Dramatic Technique Part 25

_A Porter._ (_Pus.h.i.+ng a little cart loaded with baggage._) Monsieur, here is your baggage. Do you wish to have it checked?

_Perrichon._ Certainly! But first, I am going to count them ...

because, when one knows the number ... One, two, three, four, five, six, my wife, seven, my daughter, eight, and for myself, nine. We are nine.

_Porter._ Put it up there!

_Perrichon._ (_Hurrying toward the back._) Hurry!

_Porter._ Not that way, this way! (_He points to the left._)

_Perrichon._ All right! (_To the women._) Wait for me there! We mustn't get lost! (_He goes out running, following the porter._)[14]

The first scene undoubtedly helps to create the atmosphere of a large railway station, but everything in it could be brought out in what is now Scene 2. Even the way in which Majorin is pa.s.sed from one employee to the other could be transferred to Perrichon. Every fact in Majorin's soliloquy is either repeated in the scenes which follow, or could easily be brought out in them.

What has made necessary this swifter preliminary exposition is, probably, the growing popularity of three or four acts as compared with five. Less s.p.a.ce has forced a swifter movement. Contrast, in the five-act piece _Une Chaine_[15] by Scribe, the slow exposition in a first act of thirty-two pages with the perfectly adequate re-statement in six and a half pages in the one-act adaptation by Sidney Grundy, _In Honour Bound_.[16]

It is easy, however, to overload a first act with what seems needed exposition but is not. Careful consideration may show that some part may be postponed for "later exposition." Here is the history which lies behind Act I of Sudermann's _Heimat_, or _Magda_.[17] The famous singer, Dall'Orto, who was Magda Schwartze, has returned to her native place for a music festival. Ten years before she was driven from home by her father, an army officer, because she would not marry the man of his choice, Pastor Hefferdingt. Going to Berlin to train her voice, she was betrayed by young von Keller, a former acquaintance. After six months he deserted her. A child was born to whom she is pa.s.sionately devoted. Von Keller is now a much respected citizen of the home town, who lives in awe of public opinion. He and Magda have not met since their Berlin days and he does not know there was a child. Since his return to the town he has kept away from the Schwartzes. Hefferdingt has remained single, devoting himself to good works. Magda's father nearly lost his mind from an apoplectic shock when he learned of her flight, but he has won back some part of his health through the wise and tender aid of Hefferdingt. There has been no communication between Magda and her family in the ten years. Now the younger sister Marie is engaged to the nephew of von Keller, Max, but the young people have not enough money to marry. They have been hoping that an aunt, Franziska, who caused Magda much unhappiness in the old days, will aid them. The narrow life of the town and the subservience of the Schwartzes to it had much to do with the rebelliousness of Magda as a girl. Through hard work and much bitter experience, she has won a supreme place in the world of music. She has developed a somewhat cynical philosophy of life which calls for complete self-expression, at any cost to others. She craves sight of her family again, and especially of Marie, a mere child when Magda left home.

Somewhere in the course of the play an audience must learn all these facts. How many of them must be set forth in Act I, and how many may be set apart for "later exposition"? Sudermann decided to postpone till Act II any detailed statement of the past relations between Magda and Hefferdingt. In Act I we learn only that he wished to marry Magda, and that there is anger in the family because of the way in which she refused him. What that was is not stated. Thus by giving mystery to these past relations of Magda and Hefferdingt, curiosity and interest are aroused and suspense created.

Of Magda's relations with von Keller we really learn nothing in Act I.

We are, it is true, made to suspect that his admitted meeting with her in Berlin covers more than he is willing to reveal, and that his avoidance of the Schwartzes means something, but we learn nothing clearly until Act III. Not till then do we know a child was born and is still alive. In other words, postponing detailed exposition of these matters provides the most important scene of Act II, that of Hefferdingt and Magda, and the central scene of Act III between von Keller and Magda. Note that deciding what shall be preliminary and what later exposition has much to do here, as always, with creating Suspense, a subject which will be treated under Movement. A difficult task for the dramatist is this determining what in the historical background of his play must be treated as preliminary exposition, and what may be postponed for later treatment, when the real action of the play is well under way.

Even when it is clear just what must go into preliminary exposition the ordering of the details chosen is very important. Look again at _Magda_.

