The copyright plays in this book are reprinted for students COPYRIGHT, 1923 BY JAMES PLAISTED WEBBER AND HANSON HART WEBSTER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED DRAMATIC ART DEPT- The Riverside Press PRINTED IN THE U.S.A. !37! one FOREWORD In this book we have tried to accomplish several aims: first, to assemble one-act plays which have not been printed in other anthologies, and which at the same time are well suited to young people's reading; second, to give a few hints about staging them; third, to point out available sources of plots for use in the writing of one-act plays; and, finally, to explain briefly the fundamentals of dramatic expression. Only one of the plays here reprinted has up to this time appeared in any book prepared for a purpose similar to ours. We thus present a considerable body of fresh material; and it is indisputably the unhackneyed that our audience demands. Nearly all of these plays are by contemporary writers. We include, however, two examples of the one-act play as written by dramatists of a slightly earlier school, inasmuch as each is well worth the time and thought of young people. We have maintained high dramatic and literary standards; and, even more important, we have admitted to these pages only plays which are wholesome, intelligible, and interesting. We hope that with due modesty we may claim that the suggestions offered throughout the book are sufficiently specific and practical to be of real help to both teachers and students. Mr. Webber desires to acknowledge his indebtedness to F. F. Mackay, Esq., from whose lectures at the National Conservatory of Dramatic Art and from whose book, The Art of Acting, most of the phraseology in the section entitled "The Technique of Vocal Expression" is drawn; to M. Gustave Rolland, stage-manager of the company playing at the Shubert Theater in New M271331 |