isualizing a scene, the idea
of the stage should, as far as possible, be banished from the author's
mind. He should see and describe the room, the garden, the sea-shore, or
whatever the place of his action may be, not as a stage-scene, but as a
room, garden, or sea-shore in the real world. The cultivation of this
habit ought to be, and I believe is in some cases, a safeguard against
theatricality.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: Sardou wrote careful and detailed scenarios, Dumas _fils_
held it a waste of time to do so. Pailleron wrote "enormous" scenarios,
Meilhac very brief ones, or none at all. Mr. Galsworthy, rather to my
surprise, disdains, and even condemns, the scenario, holding that a
theme becomes lifeless when you put down its skeleton on paper. Sir
Arthur Pinero says: "Before beginning to write a play, I always make
sure, by means of a definite scheme, that there is _a_ way of doing it;
but whether I ultimately follow that way is a totally different matter."
Mr. Alfred Sutro practically confesses to a scenario. He says: "Before I
start writing the dialogue of a play, I make sure that I shall have an
absolutely free hand over the entrances and exits: in other words, that
there is ample and legitimate reason for each character appearing in any
particular scene, and ample motive for his leaving it." Mr. Granville
Barker does not put on paper a detailed scenario. He says: "I plan the
general scheme, and particularly the balance of the play, in my head;
but this, of course, does not depend entirely on entrances and exits."
Mr. Henry Arthur Jones says: "I know the leading scenes, and the general
course of action in each act, before I write a line. When I have got the
whole story clear, and divided into acts, I very carefully construct the
first act, as a series of scenes between such and such of the
characters. When the first act is written I carefully construct the
second act in the same way--and so on. I sometimes draw up twenty
scenarios for an act before I can get it to go straight."]

[Footnote 2: A friend of the late Clyde Fitch writes to me: "Fitch was
often astonished at the way in which his characters developed. He tried
to make them do certain things: they did others."]

[Footnote 3: This account of the matter seems to find support in a
statement, by M. Francois de Curel, an accomplished psychologist, to the
effect that during the first few days of work at a play he is "clearly