orated in the play. The dramatist sees it
differently now. All sorts of new considerations have been presented to
him. Not a word has been altered; but it is noticeably another play.
Which is merely to say that the creative work on it which still remains
to be done has been more accurately envisaged. This strange experience
could not happen to a novel, because when a novel is written it is
finished.

And when the director of rehearsals, or producer, has been chosen, and
this priceless and mysterious person has his first serious confabulation
with the author, then at once the play begins to assume new
shapes--contours undreamt of by the author till that startling moment.
And even if the author has the temerity to conduct his own rehearsals,
similar disconcerting phenomena will occur; for the author as a producer
is a different fellow from the author as author. The producer is up
against realities. He, first, renders the play concrete, gradually
condenses its filmy vapours into a solid element.... He suggests the
casting. "What do you think of X. for the old man?" asks the producer.
The author is staggered. Is it conceivable that so renowned a producer
can have so misread and misunderstood the play? X. would be preposterous
as the old man. But the producer goes on talking. And suddenly the
author sees possibilities in X. But at the same time he sees a different
play from what he wrote. And quite probably he sees a more glorious
play. Quite probably he had not suspected how great a dramatist he
is.... Before the first rehearsal is called, the play, still without a
word altered, has gone through astounding creative transmutations; the
author recognises in it some likeness to his beloved child, but it is
the likeness of a first cousin.

At the first rehearsal, and for many rehearsals, to an extent perhaps
increasing, perhaps decreasing, the dramatist is forced into an
apologetic and self-conscious mood; and his mien is something between
that of a criminal who has committed a horrid offence and that of a
father over the crude body of a new-born child. Now in truth he deeply
realises that the play is a collaboration. In extreme cases he may be
brought to see that he himself is one of the less important factors in
the collaboration. The first preoccupation of the interpreters is not
with his play at all, but--quite rightly--with their own careers; if
they were not honestly convinced that their own careers were the chief
genui