ACT IIISCENE 1[This scene (suggested by a friend) was entirely cut before rehearsals began.]Zira’s house. Same scene as Act I, Scene 3. Small courtyard.The sun has just set. It is dusk.The gate is opened from the street.Old Woman I(Narjis)enters, locks the gate, and lights a lamp.Knocking at the gate.Old Woman I opens the gate.The two porters bring in the chair.Hajji gets out, bent double, and trembling.He pays the porters: they withdraw.The Old Woman says: “Who are you?”
ACT III
SCENE 1
[This scene (suggested by a friend) was entirely cut before rehearsals began.]
Zira’s house. Same scene as Act I, Scene 3. Small courtyard.The sun has just set. It is dusk.The gate is opened from the street.Old Woman I(Narjis)enters, locks the gate, and lights a lamp.Knocking at the gate.Old Woman I opens the gate.The two porters bring in the chair.Hajji gets out, bent double, and trembling.He pays the porters: they withdraw.The Old Woman says: “Who are you?”
Zira’s house. Same scene as Act I, Scene 3. Small courtyard.
The sun has just set. It is dusk.
The gate is opened from the street.
Old Woman I(Narjis)enters, locks the gate, and lights a lamp.
Knocking at the gate.
Old Woman I opens the gate.
The two porters bring in the chair.
Hajji gets out, bent double, and trembling.
He pays the porters: they withdraw.
The Old Woman says: “Who are you?”
SCENE 2[In the play Act III begins here.]The Bath in the Executioner’s house.(Large set.)Up five marble steps(almost fifteen feet up stage)a colonnade. Beyond it a courtyard, with a large swimming bath. The front part of the stage, couches and pierced screens. Door right to women’s apartments, door left to men’s apartments.Early moonlight in the courtyard beyond the columns. Hanging lamps in the front part of the bath.Women are robing and disrobing. Some are swimming in the tank. Laughter and chatter.
SCENE 2
[In the play Act III begins here.]
The Bath in the Executioner’s house.(Large set.)
Up five marble steps(almost fifteen feet up stage)a colonnade. Beyond it a courtyard, with a large swimming bath. The front part of the stage, couches and pierced screens. Door right to women’s apartments, door left to men’s apartments.
Early moonlight in the courtyard beyond the columns. Hanging lamps in the front part of the bath.
Women are robing and disrobing. Some are swimming in the tank. Laughter and chatter.
LAST SCENEThe same as the first scene, Act I. Before the Mosque, moonlight.
LAST SCENE
The same as the first scene, Act I. Before the Mosque, moonlight.
Does not this careful scenario make very clear what are the steps in good scenario writing? First comes structure,—ordering for clearness and correct emphasis in the story-telling. Then, with the scenario kept flexible and subject to change till the last possible moment, come many changes big and little, for better characterization and more atmosphere—see pp. 461-463.
Finally, more than anything else, as the author puts last touches to his scenario, or revises the play he has written from it, he scans its details in relation to the probable attitude toward them of his public. In the relation of that public to his subject and his treatment of it lie the most difficult problems of the dramatist. Solving them means the difference between the will to conquer and victory.
1Letters of Henrik Ibsen, p. 325. For a similar outline see that onFaste, p. 151.2The Green Book Magazine, February, 1914.3See pp. 276-278.4See Kismet Scenario, pp. 474-507.5Samuel French, publisher. New York.6Samuel French, publisher, New York.7Samuel French, publisher, New York.8Samuel French, publisher, New York.9See pp. 154-182.10See p. 287.11European Dramatists. Henrik Ibsen. A. Henderson. Pp. 175-176. Stewart & Kidd Co., Cincinnati.12The sentence is elliptical in the original.13Ibsen’s Workshop, pp. 91-92. Copyright, 1911, by Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.14Ibsen’s Workshop, pp. 92-95.15Printed by permission of Mr. Knobloch from his own manuscript.16For the play seeKismet, Methuen & Co., Ltd., London.
1Letters of Henrik Ibsen, p. 325. For a similar outline see that onFaste, p. 151.
2The Green Book Magazine, February, 1914.
3See pp. 276-278.
4See Kismet Scenario, pp. 474-507.
5Samuel French, publisher. New York.
