contrast with Sardou, who designed his sets himself and placed his
furniture precisely where he needed it for the action of his play,
sometimes finding that a given scene seemed to him to lose half its
effect if it was acted on the left side of the stage instead of the
right. He was a constant note-taker, putting down suggestions for single
scenes or for striking suggestions, as these might occur to him; and as
a result of this incessant cerebral activity he had always on hand more
or less complete plots for at least fifty plays. When he decided to
write one of these pieces, he assembled his scattered notes, set them in
order, amplified and strengthened them; and when at last he saw his way
clear he made out an elaborate and detailed scenario, containing the
whole story, with ample indication of all the changes of feeling which
might take place in any of the characters in any scene.

Then when he felt himself in the right mood, he feverishly improvized
the play, laughing over the jokes, weeping over the pathetic moments and
objurgating the evil deeds of the more despicable characters. But this
was only a first draft of the play; and it had to be gone over three or
four times, altered, condensed, sharpened, tightened in effect. The
first version was always too long; and the successive revisions reduced
it to scarcely more than a half of its original length. Sometimes he was
able to compact into a single pregnant phrase the substance of a speech
of many lines. And as the play slowly took on its final form Sardou not
only heard every word which every character had to speak, he also saw
every one of the movements which would animate the action. M. Binet
reminded him that when Scribe and Legouvé were collaborating on
'Adrienne Lecouvreur,' Scribe asserted that he visualized all that the
actors would do, while Legouvé heard all that they would say; and Sardou
then claimed that he was fortunate in possessing the double faculty of
both seeing and hearing.