One-act plays of to-day 2. [antikvár]

FOREWORD THE First Series of One-Act Plays of To-day-the forerunner of the present volume-was frankly an experiment. No such collection had ever appeared in England, and no one could predict the sort of reception it would be likely to have. It happened, however, that the book was welcomed from the day of its publication, and there can no longer be any doubt that the one-act play appeals to a much larger circle than any but the most sanguine had expected. One of the most hopeful auguries of the present day is the fact that modern drama is being recognized and appreciated in so many of our schools and colleges. Until quite recently the teachers of drama began with Shakespeare-which is rather like beginning the study of landscape-painting by an analysis of the pictures of Turner, or like starting juvenile musicians on their career with an inquiry into the nature of a Beethoven symphony or a Wagner opera. The newer method of teaching English by means of drama is to study good one-act plays written in contemporary idiom, for the two reasons that the one-act play is, in itself, an art-form as significant as the short story, and that, being brief, it exerts upon the reader's interest a hold which could, in the case of a five-act play, be only perfunctory. The oneact play is not necessarily less in quality than the five-act play, but it is less in quantity. Wherefore, it may be fairly argued, a taste for drama should be cultivated by means of one-act plays of first-rate quality rather than inhibited by