The Project Gutenberg EBook of Play-Making, by William Archer

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Title: Play-Making
A Manual of Craftsmanship

Author: William Archer

Release Date: January 29, 2004 [EBook #10865]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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PLAY-MAKING

_A Manual of Craftsmanship_

by William Archer

1912

PREFATORY NOTE

This book is, to all intents and purposes, entirely new. No considerable
portion of it has already appeared, although here and there short
passages and phrases from articles of bygone years are embedded
--indistinguishably, I hope--in the text. I have tried, wherever
it was possible, to select my examples from published plays, which the
student may read for himself, and so check my observations. One reason,
among others, which led me to go to Shakespeare and Ibsen for so many of
my illustrations, was that they are the most generally accessible of
playwrights.

If the reader should feel that I have been over lavish in the use of
footnotes, I have two excuses to allege. The first is that more than
half of the following chapters were written on shipboard and in places
where I had scarcely any books to refer to; so that a great deal had to
be left to subsequent enquiry and revision. The second is that several
of my friends, dramatists and others, have been kind enough to read my
manuscript, and to suggest valuable afterthoughts.

LONDON

_January_, 1912

To

Brander Matthews

Guide Philosopher and Friend

CONTENTS

BOOK I

PROLOGUE

_CHAPTER I_ INTRODUCTORY
_CHAPTER II_ THE CHOICE OF A THEME
_CHAPTER III_ DRAMATIC AND UNDRAMATIC
_CHAPTER IV_ THE ROUTINE OF COMPOSITION
_CHAPTER V_ DRAMATIS PERSONAE

BOOK II

THE BEGINNING

_CHAPTER VI_ THE POINT OF ATTACK: SHAKESPEARE AND IBSEN
_CHAPTER VII_ EXPOSITION: ITS END AND ITS MEANS
_CHAPTER VIII_ THE FIRST ACT
_CHAPTER IX_ "CURIOSITY" AND "INTEREST"
_CHAPTER X_ FORESHADOWING, NOT FORESTALLING

BOOK III

THE MIDDLE

_CHAPTER XI_ TENSION AND ITS SUSPENSION
_CHAPTER XII_ PR