It may be asked why modern
conditions should in this respect differ from Elizabethan conditions,
and why, if Shakespeare could produce such profound and complex
tragedies as _Othello_ and _King Lear_ without a word of exposition or
retrospect, the modern dramatist should not go and do likewise? The
answer to this question is not simply that the modern dramatist is
seldom a Shakespeare. That is true, but we must look deeper than that.
There are, in fact, several points to be taken into consideration. For
one thing--this is a minor point--Shakespeare had really far more
elbow-room than the playwright of to-day. _Othello_ and _King Lear_, to
say nothing of _Hamlet_, are exceedingly long plays. Something like a
third of them is omitted in modern representation; and when we speak of
their richness and complexity of characterization, we do not think
simply of the plays as we see them compressed into acting limits, but of
the plays as we know them in the study. It is possible, no doubt, for
modern playwrights to let themselves go in the matter of length, and
then print their plays with brackets or other marks to show the
"passages omitted in representation.
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