The advertising campaign began soon after a choice of plays had been
made. In compliance with the request of the Publicity Committee, one
of the teachers of an art class and a teacher in the English
Department assigned to their pupils the problem of making posters to
advertise the plays. To the painter of the best one a prize was
awarded.
Announcements of the play were posted by pupils in various parts of
the building. Tiny brochures decorated with Chinese motives were
prepared by students during an English period, and later were
circulated among the faculty, and placed upon office bulletin boards,
and in diaries. In writing these brochures the girls applied the
knowledge they had gained in studying the writing of advertisements.
Two illustrated advertisements made in one class were displayed in
other high schools; a number were sent in an envelope with tickets to
patrons and distinguished friends of the schools. One class wrote
letters to firms of wholesale silk merchants and importers,
advertising _The Goddess of the Woven Wind_, the story of silk.
In order to increase the sale of tickets and to prepare an
appreciative audience, various subjects were suggested to English
teachers for projects in class work connected with the plays. In many
classes every girl wrote and illustrated a paper on some topic
pertaining to Chinese life, such as customs, costumes, religion,
occupations, silk, China, umbrellas, fireworks, fans, position of
women, objects of art. Oral compositions were devoted to phases of
some of these subjects. In the oral work and in the written
composition, accurate knowledge of authorities consulted was insisted
upon. Chinese proverbs were studied. "A man knows, but a woman knows
better," used by the author in her play, was one of the most popular
ones. Translations, found in the _Literary Digest_, of Chinese poems
of the sixteenth and of the eighteenth century were produced and read
by the girls, many of whom brought to class all the Chinese articles
they could find at home. Incense burners, fans, pitchers,
embroideries, chop sticks, beads, shoes, vases, and even a Chinese
newspaper, found their way to the class-room and were exhibited with
pride. Interest in things Chinese was so great that clippings and
prints continued coming in for almost two weeks after the play had
been presented. Class visits were made to the Chinese exhibit at the
Metropolitan Museum of Art and to importing houses in the
neighborhood.
The kind of co-operation described has led in some schools to the
establishment of workshops similar to those conducted in connection
with certain university courses in playwriting and dramatics and with
many of the Little Theatres. A paragraph that appeared recently in a
calendar of the New York Drama League explains in a convincing way the
necessity for a workshop in connection with all amateur producing.
"One of the most vital problems that the amateur group has to solve,"
says the writer, "is that of securing a proper place for the preparing
of a production. Not all organizations can hold rehearsals, paint
scenery, experiment with lighting on costumes and scenery on the
stage on which they are finally to play. Even where this is possible,
it is costly. Much of the activity is now carried on in the homes of
members so far as rehearsals go; in barns or garages as regards the
painting of scenery and not at all so far as the lighting question is
concerned. More often than not, a few hasty final rehearsals are
relied upon to pull into shape some of the most important elements of
a satisfactory performance.
"The remedy lies in the acquisition of a workshop. A large room with a
very high ceiling will serve admirably. But you must be able to work
recklessly in it, sawing wood, hammering nails, mussing things up
generally with paint and riddling the walls and ceiling with hooks and
screws to hang lighting apparatus and other properties. An
old-fashioned barn can be converted into an ideal workshop, if
provision is made for proper heating. All the activity should be
concentrated in the workshop and there is no reason why all the
experimentalists cannot be at work at once--the carpenters, the scene
painters, the electricians, the property men, and even the actors with
their director."
The use of miniature model stages is becoming more and more common in
the schools, the preliminary model serving the workshop, until the
background, lighting, properties, and costumes are completed. It is an
excellent thing for schools to start a collection of models of famous
theatres and notably successful stage-sets. The material for these
exists in illustrated books and magazines and in the mass of
descriptive material in regard to the stage that is now being
published.[21]
[Footnote 21: There is a comprehensive list of books
published by the Public Library of New York that is an
indispensable guide to amateurs interested in Little Theatres
and play production and in matters connected with lighting,
scenery, costumes, and theatre building; it is W. B. Gamble,
_The Development of Scenic Art and Stage Machinery_, New
York, 1920. Cf. also the articles of Irving Pichel that have
appeared from time to time in _The Theatre Arts Magazine_.
The three following books are especially valuable for school
theatres: Barrett H. Clark, _How to Produce Amateur Plays_,
Boston, 1917; Constance D'Arcy Mackay, _Costumes and Scenery
for Amateurs_. _A Practical Working Handbook_, New York, 1915
(the illustrations are especially valuable); and Evelyn
Hilliard, Theodora McCormick, Kate Oglebay, _Amateur and
Educational Dramatics_, New York, 1917.]
[Illustration: Interior of the Beechwood Theatre.]
[Illustration: Exterior of the Beechwood Theatre.]
Two school theatres designed especially for the purpose of
fostering in the schools to which they are attached an interest in
the drama are the Garden Theatre of the high school at Montclair, New
Jersey, and the Beechwood Theatre in the private school at
Scarborough-on-Hudson, New York, built by Frank A. Vanderlip. At
Montclair the present high school building was completed in 1914. To
the northeast of the building at that time was a ravine which afforded
a natural amphitheatre. The site was perfect, and a gift from a
public-spirited citizen, Mrs. Henry Lang, made it possible to create
on this spot a very artistic and beautiful place for outdoor
performances, either plays or pageants.
On the slope nearest the building are semi-circular rows of concrete
seats accommodating about fifteen hundred people. A brook spanned by
two arched bridges separates the audience from the stage. Back of the
turf stage is a graveled stage slightly raised and reached by two
flights of steps. The pergola and trees make a beautiful background.
The house in the rear is a part of the plant and is used for dressing
and make-up.
The Beechwood Theatre within the school has a proscenium opening of
twenty-seven feet and a stage depth, back to the plaster horizon, of
the same dimensions. There are two complete sets of drapery, one of
coarse ecru linen and one of blue velvet; there is also a stock
drawing-room set of thirty pieces. Back of the stage are ten
dressing-rooms. The lighting arrangements are extraordinarily
complete: the theatre has a standard electrical equipment of
footlights and borders and a switchboard of the best type to which has
recently been added the latest lighting devices, consisting of an
X-ray border, the end section of which is on a separate dimmer, a
thousand-watt centre floodlight, six five-hundred watt-spotlights,
each on separate dimmers, in the false proscenium or tormentor,[22]
and a line of one-thousand-watt floodlights for lighting the plaster
sky. All of this recently added equipment is controlled from a
separate portable switchboard.
[Footnote 22: For the explanation of this and kindred
technical terms, see Arthur Edwin Krows, _Play Production in
America_, New York, 1916.
Cf. Maurice Browne, _The Temple of a Living Art_. _The
Drama_, Chicago, 1913, No. 12, p. 168: "Nor is this just a
question of stage jargon; that man or woman who would
establish an Art Theatre that is an Art Theatre and not a pet
rabbit fed by hand, must be able to design it, to ventilate
it, to decorate it, to equip its stage, to light it (and to
handle its lighting himself, or his electricians will not
listen to him), to plan his costumes and scenery, aye, and at
a shift, to make them with his own hand."]
Though this plant was built primarily for the school, it is used also
by the Beechwood Players, a Little Theatre organization, and by other
community clubs which comprise an orchestra, a chorus, a group
interested in the fine arts, and a poetry circle. Mr. Vanderlip looks
forward to the development of a school of the arts of the theatre from
the nucleus of the Beechwood community clubs. With this idea in mind
he has just built a workshop for the Beechwood Players in a separate
building. It contains power woodworking machines, and rooms for
painting scenery and for the costume department, the latter containing
power sewing machines.
There is no doubt but that these two schools have unique facilities
for developing an interest in the acted drama. But artistic results
have often been secured in the school theatre with equipment falling
far short of the ideal standards achieved at Montclair and at
Scarborough. Other less fortunate schools are, moreover, at no
particular disadvantage when it comes to the class-room study of the
drama for which this book is primarily planned, this work being the
first step in the direction of a more intelligent attitude toward
modern plays and modern theatres. A class-room reading of modern plays
without any accessories, as Shakespeare is often read from the seats
and the aisles, is one of the most practical methods of speech and
voice improvement. Louis Calvert, the eminent actor, speaking of this
kind of training says: "After all it is one of the simplest things in
the world to learn to speak correctly, to take thought and begin and
end each word properly.... A little attention to one's everyday
conversation will often work wonders. If one schools himself for a
while to speak a little more slowly, and to give each syllable its
due, it is surprising how naturally and rapidly his speech will
clarify. If we take care of the consonants, the vowels will take care
of themselves."
[Illustration: Ravine where the Garden Theatre was built.]
[Illustration: The Garden Theatre.]
At the present time, then, the theatre in the schools means a variety
of things. It means first and foremost, as suggested by the latest
college entrance requirements, the study of modern plays, side by side
with the classics. It means also the improvement of English speech,
through the interpretation and the reading aloud of the text. It means
a study of the new art of the theatre such as the present book
suggests. It means often the presentation of plays before outside
audiences and the consequent strengthening of the ties that should
exist between the school and the community. It may mean the
co-operation of several departments of the school in the production;
and, in this case, it usually results in the establishment of some
kind of a workshop. And finally, in certain favored schools, it means
the erection of model Little Theatres. It seems fair to suppose that
this newly aroused interest in modern drama and in modern methods of
production in the schools will have far-reaching results.
BEAUTY AND THE JACOBIN[23]
By BOOTH TARKINGTON
[Footnote 23: Copyright, 1912, by Harper and Brothers.
Copyright in Great Britain. All acting rights both amateur
and professional reserved by the author.]
Since the days of Edward Eggleston, Indiana has been accumulating
literary traditions until at the present time it rivals New England in
the variety of its literary associations. Newton Booth Tarkington,
born in Indianapolis in 1869, and continuing to make his home there
still in the old family house on North Pennsylvania Street, is one of
the most distinguished of the Hoosier writers. As a lad of eleven he
began his friendship with James Whitcomb Riley, then a neighbor. "He
acknowledges (shaking his head in reflection at the depth of it) that
the spirit of Riley has exercised over him a strong, if often
unconsciously felt, influence all his life." The delicious stories of
Penrod and of the William Sylvanus Baxter of _Seventeen_ that Booth
Tarkington has told for the unalloyed delight of old and young are
said to reproduce quite accurately the author's recollection of his
own boyhood pranks and associations in the Middle-Western city of his
birth. Tarkington went first to Phillips Exeter Academy and later to
Purdue University at Lafayette, Indiana, before he became a member of
the class of '93 at Princeton. His popularity and his good fellowship
are still cherished memories on the campus.
