This account of what was to
happen on the stage was known technically as a _scenario_. The actors
consulted this scenario before they made an entrance, and then in the
acting of the scene spoke whatever words occurred to them. Harlequin made
love to Columbine and quarreled with Pantaloon in new lines every night;
and the drama gained both spontaneity and freshness from the fact that it
was created anew at each performance. Undoubtedly, if an actor scored with
a clever line, he would remember it for use in a subsequent presentation;
and in this way the dialogue of a comedy must have gradually become more or
less fixed and, in a sense, written. But this secondary task of formulating
the dialogue was left to the performers; and the playwright contented
himself with the primary task of planning the plot.

The case of the _commedia dell'arte_ is, of course, extreme; but it
emphasises the fact that the problem of the dramatist is less a task of
writing than a task of constructing. His primary concern is so to build a
story that it will tell itself to the eye of the audience in a series of
shifting pictures. Any really good play can, to a great extent, be
appreciated even though it be acted in a foreign language. American
students in New York may find in the Yiddish dramas of the Bowery an
emphatic illustration of how closely a piece may be followed by an auditor
who does not understand the words of a single line. The recent
extraordinary development in the art of the moving picture, especially in
France, has taught us that many well-known plays may be presented in
pantomime and reproduced by the kinetoscope, with no essential loss of
intelligibility through the suppression of the dialogue. Sardou, as
represented by the biograph, is no longer a man of letters; but he remains,
scarcely less evidently than in the ordinary theatre, a skilful and
effective playwright. _Hamlet_, that masterpiece of meditative poetry,
would still be a good play if it were shown in moving pictures. Much, of
course, would be sacrificed through the subversion of its literary element;
but its essential interest _as a play_ would yet remain apparent through
the unassisted power of its visual appeal.

There can be no question that, however important may be the dialogue of a
drama, the scenario is even more important; and from a full scenario alone,
before a line of dialogue is written, it is possible in most cases to
determine whether a prospective play