They would be unable to make the necessary adjustment of mood. If
you focus your vision rapidly from a near to a far object, you
probably suffer from eye-strain. Similarly, the jump from one
play to the other in the theatre gives a modern audience mind- or
mood-strain. It is largely a matter of habit. We, to-day, have
lost the trick through lack of practice. The old custom is dead;
we are fixed in a new one. If Maude Adams, for instance, should
follow "The Little Minister" with a roaring farce, or Sothern
should turn on the same evening from "If I Were King" to "Box and
Cox," we should feel that some artistic unity had been rudely
violated; nor am I at all sure, being a product of this
generation, but that we should be quite right.
Matters standing as they do, then, it seems to me that the talk
we frequently hear about reviving "the art of the one-act play"
by restoring the curtain raisers or afterpieces to the programs
of our theatres is reactionary and futile. All recent attempts to
pad out a slim play with an additional short one have failed to
meet with approval, even when the short piece was so masterly a
work as Barrie's "The Will," splendidly acted by John Drew, or
the same author's "Twelve Pound Look," acted by Miss Barrymore.
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