It seems that he was infallibly associated in the undergraduate mind
with the singing of _Danny Deever_; so much so, that whenever he
appeared on the steps at Nassau Hall there would be an immediate
demand for his speciality, a demand that often caused him to retire as
inconspicuously as possible from the crowd. These old days are
commemorated in the following verses, a copy of which, framed, hangs
on the walls of the Princeton Club in New York.
RONDEL
"The same old Tark--just watch him shy
Like hunted thing, and hide, if let,
Away behind his cigarette,
When 'Danny Deever' is the cry.
Keep up the call and by and by
We'll make him sing, and find he's yet
The same old Tark.
No 'Author Leonid' we spy
In him, no cultured ladies' pet:
He just drops in, and so we get
The good old song, and gently guy
The same old Tark--just watch him shy!"
No biography of Booth Tarkington, no matter how brief, should omit to
mention that he was elected to the Indiana State Legislature and sat
for a time in that body, where he accumulated, no doubt, some data on
the subject of Indiana politics that he may afterwards have put to
literary use.
He has found the subject for most of his novels and plays[24] in
contemporary American life, which he treats unsentimentally,
spiritedly, and vigorously. _Beauty and the Jacobin_, like his famous
and fascinating tale, _Monsieur Beaucaire_, is exceptional among his
works in deserting the modern American scene for an Eighteenth Century
situation. The story and the play are likely, for this reason, to be
compared. The tone of _Monsieur Beaucaire_ is more urbane, more
whimsical, more romantic than the mood of _Beauty and the Jacobin_
which "breaks with the pretty, pretty kind of thing. There is a new
quality in the texture of the writing.... The plot here springs
directly from character, and the action of the piece is inevitable.
_Beauty and the Jacobin_ gives evidence of being the first conscious
and determined, as it is the first consistent, effort of the author to
leave the surface and work from the inside of his characters out....
The whole of the little drama is scintillant with wit, delicate and at
times brilliant and somewhat Shavian, which flashes out poignantly
against the sombreness of its background."[25]
[Footnote 24: For a bibliography of his works through the
year 1913, see Asa Don Dickinson, _Booth Tarkington, a
Gentleman from Indiana_, Garden City, no date.]
[Footnote 25: Robert Cortes Holliday, _Booth Tarkington_,
Garden City and New York, 1918, pp. 155-156; p. 157.]
_Beauty and the Jacobin_ was published in 1912 and has had at least
one performance on the professional stage. On November 12, 1912, it
was played by members of the company then acting in _Fanny's First
Play_, at a matinee at the Comedy Theatre, in New York. It has always
been a favorite with amateurs and quite recently was performed in St.
Louis by one of the dramatic clubs of that city.
BEAUTY AND THE JACOBIN
_Our scene is in a rusty lodging-house of the Lower Town,
Boulogne-sur-Mer, and the time, the early twilight of dark November in
northern France. This particular November is dark indeed, for it is
November of the year 1793, Frimaire of the Terror. The garret room
disclosed to us, like the evening lowering outside its one window, and
like the times, is mysterious, obscure, smoked with perplexing
shadows; these flying and staggering to echo the shiftings of a young
man writing at a desk by the light of a candle._
_We are just under the eaves here; the dim ceiling slants; and there
are two doors: that in the rear wall is closed; the other, upon our
right, and evidently leading to an inner chamber, we find ajar. The
furniture of this mean apartment is chipped, faded, insecure, yet
still possessed of a haggard elegance; shamed odds and ends, cheaply
acquired by the proprietor of the lodging-house, no doubt at an
auction of the confiscated leavings of some emigrant noble. The single
window, square and mustily curtained, is so small that it cannot be
imagined to admit much light on the brightest of days; however, it
might afford a lodger a limited view of the houses opposite and the
street below. In fact, as our eyes grow accustomed to the obscurity we
discover it serving this very purpose at the present moment, for a
tall woman stands close by in the shadow, peering between the curtains
with the distrustfulness of a picket thrown far out into an enemy's
country. Her coarse blouse and skirt, new and as ill-fitting as sacks,
her shop-woman's bonnet and cheap veil, and her rough shoes are
naively denied by her sensitive, pale hands and the high-bred and
in-bred face, long profoundly marked by loss and fear, and now very
white, very watchful. She is not more than forty, but her hair,
glimpsed beneath the clumsy bonnet, shows much grayer than need be at
that age. This is ANNE DE LASEYNE_.
_The intent young man at the desk, easily recognizable as her brother,
fair and of a singular physical delicacy, is a finely completed
product of his race; one would pronounce him gentle in each sense of
the word. His costume rivals his sister's in the innocence of its
attempt at disguise: he wears a carefully soiled carter's frock, rough
new gaiters, and a pair of dangerously aristocratic shoes, which are
not too dusty to conceal the fact that they are of excellent make and
lately sported buckles. A tousled cap of rabbit-skin, exhibiting a
tricolor cockade, crowns these anomalies, though not at present his
thin, blond curls, for it has been tossed upon a dressing-table which
stands against the wall to the left. He is younger than MADAME DE
LASEYNE, probably by more than ten years; and, though his features so
strikingly resemble hers, they are free from the permanent impress of
pain which she bears like a mourning-badge upon her own._
_He is expending a feverish attention upon his task, but with patently
unsatisfactory results; for he whispers and mutters to himself, bites
the feather of his pen, shakes his head forebodingly, and again and
again crumples a written sheet and throws it upon the floor. Whenever
this happens ANNE DE LASEYNE casts a white glance at him over her
shoulder--his desk is in the center of the room--her anxiety is
visibly increased, and the temptation to speak less and less easily
controlled, until at last she gives way to it. Her voice is low and
hurried._
ANNE. Louis, it is growing dark very fast.
LOUIS. I had not observed it, my sister. [_He lights a second candle
from the first; then, pen in mouth, scratches at his writing with a
little knife._]
ANNE. People are still crowding in front of the wine-shop across the
street.
LOUIS [_smiling with one side of his mouth_]. Naturally. Reading the
list of the proscribed that came at noon. Also waiting, amiable
vultures, for the next bulletin from Paris. It will give the names of
those guillotined day before yesterday. For a good bet: our own names
[_he nods toward the other room_]--yes, hers, too--are all three in
the former. As for the latter--well, they can't get us in that now.
ANNE [_eagerly_]. Then you are certain that we are safe?
LOUIS. I am certain only that they cannot murder us day before
yesterday. [_As he bends his head to his writing a woman comes in
languidly through the open door, bearing an armful of garments, among
which one catches the gleam of fine silk, glimpses of lace and rich
furs--a disordered burden which she dumps pell-mell into a large
portmanteau lying open upon a chair near the desk. This new-comer is
of a startling gold-and-ivory beauty; a beauty quite literally
striking, for at the very first glance the whole force of it hits the
beholder like a snowball in the eye; a beauty so obvious, so
completed, so rounded, that it is painful; a beauty to rivet the
unenvious stare of women, but from the full blast of which either king
or man-peasant would stagger away to the confessional. The egregious
luster of it is not breathed upon even by its overspreading of sullen
revolt, as its possessor carelessly arranges the garments in the
portmanteau. She wears a dress all gray, of a coarse texture, but
exquisitely fitted to her; nothing could possibly be plainer, or of a
more revealing simplicity. She might be twenty-two; at least it is
certain that she is not thirty. At her coming, LOUIS looks up with a
sigh of poignant wistfulness, evidently a habit; for as he leans back
to watch her he sighs again. She does not so much as glance at him,
but speaks absently to MADAME DE LASEYNE. Her voice is superb, as it
should be; deep and musical, with a faint, silvery huskiness._]
ELOISE [_the new-comer_]. Is he still there?
ANNE. I lost sight of him in the crowd. I think he has gone. If only
he does not come back!
LOUIS [_with grim conviction_]. He will.
ANNE. I am trying to hope not.
ELOISE. I have told you from the first that you overestimate his
importance. Haven't I said it often enough?
ANNE [_under her breath_]. You have!
ELOISE [_coldly_]. He will not harm you.
ANNE [_looking out of the window_]. More people down there; they are
running to the wine-shop.
LOUIS. Gentle idlers! [_The sound of triumphant shouting comes up from
the street below._] That means that the list of the guillotined has
arrived from Paris.
ANNE [_shivering_]. They are posting it in the wine-shop window.
[_The shouting increases suddenly to a roar of hilarity, in which the
shrilling of women mingles._]
LOUIS. Ah! One remarks that the list is a long one. The good people
are well satisfied with it. [_To ELOISE_] My cousin, in this amiable
populace which you champion, do you never scent something of--well,
something of the graveyard scavenger? [_She offers the response of an
unmoved glance in his direction, and slowly goes out by the door at
which she entered. Louis sighs again and returns to his scribbling._]
ANNE [_nervously_]. Haven't you finished, Louis?
LOUIS [_indicating the floor strewn with crumpled slips of paper_]. A
dozen.
ANNE. Not good enough?
LOUIS [_with a rueful smile_]. I have lived to discover that among all
the disadvantages of being a Peer of France the most dangerous is that
one is so poor a forger. Truly, however, our parents are not to be
blamed for neglecting to have me instructed in this art; evidently
they perceived I had no talent for it. [_Lifting a sheet from the
desk._] Oh, vile! I am not even an amateur. [_He leans back, tapping
the paper thoughtfully with his pen._] Do you suppose the Fates took
all the trouble to make the Revolution simply to teach me that I have
no skill in forgery? Listen. [_He reads what he has written._]
"Committee of Public Safety. In the name of the Republic. To all
Officers, Civil and Military: Permit the Citizen Balsage"--that's
myself, remember--"and the Citizeness Virginie Balsage, his
sister"--that's you, Anne--"and the Citizeness Marie Balsage, his
second sister"--that is Eloise, you understand--"to embark in the
vessel _Jeune Pierrette_ from the port of Boulogne for Barcelona.
Signed: Billaud Varennes. Carnot. Robespierre." Execrable! [_He tears
up the paper, scattering the fragments on the floor._] I am not even
sure it is the proper form. Ah, that Dossonville!
ANNE. But Dossonville helped us--
LOUIS. At a price. Dossonville! An individual of marked attainment,
not only in penmanship, but in the art of plausibility. Before I paid
him he swore that the passports he forged for us would take us not
only out of Paris, but out of the country.
ANNE. Are you sure we must have a separate permit to embark?
LOUIS. The captain of the _Jeune Pierrette_ sent one of his sailors to
tell me. There is a new Commissioner from the National Committee, he
said, and a special order was issued this morning. They have an
officer and a file of the National Guard on the quay to see that the
order is obeyed.
ANNE. But we bought passports in Paris. Why can't we here?
