for full measure, but issue their contes either in collections
or in the pages of the magazines. What similar chances are
there, or can there be, for the one-act play, the dramatic short
story?

An obvious chance is offered by vaudeville. The vaudeville
audience is in the mood for rapid alterations of attention; it
has the habit of variety. This is just as much a convention of
vaudeville as the single play is now a convention of the
traditional theatre. Indeed, anything longer than a one-act play
in vaudeville would be frowned upon. Any one wishing to push the
analogy can find more than one correspondence between a
vaudeville program and the contents of a "popular" magazine;
each, certainly, is the present refuge of short fiction. Yet
vaudeville can hardly be considered an ideal cradle for a serious
dramatic art. (Shall we say that the analogy to the "popular"
magazine still holds?) The average "playlet" -- atrocious word --
in the variety theatres is a dreadful thing, crude, obvious,
often sensational or sentimental, usually very badly acted at
least in the minor rôles, and still more a frank padding, a
thing of the footlights, than the afterpiece of our parents. It
has been frequently said by those optimists who are forever
discovering the birth of the arts in popular amusements that
vaudeville audiences will appreciate and applaud the best. This
is only in part true. They will appreciate the best juggler, the
cleverest trained dog, the most appealing ballad singer such as
Chevalier or Harry Lauder. But they will no more appreciate those
subtleties of dramatic art which must have free play in the
serious development of the one-act play than the readers of a
"popular" magazine in America (or England either) would