The scene, which remains unchanged throughout the play, is a room in the vicarage. Jacobean in character, its oak-panelling and beamed-ceiling, together with some fine pieces of antique furniture, lend it an air of historical interest, whilst in all other respects it speaks of solid comfort, refinement, and unostentatious elegance.[6]
Hervieu's _Connais-Toi_, a play of three acts, is another instance of one setting throughout.[7]
Not infrequently it is comparatively simple to confine a play to one set for each act, or even less. _The Great Divide_, by William Vaughn Moody, and _The Weavers_, by Hauptmann, show a new setting for each act. In _The Truth_, by Clyde Fitch, Acts I and II have the same setting: "At _Mrs. Warder's_. An extremely attractive room in the best of taste"; Acts III and IV are in "_Mr. Roland's_ rooms in _Mrs. Crespigny's_ flat in Baltimore." In the four acts of _The Witching Hour_, by Augustus Thomas, there is a change of set only for Act II.[8] Such reducing of possible settings to two or three for a play of four or five acts requires practice, and, in some cases, decided ingenuity. In present-day use the safest principle is this: a set to an act, if really needed, but no change of set within the act unless there be unavoidable reason for it.
What, then, is the would-be dramatist to do when faced by six or more settings to a five-act play, or two or three settings within what he believes should be an act? Often what seems a necessary early scene is but clumsy exposition: skilful handling would incorporate it with the scene immediately following. Scene 1, Act III, of Dryden's _The Spanish Friar_ is in the street. Lorenzo, in friar's habit, meeting the real friar, Dominic, bribes him to introduce him into the chamber of Elvira. The scene is merely the easiest way of making the audience understand why the two men enter together very early in the next scene.
_Enter Lorenzo, in Friar's habit, meeting Dominic_
Here follow some fifteen speeches in which the arrangements are made. Then:
_Elvira._ He'll come, that's certain; young appetites are sharp, and seldom need twice bidding to such a banquet;--well, if I prove frail,--as I hope I shall not till I have compassed my design,--never woman had such a husband to provoke her, such a lover to allure her, or such a confessor to absolve her. Of what am I afraid, then? not my conscience that's safe enough; my ghostly father has given it a dose of church opium to lull it; well, for soothing sin, I'll say that for him, he's a chaplain for any court in Christendom.