charming efforts to find a way out when cornered by such an
inquiry as appears to have been made to them are surely worth all
their trouble and annoyance--not to speak of their highly
probable exasperation.

William Gillette
(May, 1916)

* * * * *

How to Write a Play

I.

From Emile Augier.

My dear Dreyfus:

You ask me the recipe for making comedies. I don't know it; but I
suppose it should resemble somewhat the one given by the sergeant to the
conscript for making cannon:

"You take a hole and you pour bronze around it."

If this is not the only recipe, it is at least the one most followed.
Perhaps there should be another which would consist in taking bronze and
making a hole thru the center and an opening for light at the end. In
cannon this hole is called the core. What should it be called in
dramatic work? Find another name, if you don't like that one.

These are the only directions I can give you. Add to them, if you wish,
this counsel of a wise man to a dramatist in a difficulty:

"Soak your fifth act in gentle tears, and salt the other four with
dashes of wit."

I do not think that the author followed this advice.

Cordially yours,

E. Augier

* * * * *

II.

From Theodore de Banville.

My dear friend:

Like all questions, the question of the theater is infinitely more
simple than is imagined. All poetics, all dramatic criticism is
contained in the admirable dictum of Adolphe Dennery: "It is not hard to
succeed in the theater, but it is extremely hard to gain success there
with a fine play."

To see this clearly you must consider two questions which have no
relation to each other:

1. How should one set about composing a dramatic work which shall
succeed and make money?

2. How shall one set about composing a dramatic work which shall be fine
and shall have some hope of survival?

Reply to the first question: Nothing is known about it; for if anything
were known every theater would earn six thousand francs every evening.
Nevertheless, a play has some chance of succeeding and earning money if,
when read to a naif person, it moves him, amuses him, makes him laugh or
weep; if it falls in