uman beings, natural to the playhouse.

There are also arbitrary and artificial conventions of the stage
conditioning the story which may perhaps be regarded as drawbacks where
the story in fiction is freer in these respects. Both forms of story
telling strive--never so eagerly as to-day--for a truthful
representation of life. The stage, traditionally, in its depiction of
character through word and action, has not been so close to life as
fiction; the dialogue has been further removed from the actual idiom of
human speech. It is only of late that stage talk in naturalness has
begun to rival the verisimilitude of dialogue in the best fiction. This
may well be for the reason (already touched upon) that the presence of
the speakers on the stage has in itself a reality which corrects the
artificiality of the words spoken. "I did not know," the theater auditor
might be imagined as saying, "that people talked like that; but there
they are, talking; it must be so."

The drama in all lands is trying as never before to represent life in
speech as well as act; and the strain hitherto put upon the actor, who
in the past had as part of his function to make the artificial and
unreal plausible and artistic, has been so far removed as to enable him
to give his main strength to genuine interpretation.

The time values on the stage are a limitation which makes for
artificiality; actual time must of necessity be shortened, for if true
chronology were preserved the play would be utterly balked in its
purpose of presenting a complete story that, however brief, must cover
more time than is involved in what is shown upon the boards of a
theater. As a result all time values undergo a proportionate shrinkage.
This can be estimated by the way meals are eaten on the stage. In actual
life twenty minutes are allotted for the scamped eating time of the
railway station, and we all feel it as a grievance. Half an hour is
scant decency for the unpretentious private meal; and as it becomes
more formal an hour is better, and several hours more likely. Yet no
play could afford to allow twenty minutes for this function, even were
it a meal of state; it would consume half an act, or thereabouts.
Consequently, on the stage, the effect of longer time is produced by
letting the audience see the general details of the feast; food eaten,
wine drunk, servants waiting, and conversation interpolated. It is one
of the demands made upon the actor's skill to make a