PLAY-MAKING

With a New Introduction to the Dover Edition

Sterling Professor of Playwriting and Dramatic Literature, YaleUniversity

PREFATORY NOTE

This book is, to all intents and purposes, entirely new. No considerableportion of it has already appeared, although here and there shortpassages and phrases from articles of bygone years areembedded--indistinguishably, I hope--in the text. I have tried, whereverit was possible, to select my examples from published plays, which thestudent may read for himself, and so check my observations. One reason,among others, which led me to go to Shakespeare and Ibsen for so many ofmy illustrations, was that they are the most generally accessible ofplaywrights.

If the reader should feel that I have been over lavish in the use offootnotes, I have two excuses to allege. The first is that more thanhalf of the following chapters were written on shipboard and in placeswhere I had scarcely any books to refer to; so that a great deal had tobe left to subsequent enquiry and revision. The second is that severalof my friends, dramatists and others, have been kind enough to read mymanuscript, and to suggest valuable afterthoughts.

LONDON

January, 1912

To

Brander Matthews

Guide Philosopher and Friend

CONTENTS

BOOK I

  PROLOGUE

BOOK II

  THE BEGINNING

BOOK III

  THE MIDDLE