Even if the scene be unskilfully arranged, it is
not the audibility of one group, but the inaudibility of the others,
that is apt to strike us as unreal.
* * * * *
This is not the only form of technical pedantry that one occasionally
encounters. Some years ago, a little band of playwrights and would-be
playwrights, in fanatical reaction against the Sardou technique, tried
to lay down a rule that no room on the stage must ever have more than
one door, and that no letter must ever enter into the mechanism of a
play. I do not know which contention was the more ridiculous.
Nothing is commoner in modern house-planning than rooms which have at
least two doors and a French window. We constantly see rooms or halls
which, if transported to the stage, would provide three or four
entrances and exits; and this is even more true of the "central heated"
houses of America than of English houses. The technical purists used
especially to despise the French window--a harmless, agreeable and very
common device.
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