ied the dramatist, especially in
this modern age when the soliloquy (for reasons which will be noted in a
subsequent chapter) is usually frowned upon. Sometimes, in the theatre, a
character may be exhibited chiefly through his personal effect upon the
other people on the stage, and thereby indirectly on the people in the
audience. It was in this way, of course, that Manson was delineated in Mr.
Charles Rann Kennedy's _The Servant in the House_. But the expedient is a
dangerous one for the dramatist to use; because it makes his work
immediately dependent on the actor chosen for the leading role, and may in
many cases render his play impossible of attaining its full effect except
at the hands of a single great performer. In recent years an expedient long
familiar in the novel has been transferred to the service of the
stage,--the expedient, namely, of suggesting the personality of a character
through a visual presentation of his habitual environment. After the
curtain had been raised upon the first act of _The Music Master_, and the
audience had been given time to look about the room which was represented
on the stage, the main traits of the leading character had already been
suggested before his first appearance on the scene. The pictures and
knickknacks on his mantelpiece told us, before we ever saw him, what manner
of man he was. But such subtle means as this can, after all, be used only
to reinforce the one standard method of conveying the sense of character in
drama; and this one method, owing to the conditions under which the
playwright does his work, must always be the exhibition of objective acts.

In all these general ways the work of the dramatist is affected by the fact
that he must devise his story to be presented by actors. The specific
influence exerted over the playwright by the individual performer is a
subject too extensive to be covered by a mere summary consideration in the
present context; and we shall therefore discuss it fully in a later
chapter, entitled _The Actor and the Dramatist_.

At present we must pass on to observe that, in the second place, the work
of the dramatist is conditioned by the fact that he must plan his plays to
fit the sort of theatre that stands ready to receive them. A fundamental
and necessary relation has always existed between theatre-building and
theatric art. The best plays of any period have been fashioned in
accordance with the physical conditions of the best theatres of