successful vaudeville playlets. Clyde Fitch wrote more than
fifty-four long plays in twenty years, and yet his "Frederic
Lemaitre," used by Henry Miller in vaudeville, was not a true
vaudeville playlet--merely a short play--and achieved its success
simply because Fitch wrote it and Miller played it with consummate
art.

The vaudeville playlet and the play that is merely short, are
separate art forms, they are precisely and as distinctly different
as the short-story and the story that is merely short. It is only
within the last few years that Brander Matthews drew attention to
the artistic isolation of the short-story; and J. Berg Esenwein,
in his very valuable work [1], established the truth so that all
might read and know it. For years I have contended for the
recognition of the playlet as an art form distinct from the play
that is short.

[1] Writing the Short-Story, by J. Berg Esenwein, published uniform
with this volume, in, "The Writer's Library."

And what is true of the peculiar difference of the playlet form
is, in a lesser measure, true of the monologue, the two-act, and
the one-act musical comedy. They are all different from their
sisters and brothers that are found as integral parts of full-evening
entertainments.

To recognize these forms as distinct, to learn what material [2]
best lends itself to them and how it may be turned into the most
natural and efficient form, requires a special training different
from that necessary for the writing of plays for the legitimate