In preparing a play
for the press, the author should make his stage-directions as brief as
is consistent with clearness. Few readers will burden their memory with
long and detailed descriptions. When a new character of importance
appears, a short description of his or her personal appearance and dress
may be helpful to the reader; but even this should be kept impersonal.
Moreover, as a play has always to be read before it can be rehearsed or
acted, it is no bad plan to make the stage-directions, from the first,
such as tend to bring the play home clearly to the reader's mental
vision. And here I may mention a principle, based on more than mere
convenience, which some playwrights observe with excellent results. Not
merely in writing stage-directions, but in visualizing a scene, the idea
of the stage should, as far as possible, be banished from the author's
mind. He should see and describe the room, the garden, the sea-shore, or
whatever the place of his action may be, not as a stage-scene, but as a
room, garden, or sea-shore in the real world.
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