Only when the first draft was complete did he
proceed to set the scenes, as it were, and map out the stage-management.
On the other hand, one has heard of playwrights whose first step in
setting to work upon a particular act was to construct a complete model
of the scene, and people it with manikins to represent the characters.
As a general practice, this is scarcely to be commended. It is wiser,
one fancies, to have the matter of the scene pretty fully roughed-out
before details of furniture, properties, and position are arranged.[14]
It may happen, indeed, that some natural phenomenon, some property or
piece of furniture, is the very pivot of the scene; in which case it
must, of course, be posited from the first. From the very moment of his
conceiving the fourth act of _Le Tartufe_, Moliere must have had clearly
in view the table under which Orgon hides; and Sheridan cannot have got
very far with the Screen Scene before he had mentally placed the screen.
But even where a great deal turns on some individual object, the
detailed arrangements of the scene may in most cases be taken for
granted until a late stage in its working out.
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