There is a somewhat similar scene in the first act of _Cyrano de Bergerac_. The chief centre of attraction here is not the mimic play itself, but the behaviour of the audience, disturbed by Cyrano’s interruption of the players. That is why I think that Coquelin’s arrangement with the players on one side and the audience in profile was better than Mr. Loraine’s, with the players in the rear and the mimic audience turning its back to the real one. But it is a point of comparative insignificance. As it was the old playhouse and the old standing audience that was being represented, the stage-management was essentially as simple as that of the play-scene in _Hamlet_. So soon, however, as you come to represent the very different modern “picture” stage and the modern seated audience you see at once that the problem becomes immensely more difficult. Accordingly you find a revolution in the method of treating a play within a play. I do not know whether the Guitrys invented it or Reinhardt or whoever, but certainly the most conspicuous illustration we have had of it has been presented by the Guitrys. It is something much more than a mechanical change; it is psychological as well. The mimic stage, the stage of the play within the play, now occupies the whole of the actual stage, and the mimic audience is identified with the real audience. We saw this startling innovation first in _Pasteur_. Pasteur is supposed to be addressing a meeting of the French Academy of Medicine. His rostrum is at the footlights, and he addresses _us_, the real audience. _We_ have to suppose ourselves the Academy of Medicine. To help us to this illusion one or two actors are scattered about the house, who interrupt, argue with Pasteur, and are personally answered by him. We find ourselves, in fact, at once listening to a debate, as real audience, and, in the thick of it, taking part in it, as supposed audience. There is a French proverb which says you cannot both join in a procession and look out of the window; but this experience upsets it. The result is a curious blend of sensations; you feel yourself both spectator and actor, _at_ a play and _in_ a play. But there is no doubt that the effect is much more vivid and exciting than that which would have attended the mere spectacle of Pasteur addressing a crowd upon the stage itself. You have, by the way, exactly the same effect in Mr. Galsworthy’s _Skin Game_, where an auctioneer addresses us, the public, who are supposed to represent the competing purchasers.