6Samuel French, publisher, New York.
7Samuel French, publisher, New York.
8Samuel French, publisher, New York.
9See pp. 154-182.
10See p. 287.
11European Dramatists. Henrik Ibsen. A. Henderson. Pp. 175-176. Stewart & Kidd Co., Cincinnati.
12The sentence is elliptical in the original.
13Ibsen’s Workshop, pp. 91-92. Copyright, 1911, by Chas. Scribner’s Sons, New York.
14Ibsen’s Workshop, pp. 92-95.
15Printed by permission of Mr. Knobloch from his own manuscript.
16For the play seeKismet, Methuen & Co., Ltd., London.
CHAPTER X
THE DRAMATIST AND HIS PUBLIC
Probablymost dramatists have found that any play, either as a scenario or a completed manuscript, is not a matter of writing but of frequent re-writing. StudyFrom Ibsen’s Workshopor most of the cases cited by Binet and Passy,1and it becomes evident that the first draft of a scenario or play is usually made mainly for clearness. That will be gained by good construction and correct emphasis. There follows a re-writing in which characterization improves greatly and dialogue becomes characterizing and attractive in itself. Either in this or possible later re-writings, the dramatist shapes his material more and more in relation to the public he wishes to address, for a dramatist is, after all, a sort of public speaker. Unlike the platform orator, however, he speaks indirectly to his audience—through people and under conditions he cannot wholly control. None the less, much if not all that concerns the persuasion of public argumentation concerns the dramatist. This does not in any sense mean that an author must truckle to his audience. Far from it. Yet no dramatist can work care free in regard to his audience. He must consider their natural likes and dislikes, interests and indifferences, their probable knowledge of his subject as well as their probable approach to it. As Mr. Archer has pointed out: “The moment a playwright confines his work within the two or three hours’ limit prescribed by Western custom for a theatrical performance, he is currying favour with an audience. That limit is imposed simply by the physical endurance and power of sustained attentionthat can be demanded of Western human beings assembled in a theatre. Doubtless an author could express himself more fully and more subtly if he ignored these limitations; the moment he submits to them, he renounces the pretence that mere self-expression is his aim.”2
Once for all, what is “truckling to an audience”? When an author, believing that the end of his play should be tragic, so plans his work that until the last act or even the middle of that act, a tragic ending is the logical conclusion, and then because he is told or believes that an audience will quit the theatre much more contented if the ending be happy, he forces a pleasant ending on his play, he is untrue to himself, dishonest with his art, and truckles to his public. A very large part of American audiences and many producers believe that any play is only mere entertainment and consequently may and should be so manipulated as to please the public even in its most unthinking mood. No man who does that is a dramatist. He is merely a hack playwright, bribed by the hope of immediate gain into slavish obedience to the most unthinking part of the public.
On the other hand, an author is very foolish if he does not remember certain fundamental principles about audiences in a theatre. First, no matter what in his material attracts him, people rather than ideas arouse the interest of the general public. Secondly, even yet action far more than characterization wins and holds the attention of the great majority. These facts do not mean, however, that a dramatist must busy himself only with plays of action or characterization, foregoing all problems or thesis material. They do mean that if he is to write a play of ideas he must recognize that his task is the more difficult because of his public and that he must so handle it through the characterization and the action as to make his ideas widely interesting. Inbrief, insisting on saying what he wishes to say, he must learn to speak in terms his audience will readily understand.
More than once a play good in itself has gone astray because written too much unto the author’s self, in the sense that certain figures have interested him more than others and he has forgotten that they are not likely to be interesting to the public at large and must be made so. For instance, a would-be adapter believed that the hero of the tale he was dramatizing would remain on the stage the hero still, but in action another character, with his songs and rough humor, and his constant action, in sharp contrast with the quiet speech and restrained movement of the central figure of the story, ran off with the interest. Consequently this adaptation, though unusually well done in all other respects, went awry.
