King Herod and the Cutting-Room Floor

This interesting article on Emma Darwin's blog about psychic distance reminded me how often I used to use other media - like film - to get some writing technique over to students. One such technique was cutting from scene to scene. It can be enormously difficult for new writers to extricate themselves from a scene before it comes to a "natural" end, but it's something we need to be able to do if we're not to risk boring readers. TV shows, with their short timespan, do it ruthlessly (look at how The Big Bang Theory moves on straight after the laugh-line).

But this is by no means a technique that was invented yesterday. "St Stephen and King Herod" is a very old ballad, and its 14th-century author certainly had not seen any films or TV shows. Yet the poem is a beautiful example of how to control pace and drama by dwelling on what really matters, moving swiftly on from what matters less and leaving much out altogether.

After the scene-setting first verse:

Stephen was a servitor
In King Herod's hall,
And served him with honour
As every king befall.

we are plunged into the middle of the action; Stephen coming from the kitchen with food for the hall. He is crossing a courtyard, which wouldn't have been uncommon at the time; kitchens smell and were kept away from the gentry's noses. Not that this is explained: we simply know it is so because otherwise this couldn't happen:

Stephen came from kitchen
With boar's head in hand.
He saw a star was fair and bright
Above Bethlem stand.

At this point we might have been treated to some sort of analysis of his feelings, but our author is more economical than that:

He cast adown the boar's head
And went into the hall.
"I forsake thee, King Herod,
And thy works all."

Now at this point I should say that it has always seemed to me that Herod, who is feasting, is certainly in a good mood and possibly slightly merry. I don't think this is over-interpretation, because his words and actions for some time are unexpectedly tolerant for a king who has just been spoken to so rudely by the kitchen-boy. Indeed his first reaction is concern for the lad's welfare:

What aileth thee, Stephen,
What is thee befall?
Lacketh anything to thee
In King Herod's hall?

Model employer, really... But Stephen, a stranger to tact, readily gets to the nub of the matter:

"Ne lacketh me nothing
In King Herod's hall,
There is one born in Bethlem
Is king of us all".

One can imagine - indeed one must, for it will not be shown - the aghast faces round the board. But the mellow Herod is still inclined to treat the whole thing as a joke: one can almost hear the guffaw in his voice.

"That is all so true, Stephen,
All so true, I know,
As the capon on this platter
Should come to life and crow."

Now for the first time we shall see a couple of lines that aren't strictly necessary to the narrative, a piece of repetition that slows the action right down for a crucial moment - the equivalent, if you like, of the filmic pause before the heroine opens the door of the locked room:

That word was not so soon said,
That word in that hall

If you're reading this aloud to an audience and pause just long enough, I promise you can have them spellbound at this point, just before you shout:

The capon crew "Christus natus est"
Among the lords all.

Mellow drunks can turn nasty in a moment, and Herod is about to do so:

"Rise up, my true tormentors,
By two and by one.
Lead Stephen forth of this town
And stone him with stone."

The final verse pans out from close-up and goes back to the dispassionate, straight narrative with which it opened:

They led out Stephen
And stoned him on the way,
And therefore is his even
On Christ's own day.

. One does, at this point, have to explain, to English students at least, that 26th December was St Stephen's Day before ever "Boxing Day" was invented. But what is hopefully self-explanatory is the way this spare, dramatic ballad chooses its details, its perspective and its cuts in the way a film might: dwelling on a scene just exactly as long as it needs, zooming into close-up on Stephen and Herod and then out again to the world they affect so much without knowing it, leaving out just about everything to do with motive and mood (we can judge what mood Herod is in at various points from what he says and does), pausing where pause can make an effect but dropping a scene when it's over with as little hesitation as Stephen drops that dish with the boar's head.