THE LETTERS OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS

The White Gates
Dorking

December 5 [1948]

Dear Clive
Thank you so much for all you said yesterday.  Here is a copy of the libretto.¹  A regards, apparently, the enormous number of characters, only 3 of them, Bunyan, Pilgrim and Evangelist appear in more than one act, so that doubling, trebling, and even quadrupling is possible.
Also all the small parts in Vanity Fair should of course be sung by Chorus people.
There are 2 points on which I would much like your advice.
It is, I suppose, a commonplace of dramatic construction that every episode in a play should leave the situation a bit advanced.  (Though this is not the case in “Sign of the Cross” scene in Faust.)  Now does this criticism apply to the scene of the 4 neighbours in my scene Act I?  Ought the Pilgrim perhaps to share the neighbours fright more distinctly? and then be pulled back forcibly by Evangelist or something of that kind?  This would be rather clumsy and, except for the reason I have given above I should prefer it as it is.
My 2nd point is this: – Are the scenes with the woodcutters lad and with the Shepherds really the same thing twice over? and does it matter if they are?  They both have rather nice music in them and I should be sorry to lose either of them – but the best music in the the world will not save a bad stage situation.
Yrs
R Vaughan Williams

1. Of Pilgrim’s Progress.