Another aspect of the same difficulty is that an author forgets to consider carefully whether something he finds comic or tragic will naturally be the same for his audiences. In a prize play produced some years ago in Germany,Belinda, the author found much comedy in the following situation. A rather addle-pated man has for some years been paying large sums to a correspondent, a woman as he believes, who has been painting his portrait again and again from photographs he has sent her. Little by little he has fallen in love with this correspondent. The day comes when he is awaiting a visit from her with the utmost delight. A servant, who knows that the woman is expected, enters looking utterly bewildered, and announces her arrival. There walks into the room a wizened Jewish picture dealer, who has all these years been playing on the vanity of the younger man for his own gain. Unfortunately the author forgot that an off-stage figure must be made very attractive if sympathy is to go with it rather than with a figure seen and known, or that the on-stage figure must be very unattractive if sympathyis not to go with it in contrast to a figure unseen. Consequently, when the Jew walked on he was greeted, not as the author expected with shouts of laughter, but with an aghast silence and obvious sympathy for the deceived man. Just at that point the play began to go to pieces because the author had misjudged, or not at all considered, the relation of the public to his material.
Where, perhaps, authors fail with their public more than anywhere else is in motivation of the conduct of their characters.3Too frequently a play slips because conduct as explained in it, though wholly convincing to the dramatist, does not similarly affect his public. It is useless for him to say stoutly that he knows the incident happened just in this way, or that the audience ought to know better than to think it could happen differently. As it is hopeless in life merely to protest that you are telling the truth when everybody is convinced that you are lying, it is wasted time for a dramatist to stand his ground in a matter of motivation if he has not succeeded in making that motivation convincing. For instance, there suddenly appears in the office of the hero of a play a former acquaintance of his, an actress. She has come to see him, if you please, even as her act in the theatre is playing. That is, simply because she so wished she has left the theatre during the performance. Now the dramatist may have known of such a case and people unacquainted with life behind the curtain may accept the situation, but people of the slightest experience in the theatre will know that no actor or actress playing an important rôle is allowed to leave during the performance. Instantly the scene becomes improbable for those people—and they are many. It must be so motivated as to be a probable exception in conduct, or the whole situation must be changed.
If it be clear that, though a dramatist should never truckleto his audience, he cannot hope to write successfully unless at some time in his composition he revises his material with a view to the general intelligence, natural interests, and prejudices of his audience so far as his special subject is concerned, it is equally true that publics change greatly in their tastes. A young dramatist may learn much as to such shiftings in public taste by watching the revivals of plays once very successful. In Shakespeare’s day, for instance, the public would accept a mingling of the real and unreal with equanimity. Today it takes all the genius of Shakespeare to make the scenes of the ghost of Hamlet’s father convincing. In reading Chapman’sBussy d’Ambois, with its strange commingling of real figures and ghosts, we today draw back disappointed because we feel that what has seemed real becomes with the entrance of the ghost only melodrama sublimated by some excellent characterization and fine poetry. As has already been pointed out, in Elizabethan days the public found cause for mirth in much which today is painful. Watch in performance the scene ofTwelfth Nightin which Toby, the Fool, and Maria deride Malvolio until they almost make him believe himself mad, and you have an admirable instance of changed taste. When first produced, it probably went with shouts of laughter. Because of sympathy for Malvolio it never goes well today. The public no longer finds madness unquestionably comic; it has its hesitations on practical jokes; it has lost a very little its sure enjoyment of drunkenness, especially in women. The day may conceivably come of which no one could say, as of the stage of our time: “The single expletive ‘Damn’ has saved many a would-be comic situation.”
The attitude of a playwright should not be, “If my public ordinarily does not feel about this as I do, I will cut it out or make it conform to their usual tastes,” but “Knowing perfectly what the attitude of the public is toward my material,I will not cut it out until I have proved that it is not in my power to make the audience feel it as I do.” Just here lies the worst temptation of the playwright. He who keeps his eye more on the money box than artistic self-respect will little by little limit his choice of subjects and conventionalize his treatment of them because he is told or believes that the public will not stand for this or that. Is it not, however, a little strange that almost everything which leading play-placers, managers, and actors have in the past twenty-five years declared the public would unwillingly accept or would not accept at all has since become not only acceptable but often popular. Some years ago it was a truism among readers of manuscript plays that college life was too limited in interest to appeal to the general theatre public. Then Mr. Ade’sThe College Widowproved these prophets wrong. After this play trailedBrown of Harvardand a half-dozen other college plays which, whether good, bad, or indifferent artistically, were all warmly received by the public. Another statement once accepted in the theatrical world of New York was that American audiences no longer cared for farce, butSeven Days, followed by a crowding group of successes, changed all that. All this was not the result of any sudden revulsion on the part of the public, but came because some intelligent and clever workman, determining to make his interests and his sense of values the public’s, labored until he accomplished the task. Forthwith a delighted public begged for more and what was declared impossible became the vogue. Just at present there is a troublesome convention that the American public will not accept anything but farce or comedy. This means only that at the moment our writers of serious plays are not adept enough to win away large audiences from farce and comedy or to build up special audiences for their plays. Nevertheless, sooner or later, they or their successors will conquer such a public.