LOUIS. Send out a street-crier for an accomplished forger? My poor
Anne! We can only hope that the lieutenant on the quay may be drunk
when he examines my dreadful "permit." Pray a great thirst upon him,
my sister! [_He looks at a watch which he draws from beneath his
frock._] Four o'clock. At five the tide in the river is poised at its
highest; then it must run out, and the _Jeune Pierrette_ with it. We
have an hour. I return to my crime. [_He takes a fresh sheet of paper
and begins to write._]
ANNE [_urgently_]. Hurry, Louis!
LOUIS. Watch for Master Spy.
ANNE. I cannot see him. [_There is silence for a time, broken only by
the nervous scratching of Louis's pen._]
LOUIS [_at work_]. Still you don't see him?
ANNE. No. The people are dispersing. They seem in a good humor.
LOUIS. Ah, if they knew--[_He breaks off, examines his latest effort
attentively, and finds it unsatisfactory, as is evinced by the
noiseless whistle of disgust to which his lips form themselves. He
discards the sheet and begins another, speaking rather absently as he
does so._] I suppose I have the distinction to be one of the most
hated men in our country, now that all the decent people have left
it--so many by a road something of the shortest! Yes, these merry
gentlemen below there would be still merrier if they knew they had
within their reach a forfeited "Emigrant." I wonder how long it would
take them to climb the breakneck flights to our door. Lord, there'd be
a race for it! Prize-money, too, I fancy, for the first with his
bludgeon.
ANNE [_lamentably_]. Louis, Louis! Why didn't you lie safe in England?
LOUIS [_smiling_]. Anne, Anne! I had to come back for a good sister of
mine.
ANNE. But I could have escaped alone.
LOUIS. That is it--"alone"! [_He lowers his voice as he glances toward
the open door._] For she would not have moved at all if I hadn't come
to bully her into it. A fanatic, a fanatic!
ANNE [_brusquely_]. She is a fool. Therefore be patient with her.
LOUIS [_warningly_]. Hush.
ELOISE [_in a loud, careless tone from the other room_]. Oh, I heard
you! What does it matter? [_She returns, carrying a handsome skirt and
bodice of brocade and a woman's long mantle of light-green cloth,
hooded and lined with fur. She drops them into the portmanteau and
closes it._] There! I've finished your packing for you.
LOUIS [_rising_]. My cousin, I regret that we could not provide
servants for this flight. [_Bowing formally._] I regret that we have
been compelled to ask you to do a share of what is necessary.
ELOISE [_turning to go out again_]. That all?
LOUIS [_lifting the portmanteau_]. I fear--
ELOISE [_with assumed fatigue_]. Yes, you usually do. What now?
LOUIS [_flushing painfully_]. The portmanteau is too heavy. [_He
returns to the desk, sits, and busies himself with his writing,
keeping his grieved face from her view._]
ELOISE. You mean you're too weak to carry it?
LOUIS. Suppose at the last moment it becomes necessary to hasten
exceedingly--
ELOISE. You mean, suppose you had to run, you'd throw away the
portmanteau. [_Contemptuously._] Oh, I don't doubt you'd do it!
LOUIS [_forcing himself to look up at her cheerfully_]. I dislike to
leave my baggage upon the field, but in case of a rout it might be a
temptation--if it were an impediment.
ANNE [_peremptorily_]. Don't waste time. Lighten the portmanteau.
LOUIS. You may take out everything of mine.
ELOISE. There's nothing of yours in it except your cloak. You don't
suppose--
ANNE. Take out that heavy brocade of mine.
ELOISE. Thank you for not wishing to take out my fur-lined cloak and
freezing me at sea!
LOUIS [_gently_]. Take out both the cloak and the dress.
ELOISE [_astounded_]. What!
LOUIS. You shall have mine. It is as warm, but not so heavy.
ELOISE [_angrily_]. Oh, I am sick of your eternal packing and
unpacking! I am sick of it!
ANNE. Watch at the window, then. [_She goes swiftly to the
portmanteau, opens it, tosses out the green mantle and the brocaded
skirt and bodice, and tests the weight of the portmanteau._] I think
it will be light enough now, Louis.
LOUIS. Do not leave those things in sight. If our landlord should come
in--
ANNE. I'll hide them in the bed in the next room. Eloise! [_She points
imperiously to the window. ELOISE goes to it slowly and for a moment
makes a scornful pretense of being on watch there; but as soon as
MADAME DE LASEYNE has left the room she turns, leaning against the
wall and regarding Louis with languid amusement. He continues to
struggle with his ill-omened "permit," but, by and by, becoming aware
of her gaze, glances consciously over his shoulder and meets her
half-veiled eyes. Coloring, he looks away, stares dreamily at nothing,
sighs, and finally writes again, absently, like a man under a spell,
which, indeed, he is. The pen drops from his hand with a faint click
upon the floor. He makes the movement of a person suddenly awakened,
and, holding his last writing near one of the candles, examines it
critically. Then he breaks into low, bitter laughter._]
ELOISE [_unwillingly curious_]. You find something amusing?
LOUIS. Myself. One of my mistakes, that is all.
ELOISE [_indifferently_]. Your mirth must be indefatigable if you can
still laugh at those.
LOUIS. I agree. I am a history of error.
ELOISE. You should have made it a vocation; it is your one genius. And
yet--truly because I am a fool I think, as Anne says--I let you hector
me into a sillier mistake than any of yours.
LOUIS. When?
ELOISE [_flinging out her arms_]. Oh, when I consented to this absurd
journey, this _tiresome_ journey--with _you_! An "escape"? From
nothing. In "disguise." Which doesn't disguise.
LOUIS [_his voice taut with the effort for self-command_]. My sister
asked me to be patient with you, Eloise--
ELOISE. Because I am a fool, yes. Thanks. [_Shrewishly._] And then, my
worthy young man? [_He rises abruptly, smarting almost beyond
endurance._]
LOUIS [_breathing deeply_]. Have I not been patient with you?
ELOISE [_with a flash of energy_]. If _I_ have asked you to be
anything whatever--with me!--pray recall the petition to my memory.
LOUIS [_beginning to let himself go_]. Patient! Have I ever been
anything but patient with you? Was I not patient with you five years
ago when you first harangued us on your "Rights of Man" and your
monstrous republicanism? Where you got hold of it all I don't know--
ELOISE [_kindling_]. Ideas, my friend. Naturally, incomprehensible to
you. Books! Brains! Men!
LOUIS. "Books! Brains! Men!" Treason, poison, and mobs! Oh, I could
laugh at you then: they were only beginning to kill us, and I was
patient. Was I not patient with you when these Republicans of yours
drove us from our homes, from our country, stole all we had,
assassinated us in dozens, in hundreds, murdered our King? [_He walks
the floor, gesticulating nervously._] When I saw relative after
relative of my own--aye, and of yours, too--dragged to the
abattoir--even poor, harmless, kind Andre de Laseyne, whom they took
simply because he was my brother-in-law--was I not patient? And when I
came back to Paris for you and Anne, and had to lie hid in a stable,
every hour in greater danger because you would not be persuaded to
join us, was I not patient? And when you finally did consent, but
protested every step of the way, pouting and--
ELOISE [_stung_]. "Pouting!"
LOUIS. And when that stranger came posting after us so obvious a spy--
ELOISE [_scornfully_]. Pooh! He is nothing.
LOUIS. Is there a league between here and Paris over which he has not
dogged us? By diligence, on horseback, on foot, turning up at every
posting-house, every roadside inn, the while you laughed at me because
I read death in his face! These two days we have been here, is there
an hour when you could look from that window except to see him
grinning up from the wine-shop door down there?
ELOISE [_impatiently, but with a somewhat conscious expression_]. I
tell you not to fear him. There is nothing in it.
LOUIS [_looking at her keenly_]. Be sure I understand why you do not
think him a spy! You believe he has followed us because you--
ELOISE. I expected that! Oh, I knew it would come! [_Furiously._] I
never saw the man before in my life!
LOUIS [_pacing the floor_]. He is unmistakable; his trade is stamped
on him; a hired trailer of your precious "Nation's."
ELOISE [_haughtily_]. The Nation is the People. You malign because you
fear. The People is sacred!
LOUIS [_with increasing bitterness_]. Aren't you tired yet of the
Palais Royal platitudes? I have been patient with your Mericourtisms
for so long. Yes, always I was patient. Always there was time; there
was danger, but there was a little time. [_He faces her, his voice
becoming louder, his gestures more vehement._] But now the _Jeune
Pierrette_ sails this hour, and if we are not out of here and on her
deck when she leaves the quay, my head rolls in Samson's basket within
the week, with Anne's and your own to follow! _Now_, I tell you, there
is no more time, and _now_--
ELOISE [_suavely_]. Yes? Well? "Now?" [_He checks himself; his lifted
hand falls to his side._]
LOUIS [_in a gentle voice_]. I am still patient. [_He looks into her
eyes, makes her a low and formal obeisance, and drops dejectedly into
the chair at the desk._]
ELOISE [_dangerously_]. Is the oration concluded?
LOUIS. Quite.
ELOISE [_suddenly volcanic_]. Then "_now_" you'll perhaps be "patient"
enough to explain why I shouldn't leave you instantly. Understand
fully that I have come thus far with you and Anne solely to protect
you in case you were suspected. "_Now_," my little man, you are safe:
you have only to go on board your vessel. Why should I go with you?
Why do you insist on dragging me out of the country?
LOUIS [_wearily_]. Only to save your life; that is all.
ELOISE. My life! Tut! My life is safe with the People--my People!
[_She draws herself up magnificently._] The Nation would protect me!
I gave the people my whole fortune when they were starving. After
that, who in France dare lay a finger upon the Citizeness Eloise
d'Anville!
LOUIS. I have the idea sometimes, my cousin, that perhaps if you had
not given them your property they would have taken it, anyway.
[_Dryly._] They did mine.
ELOISE [_agitated_]. I do not expect you to comprehend what I
felt--what I feel! [_She lifts her arms longingly._] Oh, for a Man!--a
Man who could understand me!
LOUIS [_sadly_]. That excludes me!
ELOISE. Shall I spell it?
LOUIS. You are right. So far from understanding you, I understand
nothing. The age is too modern for me. I do not understand why this
rabble is permitted to rule France; I do not even understand why it is
permitted to live.
ELOISE [_with superiority_]. Because you belong to the class that
thought itself made of porcelain and the rest of the world clay. It is
simple: the mud-ball breaks the vase.
LOUIS. You belong to the same class, even to the same family.
ELOISE. You are wrong. One circumstance proves me no aristocrat.
LOUIS. What circumstance?
