e queen failed to get
their proper measure of attention.

These two instances show that the necessity of economising the attention of
an audience is just as important to the stage-manager as it is to the
dramatist and the actor. In the main, it may be said that any unexpected
innovation, any device of stage-management that is by its nature startling,
should be avoided in the crucial situations of a play. Professor Brander
Matthews has given an interesting illustration of this principle in his
essay on _The Art of the Stage-Manager_, which is included in his volume
entitled _Inquiries and Opinions_. He says:

The stage-manager must ever be on his guard against the danger
of sacrificing the major to the minor, and of letting some
little effect of slight value in itself interfere with the true
interest of the play as a whole. At the first performance of Mr.
Bronson Howard's _Shenandoah_, the opening act of which ends
with the firing of the shot on Sumter, there was a wide window
at the back of the set, so that the spectators could see the
curving flight of the bomb and its final explosion above the
doomed fort. The scenic marvel had cost time and money to
devise; but it was never visible after the first performance,
because it drew attention to itself, as a mechanical effect, and
so took off the minds of the audience from the Northern lover
and the Southern girl, the Southern lover and the Northern girl,
whose loves were suddenly sundered by the bursting of that fatal
shell. At the second performance, the spectators did not see the
shot, they only heard the dread report; and they were free to
let their sympathy go forth to the young couples.

Nowadays, perhaps, when the theatre-going public is more used to elaborate
mechanism on the stage, this effect might be attempted without danger. It
was owing to its novelty at the time that the device disrupted the
attention of the spectators.

But not only novel and startling stage effects should be avoided in the
main dramatic moments of a play. Excessive magnificence and elaborateness
of setting are just as distracting to the attention as the shock of a new
and strange device. When _The Merchant of Venice_ was revived at Daly's
Theatre some years ago, a scenic set of unusual beauty was used for the
final act. The gardens of Portia's palace were shadowy with trees and
dreamy wi