In curious contradiction to the existing attitude that audiences will like only what they at present like, much advice is given as to novelty. “Find something new in substance or form and your fortune is made” is the implication. Wherein lies novelty of plot has already been explained.4Certainly the large amount of experimentation which has been going on in recent years in one-act plays, two-act plays, or groups of one-act pieces bound together by a prologue and an epilogue, has all been well worth while, making as it does for greater flexibility of dramatic form. Yet it is unfortunately true at the present moment that most audiences prefer a three-or four-act play to something in two acts because the uninterrupted attention demanded by the last form asks too much from them. They prefer the three-act or four-act division to a group of one-act plays tied together by a prologue and an epilogue, because mere difference of form has no particular attraction for them and they do not willingly shift their interest as frequently as a group of one-act plays requires. Nevertheless there is nothing completely deterrent for a dramatist in any of these circumstances; merely cause why, in every case, after thinking of the subject in relation to himself, he should ultimately consider it with equal care in relation to the audience for which he intends it. When, too, he is selecting his form he should observe whether though attractive to him, it may not be so difficult or repellent for the general public that another more conventional form is desirable. If he becomes sure that he cannot get his desired effects except in the form first chosen he must work until he makes it acceptable to the public or put aside his subject. The final test is not: “What ordinarily do the public like in a subject like mine and in what form are they accustomed to see my subject treated,” but: “Can I so present the form I prefer as to make the publiclike equally with me what I find interesting in my subject?” That is, though presentation of a chosen subject should be flexible, the central purposes, human and artistic, of the play, should be maintained inflexibly.
Bearing the audience in mind as one writes may affect the whole play, but more often it affects details—particularly order. The scenario ofKismet5has been printed in full chiefly that the many changes it underwent in shaping it for final presentation might be clear. Among the many instances note, in Act II, that in the original form the love passage of Hajji followed plotting for the murder. When the play was in rehearsal, both actor and author felt at once that the sympathy it was necessary to maintain in the audience for Hajji would be lost if he turned immediately from such bloody plotting to the love scene. For this reason the order was changed. Surely there is no harm in such a shifting, for the story develops just as well and the characterization is as humanly true. This is a perfect illustration of persuasive arrangement. Take now the case of the torturing of Hajji, of which much was made in the original scenario. It is changed to the blow with the key because the horror of the scene when acted was too great and everything necessary is accomplished with the key. Here is a change made not to please the author but to make the material as treated produce in the audience the desired results, yet the change in no way interferes with any of the purposes of the dramatist. An illustration of the way in which a dramatist standing his ground because he is sure of the rightness of his psychology may win over his public is found inLa Princesse Georgesof Dumas fils. So great was the sympathy of the audience with Severine in her mortified wifehood that at the original performance, when she forgave her husband at the end, there were many dissenting cries. Dumas fils had foreseen this,but believing the ending truer to life than any other could be, he insisted on it. Ultimately the ending was accepted by the public as made necessary by the rest of the play.
In all this discussion of the difference between truckling to an audience and necessary regard for its interests and prejudices, of changing public taste, the important point is that until a dramatist has considered his material in relation to the public, his play is by no means ready for production. Just because the persuasive side of dramatic art is so often neglected, play after play goes on the boards in such condition that it must be greatly changed before it can succeed. Often before these ample changes can be made, the public has lost interest in the piece. If a general principle might be laid down here it would be something like this. “If you wish, first write your play so that to you it is something clear and convincing as well as something that moves to laughter or to tears. Before, however, it is tried on the stage, make sure that you have considered it in all details in so detached a way that you have a right to believe that, as a result of your careful revising, it will produce with the public the same interest, and the same emotions to the same degree as the original version did with you.”
