The House of Rimmon: A Drama in Four Acts — Story, Setting & Ideas

Diction and the Weight of Words

Van Dyke's characters speak in a heightened, almost liturgical English that draws attention to the act of naming. When Ruahmah tells Saballidin, "A name is but an empty shell, a mask / That does not change the features of the face beneath it," she articulates a central concern of the play: the gap between what things are called and what they are. This is not mere philosophical musing; it is a dramatic tool. The repeated references to "Rimmon's House" and "the prophet's word" set up a verbal polarity between false and true authority. The diction is consistently deliberate—words like "dispose," "minister," and "contend" carry formal, almost legal weight, suggesting that every utterance is a kind of pledge or judgment. Even the stage directions participate: the god's image is not just ugly but "hideous," a word that colours the reader's perception before any character speaks.

Voice and the Performance of Self

Each character's voice reveals a distinct mode of self-presentation. Tsarpi's lines are sharp and commanding: "These curls are ill arranged, this veil too low,— / So,—that is better, careless maids!" Her speech is full of imperatives and corrections, betraying a need to control appearances. In contrast, Ruahmah's voice is introspective and lyrical, especially in her song: "Above the edge of dark appear the lances of the sun." She speaks of service and love in terms of sacrifice and devotion, her syntax often flowing into long, clause-heavy sentences that mirror her layered emotions. Saballidin, caught between loyalty and desire, uses a more measured, almost legalistic tone: "I've been your servant in this doubtful quest, / Obedient, faithful, loyal to your will." The king's fool, Shumakim, is listed in the dramatis personae but does not appear in the excerpts; his absence from the given text is itself a reminder that the play's voices are carefully distributed, each carrying a specific dramatic function.

Description as Moral Landscape

Van Dyke's descriptions do more than set a scene; they encode moral and spiritual states. The garden in Act I is lush with "crimson flowers" and heavy fragrance, but the idol's presence and the tower's shadow turn it into a space of hidden tension. The background—"a wide, hilly landscape, with a high road passing over the mountains toward the snow-clad summits of Mount Hermon"—offers a visual escape route, a path toward the prophetic world of Israel. This contrast between enclosed, idol-haunted garden and open, mountainous horizon recurs implicitly throughout the excerpts. When Ruahmah speaks of the road to Dothan, she calls it "the valley northward," a simple geographical detail that nonetheless carries the weight of a journey toward healing and truth. The physical settings are never neutral; they are extensions of the characters' spiritual geography.

Structure and the Rhythm of Revelation

The play is divided into four acts, and the excerpts suggest a careful patterning of revelation and concealment. Act I opens with Tsarpi waiting, her impatience signalling a marriage built on unequal knowledge. Later, Ruahmah's decision to let Naaman continue mistaking her for Tsarpi—"To-morrow he must know the truth"—creates a deliberate postponement of recognition. This structural choice, a secret sustained across scenes, generates dramatic irony: the audience knows what the hero does not. Van Dyke also uses the song as a structural pivot; Ruahmah's lyric interrupts the dialogue, shifting the emotional register from debate to lament or hope. The movement from garden to mountain pass, from courtly intrigue to prophetic encounter, is not merely geographical but structural, each act likely marking a stage in Naaman's journey from idolatry to faith.

Readers attentive to Van Dyke's authorial choices will find a drama that works through indirection: what is not said, what is misnamed, and what is deferred are as important as the explicit action. The play rewards close attention to its verse rhythms, its symbolic use of light and shadow, and its careful calibration of voice. Approach it not as a simple retelling but as a poetic meditation on the power of language to shape belief and identity.

Reading Van Dyke’s Damascus court, all gilt and strained loyalty, I kept thinking of an older, rougher stage—the plain-spoken voices in A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 07 — Text and Context. There is something tender in how both books treat belief as a quiet, worn thing, not a spectacle. I suppose that is why they sat together on my shelf.