The action opens in the slave fields of King Darniak, where King Argimenes, a deposed and captured monarch, is working with the slaves. King Argimenes has just finished the bone he was gnawing and laments that he has nothing more to hope for. Zarb, a slave, envies him his beautiful memories, for he himself can recall nothing better than the fact that he once went for a full year without beatings. He tells Argimenes too that the King’s great dog is ill and that they may soon have more bones. Argimenes left alone goes on digging, until of a sudden he comes on a great bronze sword left there long ago by some unknown warrior.
He offers a prayer to the spirit of the departed, and conspires with Zarb to rebel against King Darniak. Zarb tells him that now he has a sword, and such a sword, the slaves will believe he is a King and will follow him. Argimenes creeps off to where the slave-guard are seated with their backs to the diggers, intending to kill the guard and arm the slaves. As the curtain falls one sees the slaves all huddled together watching Argimenes stalk the slave-guard, and at the very last a great gasp of wonder goes up from them. This scene is very remarkable. From the time when Argimenes makes his intention apparent to Zarb, to the fall of the curtain the action off stage is as clearly shown as that before the audience. Argimenes creeping through the sand hills, and then showing himself on the horizon line as he plunges downward to the attack is as clear before us as the slaves themselves as they watch and listen in awe and agony.
The second act is in the throne-room of King Darniak. The King is seated in all his glory on his throne with his four lovely Queens beside him. On his right is his idol, Illuriel, with an idol-guard in front of him. The King’s Overseer brings plans for a new garden, and they are discussed by the King and Queens. A hill must be removed, terraces made, and the slaves must be flogged that the work be accomplished more quickly. Power and selfishness are very clearly and amusingly depicted. Then a Prophet comes in to prophesy, and the Queens comment caustically on the cut of his hair while the King converses aside. The Prophet warns them of the approaching doom, of an enemy within the gates, but there is no one to give him heed. When he stops, the King in a bored tone, and without listening to him, bids him continue. The Prophet goes out and the King and the Queens go to the banqueting hall. The idol-guard ruminates on the prophecies and feels a sense of disquietude. A great noise of fighting is heard without. The slaves rush in all armed and overpower the idol-guard, throwing down Illuriel and breaking him in seven pieces. They go back to face the remnants of the palace guard, and Damiak rushes in from the feast to find his idol fallen and his throne broken. He goes back in an effort to flee, for he knows that his doom is upon him. The slaves reënter with Argimenes at their head. Argimenes takes his place on the throne, and throws a cloth of gold about his shoulders. He looks the King he is and the slaves bow before him in awe and wonder. Suddenly the Keeper of the King’s Great Dog comes to say that the royal beast is dead. In an instant Argimenes forgets that he is a King once more and with a cry of “Bones!” he rushes forward, followed by the slaves. Then, recollecting himself, he returns to the throne, and with dignity commands that the King’s Great Dog be buried. “Majesty!” cries Zarb, confounded at this last token of royalty. And so the curtain falls.
It is unquestionable that the first act of this play is immeasurably superior to the second. The first has a unity, a directness, and a force which the second lacks, breaking as it does into several phases of action. From the time when King Darniak goes with his Queens into the banqueting hall to the entrance of Argimenes and the slaves there is a momentary interlude, and just here the act breaks, splitting into two sections. In the last half of the act the entrances and exits are not carefully arranged, and altogether the effect of the whole is to give the act a downward slant rather than the upward one that it should have. The play “falls off” at the conclusion. This is all due simply and solely to faulty construction. This was the first play Dunsany attempted in more than one act, and hence it must be regarded somewhat as in the nature of an experiment. Probably the play would have been better written in three acts instead of in two. The first act in that case would show King Darniak on his throne with the Queens and the Prophet; in short it would contain the material now used in the first part of act two. The second act would be the present act one just as it now stands; and act three would be composed of what is now contained in the second portion of act two. Thus we would see the splendour of Damiak on his throne, hear the prophecy, and mark his inattention to it, after which we would get the contrast of Argimenes in the slave-fields, followed by the revolt, and the overthrow of Damiak. This revolt would follow immediately and logically upon Argimenes’ slaughter of the slave-guard in act two. There is little question in my mind but that this is the proper construction for the play.
It may be well to take up here a question which has arisen concerning the acts or scenes of the Dunsany plays. When William A. Brady produced “The Gods of the Mountain” in America he called it upon the programme “A One Act Play in Three Scenes”, whereas Dunsany himself calls his divisions, acts. When “King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior” and “The Gods of the Mountain” were produced by Stuart Walker in his Portmanteau Theater he had no hesitation in using the term “acts.” But of late the point has again arisen so that it seems desirable that we pause long enough to investigate the matter more deeply.