Just here arises the ever present query, “Why struggle to write what the public does not readily and quickly accept? Why not study their unthinking likes and dislikes and give them what they want?” Certainly write in that way if it brings contentment, as it surely will bring monetary success if the play thus written really hits popular approval. However, aiming to hit popular taste is like shooting at a shifting target and a play so made may be staged just as the public makes one of its swift changes in theatrical mood. Of course, too, he who writes in this way is in no sense a leader but merely the slave of his public. In any case, hisplay is but an imitation, not an expression of the author’s individuality.
Even would-be dramatists who do not hold the opportunist ideas just considered may draw back after reading what has been stated in this book, saying: “How difficult and painstaking is this art of the drama which I have thought so fascinating and spontaneous.” Of course, it is a difficult art. A good many years ago Sir Arthur Pinero said of it:
“When you sit in your stall at the theatre and see a play moving across the stage, it all seems so easy and so natural, you feel as though the author had improvised it. The characters, being, let us hope, ordinary human beings, say nothing very remarkable, nothing, you think (thereby paying the author the highest possible compliment) that might not quite well have occurred to you. When you take up a play-book (if you ever do take one up) it strikes you as being a very trifling thing—a mere insubstantial pamphlet beside the imposing bulk of the latest six-shilling novel. Little do you guess that every page of the play has cost more care, severer mental tension, if not more actual manual labor, than any chapter of a novel, though it be fifty pages long. It is the height of the author’s art, according to the old maxim, that the ordinary spectator should never be clearly conscious of the skill and travail that have gone to the making of the finished product. But the artist who would achieve a like feat must realize that no ingots are to be got out of this mine, save after sleepless nights, days of gloom and discouragement, and other days, again, of feverish toil the result of which proves in the end to be misapplied and has to be thrown to the winds.”
Nevertheless, this difficult art remains fascinating; and in practice, if rightly understood, it rapidly grows easier. In the understanding of any art there must be two stages. First comes the spontaneous doing of work very encouragingto the author and sufficiently good to warrant a person more experienced in encouraging him to proceed. Then begins the second stage, when he learns what can be taught him of technique in his chosen field. It is bound to be a time when consciousness of rules first learned and limitations first perceived make writing far less attractive and often so irksome that the worker is tempted to throw his task aside for good. He who does not really love his art will cast away his work. He who really cares cannot do this. He may from the hampering of these newly recognized rules become irritable, have his moments of self-doubt and despair, but he cannot stop practicing his art. With each new effort, the rules which have been so troublesome will become more and more a matter of habit. Little by little the writer will gain a curious subconscious power of using almost unthinkingly the principles he needs, giving no thought to those not needed. Then, and then only, will he write with the art that conceals art; and it is only when he has attained to delight in the difficulties of the art he practices that he is in any true sense an artist.
What ultimately happens is probably this. The critical attitude is strong in the scenario period, perhaps predominant as the dramatist works out construction, emphasis, proportion, etc., but when, with the scenario before him, he takes his pen in hand, he lets the creative impulse swamp completely the critical sense and loses himself in his task. Or he reverses the process. He writes in pure creative abandon, until at least an act of a play lies completed before him. Then, with his critical training brought to the front, he goes over and over the manuscript until what was a pure creative effort has been chastened and sublimated by his trained critical sense. The main point is: Don’t stultify your creative instincts by trying to use critical training at the same time. As far as possible, let one precede the other. Writecreatively. Then correct. Or write with the critical instinct strongly to the front until all plans are made. Then forget everything except the spirit of creation. Where dramatists in training waste their nervous energy and often stultify their best desires is in keeping critical tab upon themselves as they create. Writing something with pure delight, they are suddenly blocked by the critical spirit saying: “This or that is bad. You cannot keep this or that as you have written it,” and presto! no more creative work that day. Unless the critical and creative faculties interwork sympathetically and coöperatively, keep them separate.