It is love for Marie which, in large part, draws Magda to her home, and at first keeps her there. The love affair which Magda fled from seemed to her conventional. Sudermann opens his play, therefore, with a picture of the thoroughly conventional engagement of Max and Marie, but remembering that the sooner a dramatist creates interest the better, he starts with the mysterious bouquet, far too expensive if sent by Max to Marie and wholly unacceptable if sent by any one else. When Max, entering, says that the flowers are not from him, there is a chance to emphasize two points of importance: the lovers' lack of money, and their fear of gossip. Meantime the fact has been planted that there is a music festival in the town. As the two young people talk of their need and the people who might help them, we learn that the father thinks Magda's departure was for some reason a "blot" on the family, and that Hefferdingt wished to marry her. The call of von Keller shows that since his return home he has been distant toward the Schwartzes; that he is afraid of public opinion; and that he met Magda in Berlin, "but only for a moment, on the street." With the entrance of the father and mother we have the petty social ambitions of the latter, and the tyrannical att.i.tude of the former toward his family. The scene with von Klebs and Beckmann not only ill.u.s.trates social conditions in the town, but begins to connect Dall'Orto with the lost daughter by showing the extraordinary interest of Hefferdingt in meeting the singer. The coming of Aunt Franziska with her announcement that the Dall'Orto is Magda ends the preliminary exposition, for with the arrival of Hefferdingt and his effort to bring Magda home, the real action of the play begins.

Obviously much thought and care have gone into the re-ordering of these details, so that the facts which must be first understood are stated first and so that there shall be growing interest through the creation of more and more suspense.

In one of the early drafts of _Rosmersholm_, the opening page ran as follows. Note that there is no mention of any "white horses."

(_Mrs. Rosmer is standing by the farthest window, arranging the flowers. Madam Helset enters from the right with a basket of table linen._)

_Madam Helset._ I suppose I had better begin to lay the tea-table, ma'am?

_Mrs. Rosmer._ Yes, please do. He must soon be in now.

_Madam Helset._ (_Laying the cloth._) No, he won't come just yet; for I saw him from the kitchen--

_Mrs. Rosmer._ Yes, yes--

_Madam Helset._--on the other side of the millpond. At first, he was going straight across the foot-bridge; but then he turned back--

_Mrs. Rosmer._ Did he?

_Madam Helset._ Yes, and then he went all the way round. Ah, it's strange about such places. A place where a thing like that has happened--there--. It stays there; it isn't forgotten so soon.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ No, it is not forgotten.

_Madam Helset._ No, indeed it isn't. (_Goes out to the right._)

_Mrs. Rosmer._ (_At the window, looking out._) Forget. Forget, ah!

_Madam Helset._ (_In the doorway._) I've just seen the rector, ma'am.

He's coming here.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ Are you sure of that?

_Madam Helset._ Yes, he went across the millpond.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ And my husband is not at home.

_Madam Helset._ The tea is ready as soon as you want it.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ But wait; we can't tell whether he'll stay.

_Madam Helset._ Yes, yes. (_Goes out to the right._)

_Mrs. Rosmer._ (_Goes over and opens the door to the hall._) Good afternoon; how glad I am to see you, my dear Rector![18]

In this version the "white horses" appear, definitely explained, after some sixteen pages:

_Rosmer._ ... My former self is dead. I look upon it as one looks upon a corpse.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ Yes, but that is just when these white horses appear.

_Rosmer._ White horses? What white horses?

(_Madam Helset brings in the tea-urn and puts it on the table._)

_Mrs. Rosmer._ What was it you told me once, Madam Helset? You said that from time immemorial a strange thing happened here whenever one of the family died.

_Madam Helset._ Yes, it's true as I'm alive. Then the white horse comes.

_Rosmer._ Oh, that old family legend--

_Mrs. Rosmer._ In it comes when the night is far gone. Into the courtyard. Through closed gates. Neighs loudly. Launches out with its hind legs, gallops once round and then out again and away at full speed.

_Madam Helset._ Yes, that's how it is. Both my mother and my grandmother have seen it.

_Mrs. Rosmer._ And you too?

_Madam Helset._ Oh, I'm not so sure whether I've seen anything myself.

I don't generally believe in such things. But this about the white horse--I do believe in that. And I shall believe in it till the day of my death. Well, now I'll go and-- (_Goes out to the right._)[19]

In the final draft, Ibsen put the "white horses" into his opening page.

The beginning of this draft emphasizes particularly a grim, unexplained tragedy. The most mysterious touch in the new arrangement is given by the "white horses," here treated referentially, not in definite explanation.

(_Sitting-room at Rosmersholm; s.p.a.cious, old-fas.h.i.+oned, and comfortable._)

(_Rebecca West is sitting in an easy chair by the window and crocheting a large white woolen shawl, which is nearly finished. Now and then she looks out expectantly through the leaves of the plants.