ELOISE. That I happened to be born with brains. I can account for it
only by supposing some hushed-up ancestral scandal. [_Brusquely._] Do
you understand that?
LOUIS. I overlook it. [_He writes again._]
ELOISE. Quibbling was always a habit of yours. [_Snapping at him
irritably._] Oh, stop that writing! You can't do it, and you don't
need it. You blame the people because they turn on you now, after
you've whipped and beaten and ground them underfoot for centuries and
centuries and--
LOUIS. Quite a career for a man of twenty-nine!
ELOISE. I have said that quibbling was--
LOUIS [_despondently_]. Perhaps it is. To return to my other
deficiencies, I do not understand why this spy who followed us from
Paris has not arrested me long before now. I do not understand why you
hate me. I do not understand the world in general. And in particular I
do not understand the art of forgery. [_He throws down his pen._]
ELOISE. You talk of "patience"! How often have I explained that you
would not need passports of any kind if you would let me throw off my
incognito. If anyone questions you, it will be sufficient if I give my
name. All France knows the Citizeness Eloise d'Anville. Do you suppose
the officer on the quay would dare oppose--
LOUIS [_with a gesture of resignation_]. I know you think it.
ELOISE [_angrily_]. You tempt me not to prove it. But for Anne's
sake--
LOUIS. Not for mine. That, at least, I understand. [_He rises._] My
dear cousin, I am going to be very serious--
ELOISE. O heaven! [_She flings away from him._]
LOUIS [_plaintively_]. I shall not make another oration--
ELOISE. Make anything you choose. [_Drumming the floor with her
foot._] What does it matter?
LOUIS. I have a presentiment--I ask you to listen--
ELOISE [_in her irritation almost screaming_]. How can I help but
listen? And Anne, too! [_With a short laugh._] You know as well as I
do that when that door is open everything you say in this room is
heard in there. [_She points to the open doorway, where MADAME DE
LASEYNE instantly makes her appearance, and after exchanging one fiery
glance with ELOISE as swiftly withdraws, closing the door behind her
with outraged emphasis._]
ELOISE [_breaking into a laugh_]. Forward, soldiers!
LOUIS [_reprovingly_]. Eloise!
ELOISE. Well, _open_ the door, then, if you want her to hear you make
love to me! [_Coolly._] That's what you're going to do, isn't it?
LOUIS [_with imperfect self-control_]. I wish to ask you for the last
time--
ELOISE [_flouting_]. There are so many last times!
LOUIS. To ask you if you are sure that you know your own heart. You
cared for me once, and--
ELOISE [_as if this were news indeed_]. I did? Who under heaven ever
told you that?
LOUIS [_flushing_]. You allowed yourself to be betrothed to me, I
believe.
ELOISE. "Allowed" is the word, precisely. I seem to recall changing
all that the very day I became an orphan--and my own master!
[_Satirically polite._] Pray correct me if my memory errs. How long
ago was it? Six years? Seven?
LOUIS [_with emotion_]. Eloise, Eloise, you did love me then! We were
happy, both of us, so very happy--
ELOISE [_sourly_]. "Both!" My faith! But I must have been a brave
little actress.
LOUIS. I do not believe it. You loved me. I--[_He hesitates._]
ELOISE. Do get on with what you have to say.
LOUIS [_in a low voice_]. I have many forebodings, Eloise, but the
strongest--and for me the saddest--is that this is the last chance you
will ever have to tell--to tell me--[_He falters again._]
ELOISE [_irritated beyond measure, shouting_]. To tell you what?
LOUIS [_swallowing_]. That your love for me still lingers.
ELOISE [_promptly_]. Well, it doesn't. So _that's_ over!
LOUIS. Not quite yet. I--
ELOISE [_dropping into a chair_]. O Death!
LOUIS [_still gently_]. Listen. I have hope that you and Anne may be
permitted to escape; but as for me, since the first moment I felt the
eyes of that spy from Paris upon me I have had the premonition that I
would be taken back--to the guillotine, Eloise. I am sure that he will
arrest me when I attempt to leave this place to-night. [_With
sorrowful earnestness._] And it is with the certainty in my soul that
this is our last hour together that I ask you if you cannot tell me
that the old love has come back. Is there nothing in your heart for
me?
ELOISE. Was there anything in _your_ heart for the beggar who stood at
your door in the old days?
LOUIS. Is there nothing for him who stands at yours now, begging for a
word?
ELOISE [_frowning_]. I remember you had the name of a disciplinarian
in your regiment. [_She rises to face him._] Did you ever find
anything in your heart for the soldiers you ordered tied up and
flogged? Was there anything in your heart for the peasants who starved
in your fields?
LOUIS [_quietly_]. No; it was too full of you.
ELOISE. Words! Pretty little words!
LOUIS. Thoughts. Pretty, because they are of you. All, always of
you--always, my dear. I never really think of anything but you. The
picture of you is always before the eyes of my soul; the very name of
you is forever in my heart. [_With a rueful smile._] And it is on the
tips of my fingers, sometimes when it shouldn't be. See. [_He steps to
the desk and shows her a scribbled sheet._] This is what I laughed at
a while ago. I tried to write, with you near me, and unconsciously I
let your name creep into my very forgery! I wrote it as I wrote it in
the sand when we were children; as I have traced it a thousand times
on coated mirrors--on frosted windows. [_He reads the writing aloud._]
"Permit the Citizen Balsage and his sister, the Citizeness Virginie
Balsage, and his second sister, the Citizeness Marie Balsage, and
Eloise d'Anville"--so I wrote!--"to embark upon the vessel _Jeune
Pierrette_--" You see? [_He lets the paper fall upon the desk._] Even
in this danger, that I feel closer and closer with every passing
second, your name came in of itself. I am like that English Mary: if
they will open my heart when I am dead, they shall find, not "Calais,"
but "Eloise"!
ELOISE [_going to the dressing-table_]. Louis, that doesn't interest
me. [_She adds a delicate touch or two to her hair, studying it
thoughtfully in the dressing-table mirror._]
LOUIS [_somberly_]. I told you long ago--
ELOISE [_smiling at her reflection_]. So you did--often!
LOUIS [_breathing quickly_]. I have nothing new to offer. I
understand. I bore you.
ELOISE. Louis, to be frank: I don't care what they find in your heart
when they open it.
LOUIS [_with a hint of sternness_]. Have you never reflected that
there might be something for me to forgive you?
ELOISE [_glancing at him over her shoulder in frowning surprise_].
What!
LOUIS. I wonder sometimes if you have ever found a flaw in your own
character.
ELOISE [_astounded_]. So! [_Turning sharply upon him._] You are
assuming the right to criticize me, are you? Oho!
LOUIS [_agitated_]. I state merely--I have said--I think I forgive you
a great deal--
ELOISE [_beginning to char_]. You do! You bestow your gracious pardon
upon me, do you? [_Bursting into flame._] Keep your forgiveness to
yourself! When I want it I'll kneel at your feet and beg it of you!
You can _kiss_ me then, for then you will know that "the old love has
come back"!
LOUIS [_miserably_]. When you kneel--
ELOISE. Can you picture it--_Marquis?_ [_She hurls his title at him,
and draws herself up in icy splendor._] I am a woman of the Republic!
LOUIS. And the Republic has no need of love.
ELOISE. Its daughter has no need of yours!
LOUIS. Until you kneel to me. You have spoken. It is ended. [_Turning
from her with a pathetic gesture of farewell and resignation, his
attention is suddenly arrested by something invisible. He stands for a
moment transfixed. When he speaks, it is in an altered tone, light and
at the same time ominous._] My cousin, suffer the final petition of a
bore. Forgive my seriousness; forgive my stupidity, for I believe that
what one hears now means that a number of things are indeed ended.
Myself among them.
ELOISE [_not comprehending_]. "What one hears?"
LOUIS [_slowly_]. In the distance. [_Both stand motionless to listen,
and the room is silent. Gradually a muffled, multitudinous sound, at
first very faint, becomes audible._]
ELOISE. What is it?
LOUIS [_with pale composure_]. Only a song! [_The distant sound
becomes distinguishable as a singing from many unmusical throats and
pitched in every key, a drum-beat booming underneath; a tumultuous
rumble which grows slowly louder. The door of the inner room opens,
and MADAME DE LASEYNE enters._]
ANNE [_briskly, as she comes in_]. I have hidden the cloak and the
dress beneath the mattress. Have you--
LOUIS [_lifting his hand_]. Listen! [_She halts, startled. The
singing, the drums, and the tumult swell suddenly much louder, as if
the noise-makers had turned a corner._]
ANNE [_crying out_]. The "Marseillaise"!
LOUIS. The "Vultures' Chorus"!
ELOISE [_in a ringing voice_]. The Hymn of Liberty!
ANNE [_trembling violently_]. It grows louder.
LOUIS. Nearer!
ELOISE [_running to the window_]. They are coming this way!
ANNE [_rushing ahead of her_]. They have turned the corner of the
street. Keep back, Louis!
ELOISE [_leaning out of the window, enthusiastically_]. _Vive
la_--[_She finishes with an indignant gurgle as ANNE DE LASEYNE,
without comment, claps a prompt hand over her mouth and pushes her
vigorously from the window._]
ANNE. A mob--carrying torches and dancing. [_Her voice shaking
wildly._] They are following a troop of soldiers.
LOUIS. The National Guard.
ANNE. Keep back from the window! A man in a tricolor scarf marching in
front.
LOUIS. A political, then--an official of their government.
ANNE. O Virgin, have mercy! [_She turns a stricken face upon her
brother._] It is that--
LOUIS [_biting his nails_]. Of course. Our spy. [_He takes a
hesitating step toward the desk; but swings about, goes to the door at
the rear, shoots the bolt back and forth, apparently unable to decide
upon a course of action; finally leaves the door bolted and examines
the hinges. ANNE, meanwhile, has hurried to the desk, and, seizing a
candle there, begins to light others in a candelabrum on the
dressing-table. The noise outside grows to an uproar; the
"Marseillaise" changes to "Ca ira"; and a shaft of the glare from the
torches below shoots through the window and becomes a staggering red
patch on the ceiling._]
ANNE [_feverishly_]. Lights! Light those candles in the sconce,
Eloise! Light all the candles we have. [_ELOISE, resentful, does not
move._]
LOUIS. No, no! Put them out!
ANNE. Oh, fatal! [_She stops him as he rushes to obey his own
command._] If our window is lighted he will believe we have no thought
of leaving, and pass by. [_She hastily lights the candles in a sconce
upon the wall as she speaks; the shabby place is now brightly
illuminated._]
LOUIS. He will not pass by. [_The external tumult culminates in
riotous yelling, as, with a final roll, the drums cease to beat.
