seductive example. They have little chance of rivalling him as
sociological essayists; but if they treat their art seriously, and as a
pure art, they may easily surpass him as dramatists. By adopting his
practice they will tend to produce, not fine works of art, but inferior
sociological documents. They will impair their originality and spoil
their plays in order to do comparatively badly what Mr. Shaw has done
incomparably well.

The common-sense rule as to stage directions is absolutely plain; be
they short, or be they long, they ought always to be _impersonal_. The
playwright who cracks jokes in his stage-directions, or indulges in
graces of style, is intruding himself between the spectator and the work
of art, to the inevitable detriment of the illusion. In preparing a play
for the press, the author should make his stage-directions as brief as
is consistent with clearness. Few readers will burden their memory with
long and detailed descriptions. When a new character of importance
appears, a short description of his or her personal appearance and dress
may be helpful to the reader; but even this should be kept impersonal.
Moreover, as a play has always to be read before it can be rehearsed or
acted, it is no bad plan to make the stage-directions, from the first,
such as tend to bring the play home clearly to the reader's mental
vision. And here I may mention a principle, based on more than mere
convenience, which some playwrights observe with excellent results. Not
merely in writing stage-directions, but in visualizing a scene, the idea
of the stage should, as far as possible, be banished from the author's
mind. He should see and describe the room, the garden, the sea-shore, or
whatever the place of his action may be, not as a stage-scene, but as a
room, garden, or sea-shore in the real world. The cultivation of this
habit ought to be, and I believe is in some cases, a safeguard against
theatricality.