to their environment." [1]

[1] The Study of the Drama, Brander Matthews.

On the vaudeville stage to-day, when all the sciences and the arts
have come to the aid of the drama, there is no period nor place,
nor even a feeling of atmosphere, that cannot be reproduced with
amazing truth and beauty of effect. Everything in the way of
scenery is artistically possible, from the squalid room of the
tenement-dweller to the blossoming garden before the palace of a
king--but artistic possibility and financial advisability are two
very different things.

If an act is designed to win success by spectacular appeal, there
is no doubt that it is good business for the producer to spend as
much money as is necessary to make his effects more beautiful and
more amazing than anything ever before seen upon the stage. But
even here he must hold his expenses down to the minimum that will
prove a good investment, and what he may spend is dependent on
what the vaudeville managers will pay for the privilege of showing
that act in their houses.

But it is not worth spectacular acts that the vaudeville writer
has particularly to deal. His problem is not compounded of
extravagant scenery, gorgeous properties, trick-scenes and
light-effects. Like Shakespere, for him the play--the story--is
the thing. The problem he faces is an embarrassment of riches.
With everything artistically possible, what is financially advisable?