days of Shakespere and his predecessors--plays were presented in
open court-yards or, as in France, in tennis-courts in the broad
daylight. A proscenium arch was all the scenery usually thought
necessary in these outdoor performances, and when the plays were
given indoors even the most realistic scenery would have been of
little value in the rush-lit semi-darkness. Then, indeed, the
play was the thing. A character walked into the STORY and out of
it again; and "place" was left to the imagination of the audience,
aided by the changing of a sign that stated where the story had
chosen to move itself.

As the centuries rolled along, improvements in lighting methods
made indoor theatrical presentations more common and brought scenery
into effective use. The invention of the kerosene lamp and later
the invention of gas brought enough light upon the stage to permit
the actor to step back from the footlights into a wider working-space
set with the rooms and streets of real life. Then with the electric
light came the scenic revolution that emancipated the stage forever
from enforced gloomy darkness, permitted the actor's expressive
face to be seen farther back from the footlights, and made of the
proscenium arch the frame of a picture.

"It is for this picture-frame stage that every dramatist is composing
his plays," Brander Matthews says; "and his methods are of necessity
those of the picture-frame stage; just as the methods of the
Elizabethan dramatic poet were of necessity those of the platform
stage." And on the same page: The influence of the realistic
movement of the middle of the nineteenth century imposed on the
stage-manager the duty of making every scene characteristic of the
period and of the people, and of relating the characters closely