Angela Maxwell knocks on Miss Carey’s door the instant the curtain rises on “The Lollard,” and as soon as Miss Carey opens the door Angela says:  “Listen, you don’t know me, but I’ve just left my husband.”  And the dialogue goes on to tell why she left Harry, clearly stating the events that the audience must know in order to grasp the meaning of those that follow.

At the very beginning of a playlet the dialogue must be especially clear, vividly informing and condensed.  By “condensed,” I meant the dialogue must be tense, and supported by swift action—­it must without delay have done with the unavoidable explanations, and quickly get into the rising movement of events.

(b) Dialogue Brings out the Incidents Clearly.  Never forgetting that action makes dialogue but that dialogue never makes action, let us take the admirable surprise ending of “The System,” for an example: 

The Inspector has left, after giving The Eel and Goldie their freedom and advising them to clear out and start life anew.  The audience knows they are in hard straits financially.  How are they going to secure the money to get away from town?  Goldie expresses it concisely:  “Well, we’re broke again (tearfully).  We can’t go West now, so there’s no use packing.”  This speech is like a sign-post that points out the condition the events have made them face.  And then like a sign-post that points the other way, it adds emphasis to the flash of the surprise and the solution when The Eel, stealthily making sure no one will see him and no one can hear him, comes down to Goldie, sitting forlornly on the trunk, taps her on the shoulder and shows her Dugan’s red wallet.  Of course, the audience knows that the wallet spells the solution of all their problems, but The Eel clinches it by saying, “Go right ahead and pack.”

Out of this we may draw one observation which is at least interesting, if not illuminating:  When an audience accepts the premises of a playlet without question, it gives over many of its emotions and most of its reasoning power into the author’s hands.  Therefore the author must think for his audience and keenly suggest by dialogue that something is about to happen, show it as happening, and make it perfectly clear by dialogue that it has actually happened.  This is the use to which dialogue is put most tellingly—­bringing out the incidents in clear relief and at the very same time interpreting them cunningly.

(c) Dialogue Reveals Character Humanly.  Character is tried, developed and changed not by dialogue, but by action; yet the first intimate suggestion of character is shown in dialogue; and its trials, development and change are brought into clear relief—­just as events, of which character-change is the vital part, are made unmistakably clear—­by the often illuminating word that fits precisely.  As J. Berg Esenwein says, “Just as human interest is the heart of the narrative, so human speech is its most vivid expression.  In everyday life we do not know a man until we have heard him speak.  Then our first impressions are either confirmed, modified, or totally upset.” [1]