MADAME DE LASEYNE runs again to the window._]
ELOISE [_sullenly_]. You are disturbing yourselves without reason.
They will not stop here.
ANNE [_in a sickly whisper_]. They have stopped.
LOUIS. At the door of this house? [_MADAME DE LASEYNE, leaning against
the wall, is unable to reply, save by a gesture. The noise from the
street dwindles to a confused, expectant murmur. LOUIS takes a pistol
from beneath his blouse, strides to the door, and listens._]
ANNE [_faintly_]. He is in the house. The soldiers followed him.
LOUIS. They are on the lower stairs. [_He turns to the two women
humbly._] My sister and my cousin, my poor plans have only made
everything worse for you. I cannot ask you to forgive me. We are
caught.
ANNE [_vitalized with the energy of desperation_]. Not till the very
last shred of hope is gone. [_She springs to the desk and begins to
tear the discarded sheets into minute fragments._] Is that door
fastened?
LOUIS. They'll break it down, of course.
ANNE. Where is our passport from Paris?
LOUIS. Here. [_He gives it to her._]
ANNE. Quick! Which of these "permits" is the best?
LOUIS. They're all hopeless--[_He fumbles among the sheets on the
desk._]
ANNE. Any of them. We can't stop to select. [_She thrusts the passport
and a haphazard sheet from the desk into the bosom of her dress. An
orderly tramping of heavy shoes and a clinking of metal become audible
as the soldiers ascend the upper flight of stairs._]
ELOISE. All this is childish. [_Haughtily._] I shall merely announce--
ANNE [_uttering a half-choked scream of rage_]. You'll announce
nothing! Out of here, both of you!
LOUIS. No, no!
ANNE [_with breathless rapidity, as the noise on the stairs grows
louder_]. Let them break the door in if they will; only let them find
me alone. [_She seizes her brother's arm imploringly as he pauses,
uncertain._] Give me the chance to make them think I am here alone.
LOUIS. I can't--
ANNE [_urging him to the inner door_]. Is there any other possible
hope for us? Is there any other possible way to gain even a little
time? Louis, I want your word of honor not to leave that room unless I
summon you. I must have it! [_Overborne by her intensity, LOUIS nods
despairingly, allowing her to force him toward the other room. The
tramping of the soldiers, much louder and very close, comes to a
sudden stop. There is a sharp word of command, and a dozen muskets
ring on the floor just beyond the outer door._]
ELOISE [_folding her arms_]. You needn't think I shall consent to hide
myself. I shall tell them--
ANNE [_in a surcharged whisper_]. You will not ruin us! [_With furious
determination, as a loud knock falls upon the door._] In there, I tell
you! [_Almost physically she sweeps both ELOISE and LOUIS out of the
room, closes the door upon them, and leans against it, panting. The
knocking is repeated. She braces herself to speak._]
ANNE [_with a catch in her throat_]. Who is--there?
A SONOROUS VOICE. French Republic!
ANNE [_faltering_], It is--it is difficult to hear. What do you--
THE VOICE. Open the door.
ANNE [_more firmly_]. That is impossible.
THE VOICE. Open the door.
ANNE. What is your name?
THE VOICE. Valsin, National Agent.
ANNE. I do not know you.
THE VOICE. Open!
ANNE. I am here alone. I am dressing. I can admit no one.
THE VOICE. For the last time: open!
ANNE. No!
THE VOICE. Break it down. [_A thunder of blows from the butts of
muskets falls upon the door._]
ANNE [_rushing toward it in a passion of protest_]. No, no, no! You
shall not come in! I tell you I have not finished dressing. If you are
men of honor--Ah! [_She recoils, gasping, as a panel breaks in, the
stock of a musket following it; and then, weakened at rusty bolt and
crazy hinge, the whole door gives way and falls crashing into the
room. The narrow passage thus revealed is crowded with shabbily
uniformed soldiers of the National Guard, under an officer armed with
a saber. As the door falls a man wearing a tricolor scarf strides by
them, and, standing beneath the dismantled lintel, his hands behind
him, sweeps the room with a smiling eye._
_This personage is handsomely, almost dandiacally dressed in black;
his ruffle is of lace, his stockings are of silk; the lapels of his
waistcoat, overlapping those of his long coat, exhibit a rich
embroidery of white and crimson. These and other details of elegance,
such as his wearing powder upon his dark hair, indicate either insane
daring or an importance quite overwhelming. A certain easy power in
his unusually brilliant eyes favors the probability that, like
Robespierre, he can wear what he pleases. Undeniably he has
distinction. Equally undeniable is something in his air that is dapper
and impish and lurking. His first glance over the room apparently
affording him acute satisfaction, he steps lightly across the
prostrate door, MADAME DE LASEYNE retreating before him but keeping
herself between him and the inner door. He comes to an unexpected halt
in a dancing-master's posture, removing his huge hat--which displays a
tricolor plume of ostrich feathers--with a wide flourish, an
intentional burlesque of the old-court manner._]
VALSIN. Permit me. [_He bows elaborately._] Be gracious to a recent
fellow-traveler. I introduce myself. At your service: Valsin, Agent of
the National Committee of Public Safety. [_He faces about sharply._]
Soldiers! [_They stand at attention._] To the street door. I will
conduct the examination alone. My assistant will wait on this floor,
at the top of the stair. Send the people away down below there,
officer. Look to the courtyard. Clear the streets. [_The officer
salutes, gives a word of command, and the soldiers shoulder their
muskets, march off, and are heard clanking down the stairs. VALSIN
tosses his hat upon the desk, and turns smilingly to the trembling but
determined MADAME DE LASEYNE._]
ANNE [_summoning her indignation_]. How dare you break down my door!
How dare you force your--
VALSIN [_suavely_]. My compliments on the celerity with which the
citizeness has completed her toilet. Marvelous. An example to her sex.
ANNE. You intend robbery, I suppose.
VALSIN [_with a curt laugh_]. Not precisely.
ANNE. What, then?
VALSIN. I have come principally for the returned Emigrant, Louis
Valny-Cherault, formerly called Marquis de Valny-Cherault, formerly of
the former regiment of Valny; also formerly--
ANNE [_cutting him off sharply_]. I do not know what you mean by all
these names--and "formerlies"!
VALSIN. No? [_Persuasively._] Citizeness, pray assert that I did not
encounter you last week on your journey from Paris--
ANNE [_hastily_]. It is true I have been to Paris on business; you
may have seen me--I do not know. Is it a crime to return from Paris?
VALSIN [_in a tone of mock encouragement_]. It will amuse me to hear
you declare that I did not see you traveling in company with Louis
Valny-Cherault. Come! Say it.
ANNE [_stepping back defensively, closer to the inner door_]. I am
alone, I tell you! I do not know what you mean. If you saw me speaking
with people in the diligence, or at some posting-house, they were only
traveling acquaintances. I did not know them. I am a widow--
VALSIN. My condolences. Poor, of course?
ANNE. Yes.
VALSIN. And lonely, of course? [_Apologetically._] Loneliness is in
the formula: I suggest it for fear you might forget.
ANNE [_doggedly_]. I am alone.
VALSIN. Quite right.
ANNE [_confusedly_]. I am a widow, I tell you--a widow, living here
quietly with--
VALSIN [_taking her up quickly_]. Ah--"with"! Living here alone, and
also "with"--whom? Not your late husband?
ANNE [_desperately_]. With my niece.
VALSIN [_affecting great surprise_]. Ah! A niece! And the niece, I
take it, is in your other room yonder?
ANNE [_huskily_]. Yes.
VALSIN [_taking a step forward_]. Is she pretty? [_ANNE places her
back against the closed door, facing him grimly. He assumes a tone of
indulgence._] Ah, one must not look: the niece, likewise, has not
completed her toilet.
ANNE. She is--asleep.
VALSIN [_glancing toward the dismantled doorway_]. A sound napper! Why
did you not say instead that she was--shaving? [_He advances,
smiling._]
ANNE [_between her teeth_]. You shall not go in! You cannot see her!
She is--
VALSIN [_laughing_]. Allow me to prompt you. She is not only asleep;
she is ill. She is starving. Also, I cannot go in because she is an
orphan. Surely, she is an orphan? A lonely widow and her lonely orphan
niece. Ah, touching--and sweet!
ANNE [_hotly_]. What authority have you to force your way into my
apartment and insult--
VALSIN [_touching his scarf_]. I had the honor to mention the French
Republic.
ANNE. So! Does the French Republic persecute widows and orphans?
VALSIN [_gravely_]. No. It is the making of them!
ANNE [_crying out_]. Ah, horrible!
VALSIN. I regret that its just severity was the cause of your own
bereavement, Citizeness. When your unfortunate husband, Andre,
formerly known as the Prince de Laseyne--
ANNE [_defiantly, though tears have sprung to her eyes_]. I tell you I
do not know what you mean by these titles. My name is Balsage.
VALSIN. Bravo! The Widow Balsage, living here in calm obscurity with
her niece. Widow Balsage, answer quickly, without stopping to think.
[_Sharply._] How long have you lived here?
ANNE. Two months. [_Faltering._]--A year!
VALSIN [_laughing_]. Good. Two months and a year! No visitors? No
strangers?
ANNE. No.
VALSIN [_wheeling quickly and picking up LOUIS's cap from the
dressing-table_]. This cap, then, belongs to your niece.
ANNE [_flustered, advancing toward him as if to take it_]. It was--it
was left here this afternoon by our landlord.
VALSIN [_musingly_]. That is very, very puzzling. [_He leans against
the dressing-table in a careless attitude, his back to her._]
ANNE [_cavalierly_]. Why "puzzling"?
VALSIN. Because I sent him on an errand to Paris this morning. [_She
flinches, but he does not turn to look at her, continuing in a tone of
idle curiosity._] I suppose your own excursion to Paris was quite an
event for you, Widow Balsage. You do not take many journeys?
ANNE. I am too poor.
VALSIN. And you have not been contemplating another departure from
Boulogne?
ANNE. No.
VALSIN [_still in the same careless attitude, his back toward her and
the closed door_]. Good. It is as I thought: the portmanteau is for
ornament.
ANNE [_choking_]. It belongs to my niece. She came only an hour ago.
She has not unpacked.
VALSIN. Naturally. Too ill.
ANNE. She had traveled all night; she was exhausted. She went to sleep
at once.
VALSIN. Is she a somnambulist?
ANNE [_taken aback_]. Why?
VALSIN [_indifferently_]. She has just opened the door of her room in
order to overhear our conversation. [_Waving his hand to the
dressing-table mirror, in which he had been gazing._] Observe it,
Citizeness Laseyne.
ANNE [_demoralized_]. I do not--I--[_Stamping her foot._] How often
shall I tell you my name is Balsage!
VALSIN [_turning to her apologetically_]. My wretched memory. Perhaps
I might remember better if I saw it written: I beg a glance at your
papers. Doubtless you have your certificate of citizenship--
ANNE [_trembling_]. I have papers, certainly.
VALSIN. The sight of them--
ANNE. I have my passport; you shall see. [_With wildly shaking hands
she takes from her blouse the passport and the "permit," crumpled
together._] It is in proper form--[_She is nervously replacing the two
papers in her bosom when with a sudden movement he takes them from
her. She cries out incoherently, and attempts to recapture them._]
VALSIN [_extending his left arm to fend her off_]. Yes, here you have
your passport. And there you have others. [_He points to the littered
floor under the desk._] Many of them!
ANNE. Old letters! [_She clutches at the papers in his grasp._]
VALSIN [_easily fending her off_]. Doubtless! [_He shakes the "permit"
open._] Oho! A permission to embark--and signed by three names of the
highest celebrity. Alas, these unfortunate statesmen, Billaud
Varennes, Carnot, and Robespierre! Each has lately suffered an injury
to his right hand. What a misfortune for France! And what a
coincidence! One has not heard the like since we closed the theatres.
ANNE [_furiously struggling to reach his hand_]. Give me my papers!
Give me--
VALSIN [_holding them away from her_]. You see, these unlucky great
men had their names signed for them by somebody else. And I should
judge that this somebody else must have been writing quite
recently--less than half an hour ago, from the freshness of the
ink--and in considerable haste; perhaps suffering considerable anguish
of mind, Widow Balsage! [_MADAME DE LASEYNE, overwhelmed, sinks into a
chair. He comes close to her, his manner changing startlingly._]
VALSIN [_bending over with sudden menace, his voice loud and harsh_].
Widow Balsage, if you intend no journey, why have you this forged
permission to embark on the Jeune Pierrette? Widow Balsage, who is the
Citizen Balsage?
ANNE [_faintly_]. My brother.
VALSIN [_straightening up_]. Your first truth. [_Resuming his
gaiety._] Of course he is not in that room yonder with your niece.
ANNE [_brokenly_]. No, no, no; he is not! He is not here.
VALSIN [_commiseratingly_]. Poor woman! You have not even the pleasure
to perceive how droll you are.
ANNE. I perceive that I am a fool! [_She dashes the tears from her
eyes and springs to her feet._] I also perceive that you have
denounced us before the authorities here--
VALSIN. Pardon. In Boulogne it happens that _I_ am the authority. I
introduce myself for the third time: Valsin, Commissioner of the
National Committee of Public Safety. Tallien was sent to Bordeaux;
Collot to Lyons; I to Boulogne. Citizeness, were all of the august
names on your permit genuine, you could no more leave this port
without my counter-signature than you could take wing and fly over the
Channel!
ANNE [_with a shrill laugh of triumph_]. You have overreached
yourself! You're an ordinary spy: you followed us from Paris--
VALSIN [_gaily_]. Oh, I intended you to notice that!
ANNE [_unheeding_]. You have claimed to be Commissioner of the highest
power in France. We can prove that you are a common spy. You may go to
the guillotine for that. Take care, Citizen! So! You have denounced
us; we denounce you. I'll have you arrested by your own soldiers. I'll
call them--[_She makes a feint of running to the window. He watches
her coolly, in silence; and she halts, chagrined._]
VALSIN [_pleasantly_]. I was sure you would not force me to be
premature. Remark it, Citizeness Laseyne: I am enjoying all this. I
have waited a long time for it.
ANNE [_becoming hysterical_]. I am the Widow Balsage, I tell you! You
do not know us--you followed us from Paris. [_Half sobbing._] You're a
spy--a hanger-on of the police. We will prove--
VALSIN [_stepping to the dismantled doorway_]. I left my assistant
within hearing--a species of animal of mine. I may claim that he
belongs to me. A worthy patriot, but skillful, who has had the honor
of a slight acquaintance with you, I believe. [_Calling._]
Dossonville! [_DOSSONVILLE, a large man, flabby of flesh,
loose-mouthed, grizzled, carelessly dressed, makes his appearance in
the doorway. He has a harsh and reckless eye; and, obviously a
flamboyant bully by temperament, his abject, doggish deference to
VALSIN is instantly impressive, more than confirming the latter's
remark that DOSSONVILLE "belongs" to him. DOSSONVILLE, apparently, is
a chattel indeed, body and soul. At sight of him MADAME DE LASEYNE
catches at the desk for support and stands speechless._]
VALSIN [_easily_]. Dossonville, you may inform the Citizeness Laseyne
what office I have the fortune to hold.
DOSSONVILLE [_coming in_]. Bright heaven! All the world knows that you
are the representative of the Committee of Public Safety. Commissioner
to Boulogne.
VALSIN. With what authority?
DOSSONVILLE. Absolute--unlimited! Naturally. What else would be
useful?
VALSIN. You recall this woman, Dossonville?
DOSSONVILLE. She was present when I delivered the passport to the
Emigrant Valny-Cherault, in Paris.
VALSIN. Did you forge that passport?
DOSSONVILLE. No. I told the Emigrant I had. Under orders.
[_Grinning._] It was genuine.
VALSIN. Where did you get it?
DOSSONVILLE. From you.
VALSIN [_suavely_]. Sit down, Dossonville. [_The latter, who is
standing by a chair, obeys with a promptness more than military.
VALSIN turns smilingly to MADAME DE LASEYNE._] Dossonville's
instructions, however, did not include a "permit" to sail on the
_Jeune Pierrette_. All of which, I confess, Citizeness, has very much
the appearance of a trap! [_He tosses the two papers upon the desk.
Utterly dismayed, she makes no effort to secure them. He regards her
with quizzical enjoyment._]
ANNE. Ah--you--[_She fails to speak coherently._]
VALSIN. Dossonville has done very well. He procured your passport,
brought your "disguises," planned your journey, even gave you
directions how to find these lodgings in Boulogne. Indeed, I
instructed him to omit nothing for your comfort. [_He pauses for a
moment._] If I am a spy, Citizeness Laseyne, at least I trust your
gracious intelligence may not cling to the epithet "ordinary." My
soul! but I appear to myself a most uncommon type of spy--a very
intricate, complete, and unusual spy, in fact.
ANNE [_to herself, weeping_]. Ah, poor Louis!
VALSIN [_cheerfully_]. You are beginning to comprehend? That is well.
Your niece's door is still ajar by the discreet width of a finger, so
I assume that the Emigrant also begins to comprehend. Therefore I take
my ease! [_He seats himself in the most comfortable chair in the room,
crossing his legs in a leisurely attitude, and lightly drumming the
tips of his fingers together, the while his peaceful gaze is fixed
upon the ceiling. His tone, as he continues, is casual._] You
understand, my Dossonville, having long ago occupied this very
apartment myself, I am serenely aware that the Emigrant can leave the
other room only by the window; and as this is the fourth floor, and a
proper number of bayonets in the courtyard below are arranged to
receive any person active enough to descend by a rope of bed-clothes,
one is confident that the said Emigrant will remain where he is. Let
us make ourselves comfortable, for it is a delightful hour--an hour I
have long promised myself. I am in a good humor. Let us all be happy.
Citizeness Laseyne, enjoy yourself. Call me some bad names!
ANNE [_between her teeth_]. If I could find one evil enough!
VALSIN [_slapping his knee delightedly_]. There it is: the complete
incompetence of your class. You poor aristocrats, you do not even know
how to swear. Your ancestors knew how! They were fighters; they knew
how to swear because they knew how to attack; you poor moderns have no
profanity left in you, because, poisoned by idleness, you have
forgotten even how to resist. And yet you thought yourselves on top,
and so you were--but as foam is on top of the wave. You forgot that
power, like genius, always comes from underneath, because it is
produced only by turmoil. We have had to wring the neck of your
feather-head court, because while the court was the nation the nation
had its pockets picked. You were at the mercy of anybody with a pinch
of brains: adventurers like Mazarin, like Fouquet, like Law, or that
little commoner, the woman Fish, who called herself Pompadour and took
France--France, merely!--from your King, and used it to her own
pleasure. Then, at last, after the swindlers had well plucked you--at
last, unfortunate creatures, the People got you! Citizeness, the
People had starved: be assured they will eat you to the bone--and then
eat the bone! You are helpless because you have learned nothing and
forgotten everything. You have forgotten everything in this world
except how to be fat!
DOSSONVILLE [_applauding with unction_]. Beautiful! It is beautiful,
all that! A beautiful speech!
VALSIN. Ass!
DOSSONVILLE [_meekly_]. Perfectly, perfectly.
VALSIN [_crossly_]. That wasn't a speech; it was the truth. Citizeness
Laseyne, so far as you are concerned, I am the People. [_He extends
his hand negligently, with open palm._] And I have got you. [_He
clenches his fingers, like a cook's on the neck of a fowl._] Like
that! And I'm going to take you back to Paris, you and the Emigrant.
[_She stands in an attitude eloquent of despair. His glance roves from
her to the door of the other room, which is still slightly ajar; and,
smiling at some fugitive thought, he continues, deliberately._] I take
you: you and your brother--and that rather pretty little person who
traveled with you. [_There is a breathless exclamation from the other
side of the door, which is flung open violently, as ELOISE--flushed,
radiant with anger, and altogether magnificent--sweeps into the room
to confront VALSIN._]
ELOISE [_slamming the door behind her_]. Leave this Jack-in-Office to
me, Anne!
DOSSONVILLE [_dazed by the vision_]. Lord! What glory! [_He rises,
bowing profoundly, muttering hoarsely._] Oh, eyes! Oh, hair! Look at
her shape! Her chin! The divine--
VALSIN [_getting up and patting him reassuringly on the back_]. The
lady perceives her effect, my Dossonville. It is no novelty. Sit down,
my Dossonville. [_The still murmurous DOSSONVILLE obeys VALSIN turns
to ELOISE, a brilliant light in his eyes._] Let me greet one of the
nieces of Widow Balsage--evidently not the sleepy one, and certainly
not ill. Health so transcendent--
ELOISE [_placing her hand upon MADAME DE LASEYNE's shoulder_]. This is
a clown, Anne. You need have no fear of him whatever. His petty
authority does not extend to us.
VALSIN [_deferentially_]. Will the niece of Widow Balsage explain why
it does not?
ELOISE [_turning upon him fiercely_]. Because the patriot Citizeness
Eloise d'Anville is here!
VALSIN [_assuming an air of thoughtfulness_]. Yes, she is here. That
"permit" yonder even mentions her by name. It is curious. I shall have
to go into that. Continue, niece.
