hile one reads the printed story, short or long,
the epic or ballad, by oneself in the quiet enjoyment of the library,
one witnesses the drama in company with many other human beings--unless
the play be a dire failure and the house empty. And this association,
though it may remove some of the more refined and aristocratic
experiences of the reader, has a definite effect upon individual
pleasure in the way of enrichment, and even reacts upon the play itself
to shape its nature. A curious sort of sympathy is set up throughout an
audience as it receives the skillful story of the playwright; common or
crowd emotions are aroused, personal variations are submerged in a
general associative feeling and the individual does not so much laugh,
cry and wonder by himself as do these things sympathetically in
conjunction with others. He becomes a simpler, less complex person whose
emotions dominate the analytic processes of the individual brain. He is
a more plastic receptive creature than he would be alone. Any one can
test this for himself by asking if he would have laughed so uproariously
at a certain humorous speech had it been offered him detached from the
time and place. The chances are that, by and in itself, it might not
seem funny at all. And the readiness with which he fell into cordial
conversation with the stranger in the next seat is also a hint as to his
magnetized mood when thus subjected to the potent influence of mob
psychology. For this reason, then, among others, a drama heard and seen
under the usual conditions secures unique effects of response in
contrast with the other sister forms of telling stories.

A heightening of effect upon auditor and spectator is gained--to mention
one other advantage--by the fact that the story which in a work of
fiction may extend to a length precluding the possibility of its
reception at one sitting, may in the theater be brought within the
compass of an evening, in the time between dinner and bed. This secures
a unity of impression whereby the play is a gainer over the novel. A
great piece of fiction like _David Copperfield_, or _Tom Jones_, or _A
Modern Instance_, or _Alice for Short_ cannot be read in a day, except
as a feat of endurance and under unusual privileges of time to spare.
But a great play--Shakespeare's _Hamlet_ or Ibsen's _A Doll's
House_--can be absorbed in its entirety in less than three hours, and
while the hearer has perhaps not left his seat. Other things being