st must not expect his audience to be able to see or
hear two things at once, nor to be incapable of fatigue. And he must not
expect his interpreters to stroll round or come on or go off in a
satisfactory manner unless he provides them with satisfactory reasons
for strolling round, coming on, or going off. Lastly, he must not expect
his interpreters to achieve physical impossibilities. The dramatist who
sends a pretty woman off in street attire and seeks to bring her on
again in thirty seconds fully dressed for a court ball may fail in stage
technique, but he has not proved that stage technique is tremendously
difficult; he has proved something quite else.

III

One reason why a play is easier to write than a novel is that a play is
shorter than a novel. On the average, one may say that it takes six
plays to make the matter of a novel. Other things being equal, a short
work of art presents fewer difficulties than a longer one. The contrary
is held true by the majority, but then the majority, having never
attempted to produce a long work of art, are unqualified to offer an
opinion. It is said that the most difficult form of poetry is the
sonnet. But the most difficult form of poetry is the epic. The proof
that the sonnet is the most difficult form is alleged to be in the
fewness of perfect sonnets. There are, however, far more perfect sonnets
than perfect epics. A perfect sonnet may be a heavenly accident. But
such accidents can never happen to writers of epics. Some years ago we
had an enormous palaver about the "art of the short story," which
numerous persons who had omitted to write novels pronounced to be more
difficult than the novel. But the fact remains that there are scores of
perfect short stories, whereas it is doubtful whether anybody but
Turgenev ever did write a perfect novel. A short form is easier to
manipulate than a long form, because its construction is less
complicated, because the balance of its proportions can be more easily
corrected by means of a rapid survey, because it is lawful and even
necessary in it to leave undone many things which are very hard to do,
and because the emotional strain is less prolonged. The most difficult
thing in all art is to maintain the imaginative tension unslackened
throughout a considerable period.

Then, not only does a play contain less matter than a novel--it is
further simplified by the fact that it contains fewer kinds of matter,
and less subtle kinds