ation to an audience. It is a
portrayal of life by means of a mechanism so devised as to bring it home
to a considerable number of people assembled in a given place. "The
public," it has been well said, "constitutes the theatre." 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 attention that 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. I know that there are
haughty-souls who make no such submission, and express themselves in
dramas which, so far as their proportions are concerned, might as well
be epic poems or historical romances.[6] To them, I repeat, I have
nothing to say. The one and only subject of the following discussions is
the best method of fitting a dramatic theme for representation before an
audience assembled in a theatre. But this, be it noted, does not
necessarily mean "writing down" to the audience in question. It is by
obeying, not by ignoring, the fundamental conditions of his craft that
the dramatist may hope to lead his audience upward to the highest
intellectual level which he himself can attain.

These pages, in short, are addressed to students of play-writing who
sincerely desire to do sound, artistic work under the conditions and
limitations of the actual, living playhouse. This does not mean, of
course, that they ought always to be studying "what the public wants."
The dramatist should give the public what he himself wants--but in such
form as to make it comprehensible and interesting in a theatre.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: It is against "technic" in this sense of the term that the
hero of Mr. Howells's admirable novel, _The Story of a Play_, protests
in vigorous and memorable terms. "They talk," says Maxwell, "about a
knowledge of the stage as if it were a difficult science, instead of a
very simple piece of mechanism whose limitations and possibilities
anyone may see at a glance. All that their knowledge of it comes to is
claptrap, pure and simple.... They think that their exits and entrances
are great matters and that they must come on with such