away from the suggestive
influence of the author-hypnotist. My play will probably last an
hour and a half, and as it is possible to listen that length of
time, or longer, to a lecture, a sermon, or a debate, I have
imagined that a theatrical performance could not become fatiguing
in the same time. As early as 1872, in one of my first dramatic
experiments, "The Outlaw," I tried the same concentrated form, but
with scant success. The play was written in five acts and wholly
completed when I became aware of the restless, scattered effect it
produced. Then I burned it, and out of the ashes rose a single,
well-built act, covering fifty printed pages, and taking hour for
its performance. Thus the form of the present play is not new, but
it seems to be my own, and changing aesthetical conventions may
possibly make it timely.

My hope is still for a public educated to the point where it can
sit through a whole-evening performance in a single act. But that
point cannot be reached without a great deal of experimentation. In
the meantime I have resorted to three art forms that are to provide
resting-places for the public and the actors, without letting the
public escape from the illusion induced. All these forms are
subsidiary to the drama. They are the monologue, the pantomime, and
the dance, all of them belonging originally to the tragedy of
classical antiquity. For the monologue has sprung from the monody,
and the chorus has developed into the ballet.

Our realists have excommunicated the monologue as improbable, but
if I can lay a proper basis for it, I can also make it seem
probable, and then I can use it to good advantage. It is probable,
for instance, that a speaker may walk back and forth in his room
practising his speech aloud; it is probable that an actor may read
through his part aloud, that a servant-girl may talk to her cat,
that a mother may prattle to her child, that an old spinster may
chatter to her parrot, that a person may talk in his sleep. And in
order that the actor for once may have a chance to work independently,
and to be free for a moment from the author's pointer, it is better
that the monologues be not written out, but just indicated. As it
matters comparatively little what is said to the parrot or the cat,
or in one's sleep--because it cannot influence the action--it is
possible that a gifted actor, carried away by the situation and the
mood of the occasion, may improvise such matters better than th