ELOISE [_with supreme haughtiness_]. This lady is under her
protection.
VALSIN [_growing red_]. Pardon. Under whose protection?
ELOISE [_sulphurously_]. Under the protection of Eloise d'Anville!
[_This has a frightful effect upon VALSIN; his face becomes contorted;
he clutches at his throat, apparently half strangled, staggers, and
falls choking into the easy-chair he has formerly occupied._]
VALSIN [_gasping, coughing, incoherent_]. Under the pro--the
protection--[_He explodes into peal after peal of uproarious
laughter._] The protection of--Aha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho! [_He rocks
himself back and forth unappeasably._]
ELOISE [_with a slight lift of the eyebrows_]. This man is an idiot.
VALSIN [_during an abatement of his attack_]. Oh, pardon! It
is--too--much--too much for me! You say--these people are--
ELOISE [_stamping her foot_]. Under the protection of Eloise
d'Anville, imbecile! You cannot touch them. She wills it! [_At this,
VALSIN shouts as if pleading for mercy, and beats the air with his
hands. He struggles to his feet and, pounding himself upon the chest,
walks to and fro in the effort to control his convulsion._]
ELOISE [_to ANNE, under cover of the noise he makes_]. I was wrong: he
is not an idiot.
ANNE [_despairingly_]. He laughs at you.
ELOISE [_in a quick whisper_]. Out of bluster; because he is afraid.
He is badly frightened. I know just what to do. Go into the other room
with Louis.
ANNE [_protesting weakly_]. I can't hope--
ELOISE [_flashing from a cloud_]. You failed, didn't you? [_MADAME DE
LASEYNE, after a tearful perusal of the stern resourcefulness now
written in the younger woman's eyes, succumbs with a piteous gesture
of assent and goes out forlornly. ELOISE closes the door and stands
with her back to it._]
VALSIN [_paying no attention to them_]. Eloise d'Anville! [_Still
pacing the room in the struggle to subdue his hilarity._] This young
citizeness speaks of the protection of Eloise d'Anville! [_Leaning
feebly upon DOSSONVILLE's shoulder._] Do you hear, my Dossonville? It
is an ecstasy. Ecstasize, then. Scream, Dossonville!
DOSSONVILLE [_puzzled, but evidently accustomed to being so, cackles
instantly_]. Perfectly. Ha, ha! The citizeness is not only stirringly
beautiful, she is also--
VALSIN. She is also a wit. Susceptible henchman, concentrate your
thoughts upon domesticity. In this presence remember your wife!
ELOISE [_peremptorily_]. Dismiss that person. I have something to say
to you.
VALSIN [_wiping his eyes_]. Dossonville, you are not required. We are
going to be sentimental, and heaven knows you are not the moon. In
fact, you are a fat old man. Exit, obesity! Go somewhere and think
about your children. Flit, whale!
DOSSONVILLE [_rising_]. Perfectly, my chieftain. [_He goes to the
broken door._]
ELOISE [_tapping the floor with her shoe_]. Out of hearing!
VALSIN. The floor below.
DOSSONVILLE. Well understood. Perfectly, perfectly! [_He goes out
through the hallway; disappears, chuckling grossly. There are some
moments of silence within the room, while he is heard clumping down a
flight of stairs; then VALSIN turns to ELOISE with burlesque ardor._]
VALSIN. "Alone at last!"
ELOISE [_maintaining her composure_]. Rabbit!
VALSIN [_dropping into the chair at the desk, with mock dejection_].
Repulsed at the outset! Ah, Citizeness, there were moments on the
journey from Paris when I thought I detected a certain kindness in
your glances at the lonely stranger.
ELOISE [_folding her arms_]. You are to withdraw your soldiers,
countersign the "permit," and allow my friends to embark at once.
VALSIN [_with solemnity_]. Do you give it as an order, Citizeness?
ELOISE. I do. You will receive suitable political advancement.
VALSIN [_in a choked voice_]. You mean as a--a reward?
ELOISE [_haughtily_]. _I_ guarantee that you shall receive it! [_He
looks at her strangely; then, with a low moan, presses his hand to his
side, seeming upon the point of a dangerous seizure._]
VALSIN [_managing to speak_]. I can only beg you to spare me. You have
me at your mercy.
ELOISE [_swelling_]. It is well for you that you understand that!
VALSIN [_shaking his hand ruefully_]. Yes; you see I have a bad liver:
it may become permanently enlarged. Laughter is my great danger.
ELOISE [_crying out with rage_]. _Oh!_
VALSIN [_dolorously_]. I have continually to remind myself that I am
no longer in the first flush of youth.
ELOISE. Idiot! Do you not know who I am!
VALSIN. You? Oh yes--[_He checks himself abruptly; looks at her with
brief intensity; turns his eyes away, half closing them in quick
meditation; smiles, as upon some secret pleasantry, and proceeds
briskly._] Oh yes, yes, I know who you are.
ELOISE [_beginning haughtily_]. Then you--
VALSIN [_at once cutting her off_]. As to your name, I do not say.
Names at best are details; and your own is a detail that could hardly
be thought to matter. _What_ you are is obvious: you joined Louis and
his sister in Paris at the barriers, and traveled with them as "Marie
Balsage," a sister. You might save us a little trouble by giving us
your real name; you will probably refuse, and the police will have to
look it up when I take you back to Paris. Frankly, you are of no
importance to us, though of course we'll send you to the Tribunal. No
doubt you are a poor relative of the Valny-Cheraults, or, perhaps, you
may have been a governess in the Laseyne family, or--
ELOISE [_under her breath_]. Idiot! Idiot!
VALSIN [_with subterranean enjoyment, watching her sidelong_]. Or the
good-looking wife of some faithful retainer of the Emigrant's,
perhaps.
ELOISE [_with a shrill laugh_]. Does the Committee of Public Safety
betray the same intelligence in the appointment of all its agents?
[_Violently._] Imbecile, I--
VALSIN [_quickly raising his voice to check her_]. You are of no
importance, I tell you! [_Changing his tone._] Of course I mean
politically. [_With broad gallantry._] Otherwise, I am the first to
admit extreme susceptibility. I saw that you observed it on the
way--at the taverns, in the diligence, at the posting-houses, at--
ELOISE [_with serenity_]. Yes. I am accustomed to oglers.
VALSIN. Alas, I believe you! My unfortunate sex is but too responsive.
ELOISE [_gasping_]. "Responsive"--Oh!
VALSIN [_indulgently_]. Let us return to the safer subject. Presently
I shall arrest those people in the other room and, regretfully, you
too. But first I pamper myself; I chat; I have an attractive woman to
listen. In the matter of the arrest, I delay my fire; I do not flash
in the pan, but I lengthen my fuse. Why? For the same reason that when
I was a little boy and had something good to eat, I always first paid
it the compliments of an epicure. I looked at it a long while. I
played with it. Then--I devoured it! I am still like that. And Louis
yonder is good to eat, because I happen not to love him. However, I
should mention that I doubt if he could recall either myself or the
circumstance which annoyed me; some episodes are sometimes so little
to certain people and so significant to certain other people. [_He
smiles, stretching himself luxuriously in his chair._] Behold me,
Citizeness! I am explained. I am indulging my humor: I play with my
cake. Let us see into what curious little figures I can twist it.
ELOISE. Idiot!
VALSIN [_pleasantly_]. I have lost count, but I think that is the
sixth idiot you have called me. Aha, it is only history, which one
admires for repeating itself. Good! Let us march. I shall play--[_He
picks up the "permit" from the desk, studies it absently, and looks
whimsically at her over his shoulder, continuing:_] I shall play
with--with all four of you.
ELOISE [_impulsively_]. Four?
VALSIN. I am not easy to deceive; there are four of you here.
ELOISE [_staring_]. So?
VALSIN. Louis brought you and his sister from Paris: a party of three.
This "permit" which he forged is for four; the original three and the
woman you mentioned a while ago, Eloise d'Anville. Hence she must have
joined you here. The deduction is plain: there are three people in
that room: the Emigrant, his sister, and this Eloise d'Anville. To the
trained mind such reasoning is simple.
ELOISE [_elated_]. Perfectly!
VALSIN [_with an air of cunning_]. Nothing escapes me. You see that.
ELOISE. At first glance! I make you my most profound compliments. Sir,
you are an eagle!
VALSIN [_smugly_]. Thanks. Now, then, pretty governess, you thought
this d'Anville might be able to help you. What put that in your head?
ELOISE [_with severity_]. Do you pretend not to know what she is?
VALSIN. A heroine I have had the misfortune never to encounter. But I
am informed of her character and history.
ELOISE [_sternly_]. Then you understand that even the Agent of the
National Committee risks his head if he dares touch people she chooses
to protect.
VALSIN [_extending his hand in plaintive appeal_]. Be generous to my
opacity. How could _she_ protect anybody?
ELOISE [_with condescension_]. She has earned the gratitude--
VALSIN. Of whom?
ELOISE [_superbly_]. Of the Nation!
VALSIN [_breaking out again_]. Ha, ha, ha! [_Clutching at his side._]
Pardon, oh, pardon, liver of mine. I must not die; my life is still
useful.
ELOISE [_persisting stormily_]. Of the People, stupidity! Of the whole
People, dolt! Of France, blockhead!
VALSIN [_with a violent effort, conquering his hilarity_]. There! I am
saved. Let us be solemn, my child; it is better for my malady. You are
still so young that one can instruct you that individuals are rarely
grateful; "the People," never. What you call "the People" means folk
who are not always sure of their next meal; therefore their great
political and patriotic question is the cost of food. Their heroes
are the champions who are going to make it cheaper; and when these
champions fail them or cease to be useful to them, then they either
forget these poor champions--or eat them. Let us hear what your Eloise
d'Anville has done to earn the reward of being forgotten instead of
eaten.
ELOISE [_her lips quivering_]. She surrendered her property
voluntarily. She gave up all she owned to the Nation.
VALSIN [_genially_]. And immediately went to live with her relatives
in great luxury.
ELOISE [_choking_]. The Republic will protect her. She gave her whole
estate--
VALSIN. And the order for its confiscation was already written when
she did it.
ELOISE [_passionately_]. Ah--_liar!_
VALSIN [_smiling_]. I have seen the order. [_She leans against the
wall, breathing heavily. He goes on, smoothly._] Yes, this martyr
"gave" us her property; but one hears that she went to the opera just
the same and wore more jewels than ever, and lived richly upon the
Laseynes and Valny-Cheraults, until _they_ were confiscated. Why, all
the world knows about this woman; and let me tell you, to your credit,
my governess, I think you have a charitable heart: you are the only
person I ever heard speak kindly of her.