A play is a series of minor climaxes leading to major climaxes which in turn lead to an ultimate climax. A one-act play is a series of minor climaxes leading to one major climax which is in itself the ultimate climax. A three-act play has the major climaxes near the end of each act, and the ultimate climax near the end of the second act or during the third. A four or five act play is susceptible to the same course of reasoning. I fear that my phraseology is somewhat involved, but I have striven to be exact.
Let us try this dictum on “King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior” and see whether or not it will stand the pragmatic test. Be it understood that these major climaxes are as a rule placed at such points in the action as will tend to divide the play conveniently. This is merely a convention of the dramatic art. Dunsany’s acts are shorter than is customary, but that does not invalidate their claim to be called acts in the least, for acting time has nothing to do with the question, except as it might tend to produce lack of balance and unity. Broadly speaking, acts are natural divisions produced by emotional or intellectual climaxes.
In the first act of the play under immediate discussion the minor climaxes are the finding of the sword, and the coming of the Overseer, both leading to the major climax, the “Oh” which the slaves give as Argimenes slays the guard. In the second act the Overseer, the Prophet, the entrance of Argimenes, the destruction of Illuriel, the reëntrance of the Overseer, the incident of the King’s Great Dog with the cry of “Bones!” all lead to the ultimate climax, where Argimenes orders that the dog be buried and Zarb cries “Majesty!” Note by the way that the printed version of the play makes Zarb deliver this last speech in a tone of protest, when in reality, as Dunsany himself points out, his tone should show awe. The major climax at the end of act one leads direct to the ultimate climax at the end of act two just as I said it would. “King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior” is not as good an example as “The Gods of the Mountain” simply because the second is by far the better play. The working out of the rule I have suggested is perfectly plain in them both, however. There can be no question whether or not these plays are written in acts or scenes. “The Gods of the Mountain” is as unmistakably a three-act play as “The Amazons.” But before discontinuing the discussion let me append a note to something I said a little while back. I remarked that acts are natural divisions produced by emotional or intellectual climaxes, but if such climaxes come at points where an interval would be inconvenient or detrimental to the balance of the play then the necessary divisions must be arbitrarily imposed.
The slave song, the chant of the low born in the first act of “King Argimenes”, and the wine song or the chant of the nobles in the second act are both interesting. When the play was first given at the Abbey Theater one of the old songs of famine time was used for the chant of the low born, and most effectively. It is immensely typical of Dunsany to have these two songs balancing each other, and presenting so forceful a contrast. The play begins and ends with the thought of bones uppermost, and this gives a certain sense of unity in contra-distinction to the otherwise faulty structure. In Argimenes there is a superficial resemblance to Agmar in “The Gods of the Mountain”, and in Zarb there is a faint prophecy of Slag in the same play. This does not argue by any means that Dunsany’s characters are all types, but it indicates how his characters developed, one growing out of another.
This play should dispose finally of any theory that Dunsany develops his plot at the expense of his characters. See how Argimenes, fallen almost to an animal, regains his individuality under the influence of the sword, and how the slaves, from being mere whipped curs, rise to the point of revolt under the leadership of Argimenes. Observe the study of meanness and selfishness in the scene of Damiak, the Queens, and the Overseer, and the blind ignorance depicted in the following scene with the Prophet. Here is a social study for us if we care to heed it. And then the reversion to habit in Argimenes when he hears that the King’s Great Dog is dead, and his cry of “Bones!”, with the awe and wonder of the slaves at the reinstated monarch. It is a most excellent bit of character work on rather broad lines. As might be expected the gods have their share in the proceedings, and the fact that the god of Argimenes was only broken in three pieces while that of Darniak, Illuriel, was broken in seven, is made to serve as a partial raison d’etre for the action. The last act furnishes a splendid example of peripetia in the fall of Darniak, and the victory of Argimenes.
“King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior” is almost a good play. It presents a problem of man as opposed to man as most of the other Dunsany plays do not, and in consequence of this the conception is much less poetic, with none of the grandeur of some of the other plays.
On the other hand, the fact that we are dealing with purely human elements permits more visible opposition and direct conflict, and for this reason one occasionally hears the play placed much higher in the scale than it deserves to be. In its characterization, its dialogue, its flashes of poetry and of wit, the play is well worth serious consideration, but in its conception, and in the faulty construction of its framework it falls far below the standard set by the major portion of Dunsany’s work.