terminology of Captain Marryat. "Right First Entrance," "Left Upper
Entrance," and so forth, are terms belonging to the period when there
were no "box" rooms or "set" exteriors on the stage, when the sides of
each scene were composed of "wings" shoved on in grooves, and entrances
could be made between each pair of wings. Thus, "R. 1 E." meant the
entrance between the proscenium and the first "wing" on the right, "R. 2
E." meant the entrance between the first pair of "wings," and so forth.
"L.U.E." meant the entrance at the left between the last "wing" and the
back cloth. Now grooves and "wings" have disappeared from the stage. The
"box" room is entered, like any room in real life, by doors or French
windows; and the only rational course is to state the position of your
doors in your opening stage-direction, and thereafter to say in plain
language by which door an entrance or an exit is to be made. In exterior
scenes where, for example, trees or clumps of shrubbery answer in a
measure to the old "wings," the old terminology may not be quite
meaningless; but it is far better eschewed. It is a good general rule to
avoid, so far as possible, expressions which show that the author has a
stage scene, and not an episode of real life, before his eyes. Men of
the theatre are the last to be impressed by theatrical jargon; and when
the play comes to be printed, the general reader is merely bewildered
and annoyed by technicalities, which tend, moreover, to disturb
his illusion.

A still more emphatic warning must be given against another and more
recent abuse in the matter of stage-directions. The "L.U.E.'s," indeed,
are bound very soon to die a natural death. The people who require to be
warned against them are, as a rule, scarcely worth warning. But it is
precisely the cleverest people (to use clever in a somewhat narrow
sense) who are apt to be led astray by Mr. Bernard Shaw's practice of
expanding his stage-directions into essays, disquisitions, monologues,