words he sings, the words I quoted above about going on fer-
ever. “(Aunt Eller’sand Laurey’slips move involuntarily,
shaping the same words).” Laurey is capable of song, too. She
will break out into her own music later, but here she and Aunt
Eller feel the performative charm of Curly’s deepening charac-
ter and silently share the lyric with him.
Riggs’s Laurey does not do this. The actress in Riggs’s play
cannot mouth Curly’s words because he does not repeat his
phrases. People repeat one another’s phrases in song because
song is based on patterns of repetition, but book dialogue usu-
ally lacks the patterns and people speak for themselves. The
Laurey of Green Grow the Lilacsis a simpler and less sentimen-
tal character than she is in the musical. She does not fall into
the rhythm of Curly’s description. She waits for him to finish
his description, holding herself at a distance, getting a coun-
terthrust ready:
Laurey.Whur’d you git sich a rig at? (With explosive laughter) Anh,
I bet he’s went and h’ard it over to Claremore, thinkin I’d go
with him!She accuses Curly of spending all his money on this rig—now
he has to find somebody to ride in it. He defends himself by
pretending that he has made the whole thing up, and she gets
after him for lying to her. Hammerstein uses all of this—
later. But his Laurey has gotten caught up in Curly’s lyric,
and she has to draw back after the second chorus in time to
regain her hoydenish defenses. When she does draw back,
Hammerstein virtually copies the Riggs dialogue for a mo-
ment. But there is a telling difference. The musical insists
on orchestral underscoring while Hammerstein uses Riggs’s
dialogue. The musical register cannot be allowed to lapse,
not yet. The stretch of prose will be followed by the third
chorus of the song, and the orchestral continuity must be
maintained, so that the order of musical time will carry
through to the real conclusion.
Here is the Riggs dialogue that Hammerstein turns into the
final stanza.