I remember seeing in London, not very long ago, a one-act play on the
subject of Rouget de l'Isle. In the space of about half-an-hour, he
handed the manuscript of the "Marseillaise" to an opera-singer whom he
adored, she took it away and sang it at the Opera, it caught the popular
ear from that one performance, and the dying Rouget heard it sung by the
passing multitude in the streets within about fifteen minutes of the
moment when it first left his hands. (The whole piece, I repeat,
occupied about half-an-hour; but as a good deal of that time was devoted
to preliminaries, not more than fifteen minutes can have elapsed between
the time when the cantatrice left Rouget's garret and the time when all
Paris was singing the "Marseillaise.") This is perhaps an extreme
instance of the ideal treatment of time; but one could find numberless
cases in the works of Scribe, Labiche, and others, in which the
transactions of many hours are represented as occurring within the
limits of a single act.
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