Note how the action and the conversation increase in intensity as the play proceeds: Is this a good method? Notice the use of contrast in speech and action. Note how the chief characters are emphasized. Can you discover the quality called "restraint," in this fragment of a play? How is it gained, and what is its value? EXERCISES[8] Select a short passage from some book that you like, and try to put it into dramatic form, using this selection as a kind of model. Do not attempt too much at once, but think out carefully the setting, the stage directions, and the dialogue for a brief fragment of a play. Make a series of dramatic scenes from the same book, so that a connected story is worked out. Read a part of some modern drama, such as _The Piper_, or _The Blue Bird_, or one of Mr. Howells's little farces, and notice how it makes use of setting and stage directions; how the conversation is broken up; how the situation is brought out in the dialogue; how each person is made to speak in his own character. After you have done the reading suggested above, make another attempt at dramatizing a scene from a book, and see what improvement you can make upon the sort of thing you did at first. It might be interesting for two or three persons to work on a bit of dramatization together, and then give the fragment of a play in simple fashion before the class. Or the whole class may work on the play, and then select some of their number to perform it. COLLATERAL READINGS A Dramatic Reader: Book Five Augusta Stevenson Plays for the Home " " Jean Valjean (translated and abridged from Victor Hugo's _Les Misérables_) S.E. Wiltse (Ed.) The Little Men Play (adapted from Louisa Alcott's _Little Men_) E.L. Gould The Little Women Play " " " The St. Nicholas Book of Plays Century Company The Silver Thread and Other Folk Plays Constance Mackay Patriotic Plays and Pageants " " Fairy Tale Plays and How to Act Them Mrs. Hugh Bell Festival Plays Marguerite Merington Short Plays from Dickens H.B. Browne The Piper Josephine Preston Peabody The Blue Bird Maurice Maeterlinck Riders to the Sea J.M. Synge She Stoops to Conquer Oliver Goldsmith The Rivals Richard Brinsley Sheridan Prince Otto R.L. Stevenson The Canterbury Pilgrims Percy Mackaye The Elevator William Dean Howells The Mouse Trap " " " The Sleeping Car William Dean Howells The Register " " " The Story of Waterloo Henry Irving