appreciate Kipling's "They," or George Moore's "The Wild Goose,"
or de Maupassant's "La Ficelle." To expect them to is silly; and
to expect that because the supreme, vivid example of any form is
comprehensible to all classes and all mixtures of classes,
therefore the supreme example is going to be developed out of the
commonplace stuff such mixed audiences daily enjoy, is equally to
misunderstand the evolution of an art product in our complex
modern world. But, indeed, the matter scarce calls for argument.
Vaudeville itself furnishes the answer. Where are its one-act
plays which can be called dramatic literature? It is a hopeful
sign, perhaps, that certain of the plays in this volume have
percolated into the varieties! But they were not cradled there.

If the traditional theatre, then, is now in a rut which affords
no room for the one-act play, and if vaudeville is an empty
cradle for this branch of dramatic art, where shall we turn? The
one-act play to-day has found refuge and encouragement in the
experimental theatres, and among the amateurs. The best one-act
plays so far written in English have come out of Ireland, chiefly
from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin where they were first acted by a
company recruited from amateur players. Synge's "Riders to the
Sea," Yeats's "The Hour Glass," the comedies of Lady Gregory and
others of that school, have not only proved the power of this
form to carry the sense of reality, but its power as well to
reach tragic intensity or high poetic beauty. The sombre
loveliness and cleansing reality of Synge's masterpiece are
almost unrivaled in our short-play literature. Not from the Abbey
Theatre, but from the pen of an Irishman, Lord Dunsany, have come
such short fantasies as "The Gods of the Mountain" and "The
Glittering Gate," which the so-called "commercial" theatre has