SCENE 7. _Uncle. George Barnwell at a distance

_Uncle._ O Death, thou strange mysterious power,--seen every day, yet never understood but by the incommunicative dead--what art thou? The extensive mind of man, that with a thought circles the earth's vast globe, sinks to the centre, or ascends above the stars; that worlds exotick finds, or thinks it finds--thy thick clouds attempts to pass in vain, lost and bewilder'd in the horrid gloom; defeated, she returns more doubtful than before; of nothing certain but of labour lost.

(_During this speech, Barnwell sometimes presents the pistol and draws it back again; at last he drops it, at which his uncle starts and draws his sword._)

_Barnwell._ Oh, 'tis impossible!

_Uncle._ A man so near me, arm'd and masqu'd!

_Barn._ Nay, then there's no retreat. (_Plucks a poniard from his bosom, and stabs him._)

_Uncle._ Oh! I am slain! All-gracious heaven regard the prayer of thy dying servant! Bless, with thy choicest blessings, my dearest nephew; forgive my murderer, and take my fleeting soul to endless mercy!

(_Barnwell throws off his mask, runs to him, and, kneeling by him, raises and chafes him._)

_Barn._ Expiring saint! Oh, murder'd, martyr'd uncle! Lift up your dying eyes, and view your nephew in your murderer! O, do not look so tenderly upon me! Let indignation lighten from your eyes, and blast me e're you die!--By Heaven, he weeps in pity of my woes. Tears,--tears for blood! The murder'd, in the agonies of death, weeps for his murderer.--Oh, speak your pious purpose, pronounce my pardon then--and take me with you!--He wou'd, but cannot. O why with such fond affection do you press my murdering hand!--What! will you kiss me! (_Kisses him. Uncle groans and dies._) He's gone forever--and oh! I follow. (_Swoons away by his uncle's body._) Do I still live to press the suffering bosom of the earth? Do I still breathe and taint with my infectious breath the wholesome air! Let Heaven from its high throne, in justice or in mercy, now look down on that dear murder'd saint, and me the murderer. And, if his vengeance spares, let pity strike and end my wretched being!--Murder the worst of crimes, and parricide the worst of murders, and this the worst of parricides! Cain, who stands on record from the birth of time, and must to its last final period, as accurs'd, slew a brother, favour'd above him. Detested Nero by another's hand dispatched a mother that he fear'd and hated. But I, with my own hand, have murder'd a brother, mother, father, and a friend, most loving and belov'd. This execrable act of mine's without a parallel. O may it ever stand alone--the last of murders, as it is the worst!

The rich man thus, in torment and despair, Prefer'd his vain, but charitable prayer. The fool, his own soul lost, wou'd fain be wise For others good; but Heaven his suit denies. By laws and means well known we stand or fall, And one eternal rule remains for all.

_The End of the Third Act_.[14]

Have you noticed that people under stress of strong emotion stop to depict their emotional condition, to analyze it, or neatly to apostrophize fate or Providence? The more real the emotion the more compact and connotative, usually, is its expression. People under high emotional strain who can tell you just what they ought to feel, or who describe elaborately what they are feeling are usually "indeed exceeding calm." Dryden's Lyndaraxa builded better than she knew when she said:

By my own experience I can tell Those who love truly do not argue well.

Bulwer-Lytton was thinking of the weakness of self-descriptive woe when he wrote Macready, while composing _Richelieu_, "In Act 4--in my last alteration, when Richelieu, pitying Julie, says, 'I could weep to see her thus--But'--the effect would I think be better if he felt the tears with indignation at his own weakness--thus:

'Are these tears? O, shame, shame, Dotage'--"

Emotion, if given free way, finds the right words by which to express itself. When a character stands outside itself, describing what it feels, the speaker is really the author in disguise, describing what he is incompetent, from lack of sympathetic power, to phrase with simple, moving accuracy. M. de Curel has described perfectly the right relation of author to character and dialogue.

