action of a play is simply a story told by the movements
of the players. But when we see a man stabbed, or a woman kissed,
our curiosity is excited. We want to know something more about the
people whose actions we see. This, indeed, may be roughly told by
gesture and facial expression, which are themselves language; but,
finally, to understand more than the barest outline of the story, we
are forced to demand words. And the more we are interested in human
nature the more we want to understand the thoughts, emotions,
motives, characters, of the personages in action before us. Hence by
gradual steps have come our latest attempts at studies of complex
characters, in their struggle to solve the problems of life; or what
are objected to as "problem plays." Well, why object? Every play,
from _Charley's Aunt_ to _Hamlet_, is a problem play. It is merely a
matter of degree. Every play deals with the struggle of men and
women to solve some problem of life, great or small: to outwit evil
fortune. It may be merely to persuade a couple of pretty girls to
stay to luncheon in your college rooms, when their chaperon has not
turned up. It may be something more important.

The more interest the public and the dramatist take in human
nature--that is to say, the better developed they are as regards
dramatic sympathy--the more, rich, vivid, and subtle will be the
play of character and passion, in the drama demanded and produced.
In a word, the less wooden-pated and wooden-hearted they become, the
less mechanical and commonplace will their drama be.

We are slowly emerging from the puppet-show conception of drama. Our
dramatists are beginning to do more than refurbish the old puppets,
and move them about the stage according to the rules of the
"well-made" play. They are not content, like their predecessors, to
leave their characters quite at the mercy of the actor who, in
"creating" them, gave them whatever small resemblance to humanity
they may have possessed. And as the play gains in vitality, the
playwright begins to feel the absolute necessity for writing decent
dialogue--not mere stage dialect that may be scamped and ranted _ad
libitum_ by the "star" to suit his own taste, or want of it, but
real dialogue, which, while ideally reflecting the colloquial
language of the day, taxes the intelligence and feeling of the actor
to deliver properly.

This means real progress; for the dialogue is the very life of the
play. It alone can bring