Nor is it at all certain that the one-act plays of our parents
and grandparents and great-grandparents, the names of which you
may read by the thousands on ancient playbills, added anything to
the store of dramatic literature. Some of them are decently
entombed in the catacombs of Lacy's British Drama, or still
available for amateurs in French's library. Did you ever try to
read one? Of course, there was "Box and Cox," but it is doubtful
if there will be any great celebration at the tercentenary of
Morton's death. For the most part, those ancient afterpieces were
frankly padding, conventional farces to fill up the bill and send
the audiences home happy. To the real art of the drama or the
development of the one-act play as a form of serious literary
expression, they made precious little contribution. They were a
theatrical tradition, a convention.
But the one-act play, nonetheless, has an obvious right to
existence, as much as the short story, and there are plentiful
proofs that it can be as terse, vivid, and significant. Most
novelists don't tack on a short story at the end of their books
for full measure, but issue their contes either in collections
or in the pages of the magazines.
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