During the first days of work I have a very distinct feeling of creation. Later I move on instinctively and that is much better. When the sentiments of my characters are in question I am absolutely in their skins, for my own part indifferent as to their griefs or joys. I can be moved only later in re-reading, and then this emotion seems to arise from the fact that I have to do with characters absolutely strange to me. I experience sometimes, and then personally, a feeling of irony, of flippancy, in regard to my characters who tangle themselves up and get themselves into difficulties. That transpires sometimes in the language of some other character who, at the moment, ceases to speak correctly because he speaks as I should. As a result, corrections later. At the end of a year, my play, when I re-read it, seems something completely apart from me, written by another.[15]

Allowing a character to express itself exactly raises inevitably the question of dialect. On the one hand it must be admitted that nothing more quickly characterizes a figure, as far as type is concerned, than to let him speak like a Yankee, a Scotchman, a Negro, etc. If the character utters phrases which an audience recognizes instantly as characteristic of his supposed type, there is special satisfaction to the audience in such recognition. On the other hand, very few audiences know any dialect thoroughly enough to permit a writer to use it with absolute accuracy. The moment dialect begins to show the need of a glossary, it is defeating its own ends. As a result a compromise has arisen, dating from the very early days of the drama--stage dialects. A character made up to represent Scotchman, Welshman, Frenchman, Negro, or Indian, speaks in a way that has become time-honored on the stage as representing this or that figure among these types. Till recently most dialect on the stage has been at best a mere popular approximation to real usage. Until within a few years the peasant dialogue of _Gammer Gurton's Needle_, the famous sixteenth-century Interlude, was supposed to represent dialect of its time in the neighborhood of Cambridge, England. Recently philologists have shown that the speech of these peasants is unlike any dialect of the period of the play, and was obviously a stage convention of the time. Study the Welshmen and other dialect parts in Shakespeare, and you will reach approximately the same conclusion. With our developing sense of historical truth and of realism, we have, in recent years, been trying to make our characters speak exactly as they would in real life. The plays of the Abbey Theatre are in large part a revolt from the Irish dialogue which the plays of Dion Boucicault had practically established as true to life. Today we try not only phonetically to represent the ways in which words are spoken by the people of a particular locality, but by the use of words and phrases heard among such people to make the characterization vivid and convincing. Here, in Mr. Sheldon's play, _The Nigger_, is care to reproduce phonetically the speech of negroes:

_Jinny._ (_Wearily._) I speck yo' right. Hev yo' got suthin' fo' me t'night? Seems lak I might take it down wif me t' de cabin.

_Simms._ (_Grumbling._) Fo' dat young good-fo'-nuffin hawg-grubbah t' swallow w'en he done come home? Laws me, w'y Marse Phil 'lows his fried chicken en' co'n-braid t' feed dat wo'thles rap-scallion, I jes' cain't see! Clar out o' heah, yo' ern'ry yallah gal!

_Jinny._ (_Crushingly._) Yallah gal--! Sho'! I was livin' heah fo' yo' was bawn! Don' fo'get dat, yo' imperent, low-down li'tle niggah yo'!

_Simms._ (_Pacifically._) Hol' on, Jinny! I ain't said nuffin'. Dat I ain't! Yo' g' long now en' I'll sen' down a gal t' yo' cabin wif a basket.

_Jinny._ (_Turning away._) Yo' sho' will--er Marse Phil'd--

_Simms._ (_As he goes up the steps._) En' keep yo' gran'chillun out dat saloom, Jinny, ef yo' don' want t' see 'em cross de Jo'dan ahead o' yo'! Dat Joe! Lawd-a-massy! De white in him ain't done nobody no good's fah's dis--'Scuse me, sah!

(_He stops suddenly and turns aside, bowing, on seeing Noyes and Georgie, who have opened the door and come out._)

Here is equal care to represent the speech of Southerners.

_Noyes._ My fathah? Yes, he gave way t' his Comme'cial ambition by sellin' powda an' bullets t' the Union--way back in '62. That got him into a bunch o' trouble, but it wasn't what _sta'ted_ the--slight fam'ly coolness!

_Georgie._ Wasn't it? Why, I always hea'd---

_Noyes._ No, it came befo' that. My gran'fathah an' Phil's--they were brothahs-in-law, you know--they began it in the fo'ties.

_Georgie._ Why?

_Noyes._ (_Grimly._) I reckon the Morrows are tryin' now t' keep it da'k. But Lawd!--I don't mind tellin'. It's the old thing--both losin' theah heads ovah the same woman.

_Georgie._ (_Innocently._) How romantic! Phil's gran'mothah?

_Noyes._ (_After a pause._) No--niggah woman.

_Georgie._ (_In a low voice, turning away._) Oh--I didn't--realize--

_Noyes._ (_Clearing his throat._) Phil's gran'fathah--he won out. An' that's the kick that sta'ted the Noyes fam'ly a-rollin' t' pe'dition.

_Georgie._ (_With difficulty._) But mos' people are willin' to fo'get--at least they ought to be.

_Noyes._ (_Dryly._) Some ain't killed 'emselves tryin'. Howevah, on lookin' ahead I saw Phil an' I might be in a position t' help each othah, so we agreed t' sink it. I--I wish yo' mothah would follow Phil, Miss Byrd. I ce'tainly do wish that!

