[1]
The scenario or skeleton is so manifestly the natural ground-work of a
dramatic performance that the playwrights of the Italian _commedia dell'
arte_ wrote nothing more than a scheme of scenes, and left the actors to
do the rest. The same practice prevailed in early Elizabethan days, as
one or two MS. "Plats," designed to be hung up in the wings, are extant
to testify. The transition from extempore acting regulated by a scenario
to the formal learning of parts falls within the historical period of
the German stage. It seems probable that the romantic playwrights of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both in England and in Spain, may
have adopted a method not unlike that of the drama of improvisation,
that is to say, they may have drawn out a scheme of entrances and exits,
and then let their characters discourse (on paper) as their fancy
prompted. So, at least, the copious fluency of their dialogue seems to
suggest. But the typical modern play is a much more close-knit organism,
in which every word has to be weighed far more carefully than it was by
playwrights who stood near to the days of improvisation, and could
indulge in "the large utterance of the early gods.
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