Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Coming of Gabrielle: A Comedy
Sinners; it comes into my mind naturally, for it is the last, or one of the last, plays written in our old English dramatic formula, come down to us, with some variations, from the sixteenth century - three, four, or five scenes in each act, a forest glade followed by a parlour, a parlour by a street scene, a street scene by a lady's boudoir. The reader must think out for himself where the dramatist might have placed his fifth scene - in a cottage on a lonely heath, by the seashore, or in a tavern. It matters not where the scenes are placed; it's enough to say that all these changes were made within sight of the audience, the side scenes being pulled away by the scene-shifters. The craft of Saints and Sinners must have seemed to me very gross (after a long sojourn in France it could not seem otherwise), and it may be that once again I indulged myself in a dream of a play in three acts, in which the whole action would be confined to a parlour, each act comprising fourteen exits and entrances. Indeed, it could not have been else than that my thoughts turned to such a play, for the belief Of everybody in the nineties was that to recapture Shakespeare we must denounce monologues and asides.
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