_Georgie_. She's old-fashioned--oh, hopelessly so!--in things the world now considers--trivial.

_Noyes._ (_Looking at his hands._) Such as--trade?

_Georgie._ (_Gently._) That's one of them.[16]

Lady Gregory, after writing a rough draft of one of her plays, goes among the people of her community and sets them talking of the subject she is treating. Noting their racy, apt, and highly individualized phrases, she gives them to her characters in the play as she re-writes. Such intimate, loving study of dialect as Lady Gregory, Mr. Yeats, and Synge have shown has given us an accurate representation of the Irish peasant, and may ultimately drive from the English stage the conventional absurdities of the past. Dialect, then, if carefully studied, is highly desirable if two or three facts are borne in mind. First of all, it should be accurate; but secondly it must be clear or must be made clear for any audience. Unquestionably, Mr. Stanley Houghton's memorable play _Hindle Wakes_ had a bad title away from its birthplace,--Manchester, England. In the United States, this title is perfectly meaningless. How many in any audience in this country could be expected to know that the title means certain "autumn week-end holidays in the town of Hindle." There could be no harm in using a different title away from the birthplace of the play. Recently, in a manuscript play, appeared a figure speaking a strange mixture of Negro and Irish dialects. He seemed to all readers a clumsy attempt by the author at a dialect part. Really, the figure was a portrait of a small political boss who, from boyhood on, had acquired in the saloons and purlieus of his district words and phrases of both the Negroes and the Irish. A little preliminary exposition at the right place cleared up this difficulty and turned what seemed inept characterization into a particularly individual figure of richly characterizing phrase. Obviously, then, dialect should, first, be written accurately. Then it should be gone over to see what in it may not be clear to most auditors. These words or phrases should be made clear because they are translated by other people on the stage or by the speaker, who himself sees or is told that some stage listener does not understand him. Only a little ingenuity is needed to do away with such vaguenesses. To substitute for such words and phrases others which, though incorrect, would be instantly understood by the audience is to botch the dialect and produce what is, after all, not different from the conventional stage dialect of the past. This raises a third point in regard to dialect, and one very frequently disregarded. Over and over again in plays using dialect certain speeches are passed over by the author in his final revision which neither phonetically nor in the words and phrases chosen comport with the context. Instantly the mood and the color of the scene are lost unless the actor supplies what the author failed to give. That is, dialect, if used, should be used steadily and consistently. The desiderata are, then, accuracy, persistent use, and clearness for the general public. Thus used, dialect is one of the chief aids to characterization.

If, in writing dialogue, a dramatist must not speak as himself but in character, must not be consciously or unconsciously literary if not in character, how may one surely choose the right words? Perhaps one or two illustrations will help here. The citation in the left-hand column from the first quarto _Hamlet_ states the facts clearly enough, but wholly uncolored by the emotion of the speaker. In the right-hand column the passionate sympathy of Shakespeare has given him perfect understanding of Hamlet's feeling.

_Hamlet._ O fie Horatio, and if _Hamlet._. O good Horatio, what a thou shouldst die, wounded name What a scandale wouldst thou Things standing thus unknowne, leave behinde? shall I leave behind me? What tongue should tell the If thou did'st ever hold me in story of our deaths, thy hart, If not from thee? O my heart Absent thee from felicity a sinckes Horatio, while Mine eyes have lost their sight, And in this harsh world drawe my tongue his use: thy breath in paine Farewell Horatio, heaven receive To tell my story; What warlike my soule. noise is this? (_Hamlet dies._) (_A march a farre off._)[17]

Speaking, not as the historian, not as the observer, but as Hamlet himself, Shakespeare by his quickened feeling finds a phrasing of which we may say what Swinburne said of some of the lines of John Webster: that the character says, not what he might have said, not what we are satisfied to have him say, but what seems absolutely the only thing he could have said.

When a dramatist works as he should, the emotion of his characters gives him the right words for carrying their feelings to the audience, and every word counts. Writing to Macready of _Money_, Bulwer-Lytton said of his play, "At the end of Act in your closing speech, will you remember to say, you 'would' refuse me ten pounds to spend on benevolence. Not you refuse me. The _would_ is important." [18]

In the left-hand column the complete sympathy of Heywood with his characters makes them speak simply, out of the fullness of their emotion. In the right-hand column, Heywood's collaborator, Rowley, lacking complete understanding of his characters, is thinking more of phrase for its own sake.