Whoever aims to write plays chiefly or wholly because he would like fame or money or because he wishes to show that he is as strong in one fictional art as another,—the story, the essay, the poem, whatever it may be,—in fact he who writes plays for any other reason than that he cannot be happy except in writing plays, better give over such writing. Play-making is an exceedingly difficult art, and in so far as it is in any sense a transcript from life or a beautified presentation of life past, present, or imagined, it grows more difficult as the years pass because of the accumulating mass of dramatic masterpieces. Yet for him who cares for dramatic writing more than any form of self-expression, no time has been more promising than the present. There has been more good drama in the past twenty-five years the world over than at any time in the history of the stage. It has been more varied in subject and form, more individual in treatment. The drama is today more flexible, more daring and experimental, than ever before. It is in closer relation to all the subtlest and most advanced of man’s thinking. It has been breaking new ways for itself, and it has new ways yet to break. All that has been said in this book concerns merely the historic foundations of this very great art. Accept these principles as stated or quarrel with most ofthem; but realize that any principles, whether accepted from others or self-taught, should be but the beginning of a life-long training by which the individual will pass from what he shares of general dramatic experience to what is peculiarly his own expression.
1L’Année Psychologique, 1894.2Play-Making, p. 14. William Archer. Small, Maynard & Co.3See pp. 248-276.4See pp. 62-67.5See pp. 474-507.
1L’Année Psychologique, 1894.
2Play-Making, p. 14. William Archer. Small, Maynard & Co.
3See pp. 248-276.
4See pp. 62-67.
5See pp. 474-507.
INDEX OF AUTHORS
Æschylus,155.Andreiev, Leonid,328.Archer, William,45,50,55,61,78,151,214,237,260,510.Augier, Émile,221.Baker, Elizabeth,223.Barker, Granville,278.Beach, Lewis,219.Beaumont and Fletcher,281.Binet and Passy,47,49,76,78,339.Brieux, Eugène,301.Browning, Robert,306,391,399.Brunetière, Ferdinand,44.Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of,170,408.Bulwer-Lytton, Edward Robert,77,90,92,125,136,211,227,339,344.Child, C.G. (Editor),16,19.Congreve, William,396,413.Corson, Hiram,390.Davis, Richard Harding,164.Diderot, Denis,72,74,259.Dryden, John,123,261,336.Dumas fils,34,49,74,94,100,259.Dunsany, Lord,49.Eaton, W.P.,249.Echegaray, Miguel,385.Euripides,282.Fitch, Clyde,61,198,283.Flickinger, Roy C.,125,141.Galsworthy, John,66,183,191,244,375.Gildon, Charles,249.Goldsmith, Oliver,323.Gregory, Lady,162.Hapgood, Norman,58,243.Haraucourt, Edmond,83.Hart, J.A.,48,71.Hauptmann, Gerhart,164,193.Hazlitt, William,243.Heijermans, Herman,218.Henderson, A.,462.Henley, W.E.,27.Hervieu, Paul,192.Heywood, Thomas,345.Hobbes, John Oliver,350.Hofmannsthal, Hugo von,377,380.Houghton, Stanley,324.Ibsen, Henrik,51,151,179,181,183,233,259,348,349,419,421,470.Irving, Sir Henry,25,197,290,362.Jones, Henry Arthur,265,279,351,395.Jonson, Ben,235,289.Kennedy, Rann,122.Knobloch, Edward,474.Kyd, Thomas,370.Labiche, Eugène,131,173.Le Clerc, M.E.,352.Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim,9,68,114,121,212,247,255,291.Lillo, George,131,335,337.Macleod, Fiona,65.Maeterlinck, Maurice,38.Marlowe, Christopher,35,128.Matthews, Brander,19.Meredith, George,117.Middleton, Thomas,85,284.Moody, W.V.,379.Moreau, Adrien,163.Moulton, R.G.,18,154.Mushakoji, J.,316.Ostrovsky, Aleksander Nikolaevich,86.Phillips, Stephen,222.Pinero, Sir Arthur,6,15,106,107,222,255,258,291,292,378,382,383.Pinski, David,330.Polti, Georges,63.Racine, Jean,168.Reade, Charles,393.Riddle, George,368.Robertson, Thomas William,29.Rostand, Edmond,36,225.Rowley, William,345.Sardou, Victorien,163.Savage, Henry, iii,69.Selwyn, Edgar,81.Shakespeare, William,23,31,97,101,139,142,166,185,215,268,332,358,369,385,406,409.Shaw, George Bernard,299.Sheldon, Edward,341.Steele, Richard,134.Stevenson, Robert Louis,27.Sudermann, Hermann,226,229.Synge, John Millington,417.Taylor, Tom,220,393.Tennyson, Alfred, Lord,195,290,362.Terence,170,171.Thomas, Augustus,189.Vanbrugh, Sir John,297,395.Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de,113.Webster, John,267,285,303,384.Wilde, Oscar,187,230,231,388,389,402,403,404,410.Young, Charles,374.
