Playwriting; A Handbook for Would-Be Dramatic Authors (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. " PLANTING." And now the play?the sparkling comedy, the exciting drama, the screaming farce?is written, and has been neatly " typed " or copied out. Always see to this most carefully. The play must be easily readable or it won't be read, or if it be read, read with growing irritation and perplexity, not conducive to its chances of acceptance. To have it " typed " is the most practicable. Type-writing is nearly as plain as printing, and very cheap?cheaper than " copying " indeed. Mr. Gilbert had his first play printed, I know (there are few people who don't know that fact by this time, I should think), and Mr. Gilbert showed himself, thereby, wise in his generation. But then that was the last but one generation, and before the days of Remingtons and Columbias, or he would not have paid seven or eight pounds for printing, when he could have had it typed for five to ten shillings an act. I am not going to advertise any particular type-writing firm. There are five or six of them in the neighbourhood of the Strand, and one is much about as good as another. Let me see, where were we ? Oh yes, I remember, the play is finished and typed and ready for acting, and the only thing remaining is to get it accepted. Well, you will naturally think, in the case of such a piece as this, that can't be very difficult. Managers will jump at it. My dear hoy, you don't know them. You've no idea how blind they are to their own interests. Why I, myself?an important, clever writer like I am?have, at this moment, in my desk, plays that brilliant, startling, dramatic, and amusing that they would create quite a furore in Europe if they were only produced, and managers read them, and then hum and hah over them, and hesitate about them, and throw cold water upon them as though they were ...