Read-Aloud Plays

Excerpt

INTRODUCTION

The first two or three of these "plays" (I retain the word for lack of a better one) began themselves as short stories, but in each case I found that the dramatic element, speech, tended to absorb the impersonal element of comment and description, so that it proved easier to go on by allowing the characters to establish the situation themselves. As I grew conscious of this tendency, I realized that even for the purpose of reading it might be advantageous to render the short story subject dramatically, since this method is, after all, one of extreme realism, which should also result in an increase of interest. As the series developed, however, I perceived that something more than a new short story form was involved; I perceived that the "read-aloud" play has a distinct character and function of its own. In the long run, everything human rises or falls to the level of speech. The culminating point, even of action the most poignant or emotion the most intimate, is where it finds the right word or phrase by which it is translated into the lives of others. Every literary form has always paid, even though usually unconscious, homage to the drama. But the drama as achieved on the stage includes, for various reasons, only a small portion of its own inherent possibility. Exigencies of time and machinery, as well as the strong influence of custom, deny to the stage the value of themes such as the Divine Comedy, on the one hand, and of situations which might be rendered by five or ten minutes' dialogue on the other, each of which extremes may be quite as "dramatic" as the piece ordinarily exploited on the stage. By trying these "read-aloud" plays on different groups, of from two to six persons, I have proved that the homage all literature pays the drama is misplaced if we identify the drama with the stage. A sympathetic voice is all that is required to "get over" any effect possible to speech; and what effect is not? Moreover, by deliberately setting out for a drama independent of the stage, a drama involving only the intimate circle of studio or library, I feel that an entire new range of experiences is opened up to literature itself. Nothing is more thrilling than direct, self-revealing speech; and, once the proper tone has been set, even abstract subjects, as we all know, have the power to absorb. Thus I entertain the hope that others will take up the method of this book, the method of natural, intimate, heart-to-heart dialogue carried on in a suitable setting, and with attendant action as briefly indicated; for the discovery awaits each one that speech, independent of the tradition of the stage, has the power of rendering old themes new and vital, as well as suggesting new themes and situations. Indeed, it is in the confidence that others will follow with "read-aloud" plays far more interesting and valuable than the few offered here that I am writing this introduction, and not merely to call attention to a novelty in my own work.

Horace Holley.

New York City.

Darkness. A door opens swiftly. Light from outside shows a woman entering. She is covered by a large cape, but the gleam of hair and brow indicates beauty. She closes the door behind her. Darkness.

The Woman

Paul! Paul! Are you here, Paul?

A Voice

Yes, Elizabeth, I am here.

The Woman

Oh thank God! You are here! I felt so strange—I thought ... Oh, I cannot tell you what I have been thinking! Turn on the light, Paul.

The Voice

You are troubled, dear. Let the darkness stay a moment. It will calm you. Sit down, Elizabeth.

The Woman

Yes.... I am so faint! I had to come, Paul! I had to see you, to know that you were.... I know I promised not to, but I was going mad! Just to touch you, to hold you ... but it's all right now.

The Voice

It is all right now, Elizabeth.

The Woman

I thought I could stand it, dear, I thought I could stand it. It wasn't myself—I swear to you it wasn't—nor him. I, I can stand all that, now. It was something else, something that came over me all at once. I saw—Oh Paul! the thing I saw! But it's all right now....

The Voice

It is all right, Elizabeth, because ours is love, love that is made of light, and not merely blind desire.

The Woman

Ours is love. We are love!

The Voice

So that even if we are separated—even if you cannot come to me yet, we shall not lose conviction nor joy.

The Woman

Yes, Paul. I will not make it harder for you. I know it is hard, and that it was for my sake you could bring yourself to bind me not to see you again.

The Voice

Love is, world without end. That is all we need to know.

The Woman

World without end, amen.

The Voice

And because I knew the power and truth of love in you I put this separation upon us.

The Woman

For my sake. I know it now, Paul! And trust me! You can trust me, Paul! Not time, nor distance, nor trouble nor change shall move me from the heights of love where I dwell.

The Voice

And because I knew the happiness of love could not endure in deceit, nor the wine give life if we drank it in a cup that was stained, I put you from me—in the world's sight we meet no more.

The Woman

In the world's sight ... and in the sight of God and man shall I be faithful to him from now on, in thought and deed and word, as a heart may be. Yes, Paul ... even that can I endure for your sake. For I know that hereafter—

The Voice

For love there is neither here nor hereafter, but the realization of love is ever according to his triumph. This has come to me suddenly, a light in the darkness, and I have won the truth by supreme pain.

The Woman

That, too, Paul. Pain.... I have been weak. I gave way to my nerves, but now in your presence I am strong again, and I shall not fail you.

The Voice

My presence is where your love is, and as your love so my nearness. Love me as I love you now, and I shall be more real to you than your hands and your eyes.

The Woman

Bone of one bone, and flesh of one flesh....

The Voice

Spirit of one spirit! The flesh we have put away.

The Woman

That, too, Paul. Oh the glory of it!...