can always reduce me to blushes with a scornful, "My dear man, you
_can't_ do that in a _play_!" And when they tell me to remember what
Strindberg said in '93 (if he were alive then; I really don't know) or
what Aristotle wrote in--no, I shan't even guess at Aristotle, well,
then, I want to burst into tears, my ignorance is so profound. So,
very humbly, I just say now that, when Melisande talks and behaves in
a certain way, I do not mean that a particular girl exists (Miss
Jones, of 999 Bedford Park) who talks and behaves like this, but I do
mean that there is a type of girl who, in her heart, secretly,
_thinks_ like this. If, from your great knowledge of the most secret
places of a young girl's heart, you tell me that there is no such
type, then I shall only smile. But if you inform me sternly that a
dramatist has no business to express an attitude in terms of an
actress, then you reduce me to blushes again. For I really know
nothing about play-writing, and I am only sustained by two beliefs.
The first is that rules are always made for the other people; the
second is that, if a play by me is not obviously by me, and as
obviously not by anybody else, then (obviously) I had no business to
write it.

Of the one-act plays, _The Camberley Triangle_ and _The Stepmother_,
nothing much need be said. The former was played at the Coliseum; the
latter, written for Miss Winifred Emery, was deemed by the management
too serious for that place of amusement. This, however, was to the
great advantage of the play, for now it has appeared only at Charity
_matinées_ with an "all-star" cast.

As before, the plays are printed in the order in which they were
written; in this case between October 1918 and June 1920. May the
reader get as much enjoyment from them as I had in their writing. But