ELOISE [_setting her teeth_]. Venom!
VALSIN [_observing her slyly_]. It is with difficulty I am restraining
my curiosity to see her--also to hear her!--when she learns of her
proscription by a grateful Republic.
ELOISE [_with shrill mockery_]. Proscribed? Eloise d'Anville
proscribed? Your inventions should be more plausible, Goodman Spy! I
_knew_ you were lying--
VALSIN [_smiling_]. You do not believe--
ELOISE [_proudly_]. Eloise d'Anville is a known Girondist. The Gironde
is the real power in France.
VALSIN [_mildly_]. That party has fallen.
ELOISE [_with fire_]. Not far! It will revive.
VALSIN. Pardon, Citizeness, but you are behind the times, and they are
very fast nowadays--the times. The Gironde is dead.
ELOISE [_ominously_]. It may survive _you_, my friend. Take care!
VALSIN [_unimpressed_]. The Gironde had a grand facade, and that was
all. It was a party composed of amateurs and orators; and of course
there were some noisy camp-followers and a few comic-opera
vivandieres, such as this d'Anville. In short, the Gironde looked
enormous because it was hollow. It was like a pie that is all crust.
We have tapped the crust--with a knife, Citizeness. There is nothing
left.
ELOISE [_contemptuously_]. You say so. Nevertheless, the Rolands--
VALSIN [_gravely_]. Roland was found in a field yesterday; he had
killed himself. His wife was guillotined the day after you left Paris.
Every one of their political friends is proscribed.
ELOISE [_shaking as with bitter cold_]. It is a lie! Not Eloise
d'Anville!
VALSIN [_rising_]. Would you like to see the warrant for her arrest?
[_He takes a packet of documents from his breast pocket, selects one,
and spreads it open before her._] Let me read you her description:
"Eloise d'Anville, aristocrat. Figure, comely. Complexion, blond.
Eyes, dark blue. Nose, straight. Mouth, wide--"
ELOISE [_in a burst of passion, striking the warrant a violent blow
with her clenched fist_]. Let them dare! [_Beside herself, she strikes
again, tearing the paper from his grasp. She stamps upon it._] Let
them dare, I say!
VALSIN [_picking up the warrant_]. Dare to say her mouth is wide?
ELOISE [_cyclonic_]. Dare to arrest her!
VALSIN. It does seem a pity. [_He folds the warrant slowly and
replaces it in his pocket._] Yes, a great pity. She was the one
amusing thing in all this somberness. She will be missed. The
Revolution will lack its joke.
ELOISE [_recoiling, her passion exhausted_]. Ah, infamy! [_She turns
from him, covering her face with her hands._]
VALSIN [_with a soothing gesture_]. Being only her friend, you speak
mildly. The d'Anville herself would call it blasphemy.
ELOISE [_with difficulty_]. She is--so vain--then?
VALSIN [_lightly_]. Oh, a type--an actress.
ELOISE [_her back to him_]. How do you know? You said--
VALSIN. That I had not encountered her. [_Glibly._] One knows best the
people one has never seen. Intimacy confuses judgment. I confess to
that amount of hatred for the former Marquis de Valny-Cherault that I
take as great an interest in all that concerns him as if I loved him.
And the little d'Anville concerns him--yes, almost one would say,
consumes him. The unfortunate man is said to be so blindly faithful
that he can speak her name without laughing.
ELOISE [_stunned_]. Oh!
VALSIN [_going on, cheerily_]. No one else can do that, Citizeness.
Jacobins, Cordeliers, Hebertists, even the shattered relics of the
Gironde itself, all alike join in the colossal laughter at this
Tricoteuse in Sevres--this Jeanne d'Arc in rice-powder!
ELOISE [_tragically_]. They laugh--and proclaim her an outlaw!
VALSIN [_waving his hand carelessly_]. Oh, it is only that we are
sweeping up the last remnants of aristocracy, and she goes with the
rest--into the dust-heap. She should have remained a royalist; the
final spectacle might have had dignity. As it is, she is not of her
own class, not of ours: neither fish nor flesh nor--but yes, perhaps,
after all, she is a fowl.
ELOISE [_brokenly_]. Alas! Homing--with wounded wing! [_She sinks into
a chair with pathetic grace, her face in her hands._]
VALSIN [_surreptitiously grinning_]. Not at all what I meant.
[_Brutally._] Peacocks don't fly.
ELOISE [_regaining her feet at a bound_]. You imitation dandy! You--
VALSIN [_with benevolence_]. My dear, your indignation for your friend
is chivalrous. It is admirable; but she is not worth it. You do not
understand her: you have probably seen her so much that you have never
seen her as she is.
ELOISE [_witheringly_]. But you, august Zeus, having _never_ seen her,
will reveal her to me!
VALSIN [_smoothly urbane_]. If you have ears. You see, she is not
altogether unique, but of a variety known to men who are wise enough
to make a study of women.
ELOISE [_snapping out a short, loud laugh in his face_]. Pouff!
VALSIN [_unruffled_]. I profess myself an apprentice. The science
itself is but in its infancy. Women themselves understand very well
that they are to be classified, and they fear that we shall perceive
it: they do not really wish to be known. Yet it is coming; some day
our cyclopedists will have you sorted, classed, and defined with
precision; but the d'Alembert of the future will not be a woman,
because no woman so disloyal will ever be found. Men have to acquire
loyalty to their sex: yours is an instinct. Citizen governess, I will
give you a reading of the little d'Anville from this unwritten work.
To begin--
ELOISE [_feverishly interested, but affecting languor_]. _Must_ you?
VALSIN. To Eloise d'Anville the most interesting thing about a
rose-bush has always been that Eloise d'Anville could smell it.
Moonlight becomes important when it falls upon her face; sunset is
worthy when she grows rosy in it. To her mind, the universe was set in
motion to be the background for a decoration, and she is the
decoration. She believes that the cathedral was built for the fresco.
And when a dog interests her, it is because he would look well beside
her in a painting. Such dogs have no minds. I refer you to all the
dogs in the portraits of Beauties.
ELOISE [_not at all displeased; pretending carelessness_]. Ah, you
have heard that she is beautiful?
VALSIN. Far worse: that she is a Beauty. Let nothing ever tempt _you_,
my dear, into setting up in that line. For you are very
well-appearing, I assure you; and if you had been surrounded with all
the disadvantages of the d'Anville, who knows but that you might have
become as famous a Beauty as she? What makes a Beauty is not the
sumptuous sculpture alone, but a very peculiar arrogance--not in the
least arrogance of mind, my little governess. In this, your d'Anville
emerged from childhood full-panoplied indeed; and the feather-head
court fell headlong at her feet. It was the fated creature's ruin.
ELOISE [_placidly_]. And it is because of her beauty that you drag her
to the guillotine?
VALSIN. Bless you, I merely convey her!
ELOISE. Tell me, logician, was it not her beauty that inspired her to
give her property to the Nation?
VALSIN. It was.
ELOISE. What perception! I am faint with admiration. And no doubt it
was her beauty that made her a Republican?
VALSIN. What else?
ELOISE. Hail, oracle! [_She releases an arpeggio of satiric
laughter._]
VALSIN. That laugh is diaphanous. I see you through it, already
convinced. [_She stops laughing immediately._] Ha! we may proceed.
Remark this, governess: a Beauty is the living evidence of man's
immortality; the one plain proof that he has a soul.
ELOISE. It is not so bad then, after all?
VALSIN. It is utterly bad. But of all people a Beauty is most
conscious of her duality. Her whole life is based upon her absolute
knowledge that her Self and her body are two. She sacrifices all
things to her beauty because her beauty feeds her Self with a dreadful
food which it has made her unable to live without.
ELOISE. My little gentleman, you talk like a sentimental waiter. Your
metaphors are all hot from the kitchen.
VALSIN [_nettled_]. It is natural; unlike your Eloise, I am _really_
of "the People"--and starved much in my youth.
ELOISE. But, like her, you are still hungry.
VALSIN. A Beauty is a species of cannibal priestess, my dear. She will
make burnt-offerings of her father and her mother, her sisters--her
lovers--to her beauty, that it may in turn bring her the food she must
have or perish.
ELOISE. _Boum!_ [_She snaps her fingers._] And of course she bathes in
the blood of little children?
VALSIN [_grimly_]. Often.
ELOISE [_averting her gaze from his_]. This mysterious food--
VALSIN. Not at all mysterious. Sensation. There you have it. And that
is why Eloise d'Anville is a renegade. You understand perfectly.
ELOISE. You are too polite. No.
VALSIN [_gaily_]. Behold, then! Many women who are not Beauties are
beautiful, but in such women you do not always discover beauty at your
first glance: it is disclosed with a subtle tardiness. It does not
dazzle; it is reluctant; but it grows as you look again and again. You
get a little here, a little there, like glimpses of children hiding in
a garden. It is shy, and sometimes closed in from you altogether, and
then, unexpectedly, this belated loveliness springs into bloom before
your very eyes. It retains the capacity of surprise, the vital element
of charm. But the Beauty lays all waste before her at a stroke: it is
soon over. Thus your Eloise, brought to court, startled Versailles;
the sensation was overwhelming. Then Versailles got used to her, just
as it had to its other prodigies: the fountains were there, the King
was there, the d'Anville was there; and naturally, one had seen them;
saw them every day--one talked of matters less accepted. That was
horrible to Eloise. She had tasted; the appetite, once stirred, was
insatiable. At any cost she must henceforth have always the sensation
of being a sensation. She must be the pivot of a reeling world. So she
went into politics. Ah, Citizeness, there was one man who understood
Beauties--not Homer, who wrote of Helen! Romance is gallant by
profession, and Homer lied like a poet. For the truth about the Trojan
War is that the wise Ulysses made it, not because Paris stole Helen,
but because the Trojans were threatening to bring her back.
ELOISE [_unwarily_]. Who was the man that understood Beauties?
VALSIN. Bluebeard. [_He crosses the room to the dressing-table, leans
his back against it in an easy attitude, his elbows resting upon the
top._]
ELOISE [_slowly, a little tremulously_]. And so Eloise d'Anville
should have her head cut off?
VALSIN. Well, she thought she was in politics, didn't she?
[_Suavely._] You may be sure she thoroughly enjoyed her hallucination
that she was a great figure in the Revolution--which was cutting off
the heads of so many of her relatives and old friends! Don't waste
your pity, my dear.
ELOISE [_looking at him fixedly_]. Citizen, you must have thought a
great deal about my unhappy friend. She might be flattered by so
searching an interest.
VALSIN [_negligently_]. Not interest in her, governess, but in the
Emigrant who cools h
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