It has been said that “Romeo and Juliet” played in English in any country would be enjoyed by everyone, even though they could not understand a word of what was said.  There is a story told about a Slav in Pennsylvania who could not speak one word of English, but who happened to come up from his work as a laborer in a coal mine just as the people were filing in to the performance of “The Two Orphans,” and as he had nothing in particular to do, in he went—­and nearly broke up the performance by the loudness of his sobbing.  I shall never forget an experience of my own, when I took a good French friend to see David Warfield in “The Music Master”; this young chap could not understand more than a word here and there, but we were compelled to miss the last act because he cried so hard during the famous lost-daughter scene that he was ashamed to enter the theatre after the intermission.

Every great play is, in the last analysis, a pantomime.  Words are unnecessary to tell a stage story that has its wellspring deep in the emotions of the human heart.  Words can only embellish it.  A great pantomimist—­a Mlle. Dazie, who played Sir James M. Barrie’s “The Pantaloon” in vaudeville without speaking a word; a Pavlowa, who dances her stories into the hearts of her audience; a Joe Jackson, who makes his audiences roar with laughter and keeps them convulsed throughout his entire act, with the aid of a dilapidated bicycle, a squeaky auto horn and a persistently annoying cuff—­does not need words to tell a story.

The famous French playwright Scribe—­perhaps the most ingenious craftsman the French stage has ever seen—­used to say, “When my subject is good, when my scenario (plot) is very clear, very complete, I might have the play written by my servant; he would be sustained by the situation;—­and the play would succeed.”  Plutarch tells us that Menander, the master of Greek comedy, was once asked about his new play, and he answered:  “It is composed and ready; I have only the verses (dialogue) to write.” [1]

[1] Reported in A Study of the Drama, by Brander Matthews.

If it is true that a great play, being in its final analysis a pantomime, is effective without dialogue, and if some famous dramatists thought so little of dialogue that they considered their plays all written before they wrote the dialogue, then speech must be something that has little comparative value—­something primarily employed to aid the idea behind it, to add emphasis to plot—­not to exist for itself.

2.  The Uses of Dialogue

Dialogue makes the dramatic story clear, advances it, reveals character, and wins laughter—­all by five important means: 

(a) Dialogue Conveys Information of Basic Events at the Opening.  As we saw in the discussion of the structural elements of plot, there are of necessity some points in the basic incidents chosen for the story of a playlet that have their roots grounded in the past.  Upon a clear understanding of these prior happenings which must be explained immediately upon the rise of the curtain, depends the effect of the entire sequence of events and, consequently, the final and total effect of the playlet.  To “get this information over” the characters are made to tell of them as dramatically as possible.  For instance: