ical conditions which tended to banish it from the stage were
reinforced by the growing perception of its artistic slovenliness. It
was found that the most delicate analyses could be achieved without its
aid; and it became a point of honour with the self-respecting artist to
accept a condition which rendered his material somewhat harder of
manipulation, indeed, but all the more tempting to wrestle with and
overcome. A drama with soliloquies and asides is like a picture with
inscribed labels issuing from the mouths of the figures. In that way,
any bungler can reveal what is passing in the minds of his personages.
But the glorious problem of the modern playwright is to make his
characters reveal the inmost workings of their souls without saying or
doing anything that they would not say or do in the real world.[6]

There are degrees, however, even in the makeshift and the slovenly; and
not all lapses into anachronism are equally to be condemned. One thing
is so patent as to call for no demonstration: to wit, that the aside is
ten times worse than the soliloquy. It is always possible that a man
might speak his thought, but it is glaringly impossible that he should
speak it so as to be heard by the audience and not heard by others on
the stage. In French light comedy and farce of the mid-nineteenth
century, the aside is abused beyond even the license of fantasy. A man
will speak an aside of several lines over the shoulder of another person
whom he is embracing. Not infrequently in a conversation between two
characters, each will comment aside on every utterance of the other,
before replying to it. The convenience of this method of proceeding is
manifest. It is as though the author stood by and delivered a running
commentary on the secret motives and designs of his characters. But it
is such a crying confession of unreality that, on the English-speaking
stage, at any rate, it would scarcely be tolerated to-day, even in
farce. In serious modern drama the aside is now practically unknown. It
is so obsolete, indeed, that actors are puzzled how to handle it, and
audiences what to make of it. In an ambitious play produced at a leading
London theatre about ten years ago, a lady, on leaving the stage,
announced, in an aside, her intention of drowning herself, and several
critics, the next day, not understanding that she was speaking aside,
severely blamed the gentleman who was on the stage with her for not
frustrating her intention.