Page:The Review of English Studies Vol 1.djvu/77

Rh manager of an Elizabethan theatre had to solve—the provision of settings, not necessarily so elaborate or decorative as those of the Court, but at least intelligible, for open-country scenes, battle and siege scenes, garden scenes, street and threshold scenes, hall scenes, chamber scenes.” Once more, I don’t believe the Elizabethan manager would have admitted that a problem existed. Every now and then a playwright’s imagination might get the better of his tactical discretion; for certainly tactics are involved. It is all a question of what actors with their make-believe can convince you of, or make you forget; and they must never be let seem to be trying to convince you. Ask them to do nothing awkward, that’s all.

Is it rash to assert that while the Elizabethan drama was most itself there was no problem of locality? It had existed maybe, and it was to arise again. A self-conscious dramatist like Jonson might feel interested in raising it. Dr. Chambers’ citation of Every Man out of His Humour is suggestive. But he remarks that “the experiment was not repeated.” No, at that time it would not be. Why deliberately abandon a state of innocence and freedom? How many instances of “localisation by dialogue” in the common run of plays show any consistent consideration for the ability of the stage-manager to reinforce them? Are they not themselves, rather, mere reinforcements for the actor in his task of capturing and enlarging the audience’s imagination, and only provided if and as they will be? Marlowe takes care to emphasise the shifting of the action in Dr. Faustus from Wittenberg to Rome, to the Emperor’s Court and back to Wittenberg. Why? Because this ranging of the world is an essential part of the dramatic effect of the play. But turn to Shakespeare’s Richard II. The audience would know already about as much as it was dramatically profitable for them to know of the story’s general environment. And we find that out of nineteen scenes only nine are localised, and all but about three of these quite casually. In one case the transference from Barkloughly castle to Flint castle depends on a half line spoken by Richard which an audience might easily not hear. And if they did miss it, and thought Richard was still at Barkloughly while Shakespeare thought he was at Flint, this would make not one pennyworth of difference to the dramatic effect of the play. Nor need it dramatically follow, for that matter, because Richard said “Go to Flint Castle,” that he, or anybody listening to him, went there. Rather the contrary. But here the unfettered