"Владимир Набоков. Эссе о драматургии (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

important, if not the most important, part in the play. Indeed, more often
than not the "by and by" brings in the so-called fertilizing character.
These promises, being links in the iron chain of tragic causation, are
inevitably kept. The so-called scne faire, the obligatory scene, is not,
as most critics seem to think, one scene in the play--it is really every
next scene in the play, no matter how ingenious the author may be in the way
of surprises, or rather just because he is expected to surprise. A cousin
from Australia is mentioned; somehow or other the characters expect him to
be a grumpy old bachelor; now, the audience is not particularly eager to
meet a grumpy old bachelor; but the cousin from Australia turns out to be
the bachelor's fascinating young niece. The arrival is an obligatory scene
because any intelligent audience had vaguely expected the author to make
some amends for promising a bore. This example refers certainly more to
comedy than to tragedy, but analogous methods are employed in the most
serious plays: for example, in Soviet tragedies where more often than not
the expected commissar turns out to be a slip of a girl--and then this slip
of a girl turns out to be an expert with a revolver when another character
turns out to be a bourgeois Don Juan in disguise.
Among modern tragedies there is one that ought to be studied
particularly closely by anyone wishing to find all the disastrous results of
cause and effect, neatly grouped together in one play. This is O'Neill's
Mourning Becomes Electra. Just as the weather changed according to human
moods and moves in Ibsen's play, here, in Mourning Becomes Electra, we
observe the curious phenomenon of a young woman who is flat-chested in the
first act, becomes a full-bosomed beautiful creature after a trip to the
South Islands, then, a couple of days later, reverts to the original
flat-chested, sharp-elbowed type. We have a couple of suicides of the
wildest sort, and the positive-finality trick is supplied by the heroine's
telling us just before the play ends that she will not commit suicide, but
will go on living in the dismal house, etc., though there is nothing to
prevent her changing her mind, and using the same old army pistol so
conveniently supplied to the other patients of the play. Then there is the
element of Fate, Fate whom the author leads by one hand, and the late
professor Freud by the other. There are portraits on the wall, dumb
creatures, which are used for the purpose of monologue under the queer
misconception that a monologue becomes a dialogue if the portrait of another
person is addressed. There are many such interesting things in this play.
But perhaps the most remarkable thing, one that throws direct light on the
inevitable artificial side of tragedies based on the logic of fate, is the
difficulties the author experiences in keeping this or that character on the
stage when he is especially required, but when some pathetic flaw in the
machinery suggests that the really natural thing would be a hasty retreat.
For instance: the old gentleman of tragedy is expected to return from the
war tomorrow or possibly after tomorrow, which means that he arrives almost
immediately after the beginning of the act with the usual explanation about
trains. It is late in the evening. The evening is cold. The only place to
sit is the steps of the porch. The old gentleman is tired, hungry, has not
been home for ages and moreover suffers from acute heart trouble--a pain
like a knife, he says, which is meant to prepare his death in another act.
Now the horrible job with which the author is faced is to make that poor old