Æschylus,155.
Andreiev, Leonid,328.
Archer, William,45,50,55,61,78,151,214,237,260,510.
Augier, Émile,221.
Baker, Elizabeth,223.
Barker, Granville,278.
Beach, Lewis,219.
Beaumont and Fletcher,281.
Binet and Passy,47,49,76,78,339.
Brieux, Eugène,301.
Browning, Robert,306,391,399.
Brunetière, Ferdinand,44.
Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of,170,408.
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward Robert,77,90,92,125,136,211,227,339,344.
Child, C.G. (Editor),16,19.
Congreve, William,396,413.
Corson, Hiram,390.
Davis, Richard Harding,164.
Diderot, Denis,72,74,259.
Dryden, John,123,261,336.
Dumas fils,34,49,74,94,100,259.
Dunsany, Lord,49.
Eaton, W.P.,249.
Echegaray, Miguel,385.
Euripides,282.
Fitch, Clyde,61,198,283.
Flickinger, Roy C.,125,141.
Galsworthy, John,66,183,191,244,375.
Gildon, Charles,249.
Goldsmith, Oliver,323.
Gregory, Lady,162.
Hapgood, Norman,58,243.
Haraucourt, Edmond,83.
Hart, J.A.,48,71.
Hauptmann, Gerhart,164,193.
Hazlitt, William,243.
Heijermans, Herman,218.
Henderson, A.,462.
Henley, W.E.,27.
Hervieu, Paul,192.
Heywood, Thomas,345.
Hobbes, John Oliver,350.
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von,377,380.
Houghton, Stanley,324.
Ibsen, Henrik,51,151,179,181,183,233,259,348,349,419,421,470.
Irving, Sir Henry,25,197,290,362.
Jones, Henry Arthur,265,279,351,395.
Jonson, Ben,235,289.
Kennedy, Rann,122.
Knobloch, Edward,474.
Kyd, Thomas,370.
Labiche, Eugène,131,173.
Le Clerc, M.E.,352.
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim,9,68,114,121,212,247,255,291.
Lillo, George,131,335,337.
Macleod, Fiona,65.
Maeterlinck, Maurice,38.
Marlowe, Christopher,35,128.
Matthews, Brander,19.
Meredith, George,117.
Middleton, Thomas,85,284.
Moody, W.V.,379.
Moreau, Adrien,163.
Moulton, R.G.,18,154.
Mushakoji, J.,316.
Ostrovsky, Aleksander Nikolaevich,86.
Phillips, Stephen,222.
Pinero, Sir Arthur,6,15,106,107,222,255,258,291,292,378,382,383.
Pinski, David,330.
Polti, Georges,63.
Racine, Jean,168.
Reade, Charles,393.
Riddle, George,368.
Robertson, Thomas William,29.
Rostand, Edmond,36,225.
Rowley, William,345.
Sardou, Victorien,163.
Savage, Henry, iii,69.
Selwyn, Edgar,81.
Shakespeare, William,23,31,97,101,139,142,166,185,215,268,332,358,369,385,406,409.
Shaw, George Bernard,299.
Sheldon, Edward,341.
Steele, Richard,134.
Stevenson, Robert Louis,27.
Sudermann, Hermann,226,229.
Synge, John Millington,417.
Taylor, Tom,220,393.
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord,195,290,362.
Terence,170,171.
Thomas, Augustus,189.
Vanbrugh, Sir John,297,395.
Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de,113.
Webster, John,267,285,303,384.
Wilde, Oscar,187,230,231,388,389,402,403,404,410.
Young, Charles,374.
INDEX OF QUOTATIONS