Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Friend of the People: A Play in Four Acts
To be sure, when a play fails it is not always easy to say why it failed. There is really no formula of success in play - writing. There is an instance of a play that bored a veteran London critic, which, according to his own confession, was just the sort of play that he had been always reviling people for not writing, managers for not producing, critics for not praising. He owned that it was a sincere pre sentment of actual life; that the characters were alive, well drawn and had the value of types; that it was full of food for re?ection and innocent of theatrical effects. Yet it made him long to be amused and excited, and he couldn't tell why it failed to interest him with all its facts and ideas. The explanation probably is that the good qualities of the play were wholly negative. The author had mastered the decalogue of prohibitions, but neglected the organic form of emotion which stimulates feel ing as well as thought. Obviously positive merit is better than the negative kind, but yet few of us have the genius that would justify us in defying the seven devils of the theatre. Hence the importance of considering objections from high sources, objec tions not to be found in textbooks on technique or made obvious by object lessons on the stage itself, and therefore unknown to the average novice of the drama.
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