costume to produce in the audience that illusion of environment which
the text invites. Without so much scenery or costume the words fail to
get home to the audience. In comedies dealing with concrete conditions
of modern society, the stage presentation necessarily relies to a very
large extent for its success on the realism of the scenic appliances.
In plays which, dealing with the universal and less familiar
conditions of life, appeal to the highest faculties of thought and
imagination, the pursuit of realism in the scenery tends to destroy
the full significance of the illusion which it ought to enforce. In
the case of plays straightforwardly treating of contemporary affairs,
the environment which it is sought to reproduce is familiar and easy
of imitation. In the case of drama, which involves larger spheres of
fancy and feeling, the environment is unfamiliar and admits of no
realistic imitation. The wall-paper and furniture of Mrs So-and-so's
drawing-room in Belgravia or Derbyshire can be transferred bodily to
the stage. Prospero's deserted island does not admit of the like
translation.

Effective suggestion of the scene of _The Tempest_ is all that can be
reasonably attempted or desired. Plays which are wrought of purest
imaginative texture call solely for a scenic setting which should
convey effective suggestion. The machinery to be employed for the
purpose of effective suggestion should be simple and unobtrusive. If
it be complex and obtrusive, it defeats "the purpose of playing" by
exaggerating for the spectator the inevitable interval between the
visionary and indeterminate limits of the scene which the poet
imagines, and the cramped and narrow bounds, which the stage renders
practicable. That perilous interval can only be effectually bridged
by scenic art, which is applied with an apt judgment and a light hand.
Anything that aims at doing more than satisfy the condition essential
to the effective suggestion of the scenic environment of Shakespearean
drama is, from the literary and logical points of view, "wasteful and
ridiculous excess."[2]

[Footnote 2: A minor practical objection, from the dramatic point of
view, to realistic scenery is the long pause its setting on the stage
often renders inevitable between the scenes. Intervals of the kind,
which always tends to blunt the dramatic point of the play, especially
in the case of tragic masterpieces, should obviously be as brief as
possible.]

But it is no