If the traditional theatre, then, is now in a rut which affords no room for the one-act play, and if vaudeville is an empty cradle for this branch of dramatic art, where shall we turn? The one-act play to-day has found refuge and encouragement in the experimental theatres, and among the amateurs. The best one-act plays so far written in English have come out of Ireland, chiefly from the Abbey Theatre in Dublin where they were first acted by a company recruited from amateur players. Synge's "Riders to the Sea," Yeats's "The Hour Glass," the comedies of Lady Gregory and others of that school, have not only proved the power of this form to carry the sense of reality, but its power as well to reach tragic intensity or high poetic beauty. The sombre loveliness and cleansing reality of Synge's masterpiece are almost unrivaled in our short-play literature. Not from the Abbey Theatre, but from the pen of an Irishman, Lord Dunsany, have come such short fantasies as "The Gods of the Mountain" and "The Glittering Gate," which the so-called "commercial" theatre has quite ignored, but which have been played extensively by amateurs and experimental theatres throughout America; and the latter piece, especially, has probably been provocative of more experimental stagecraft and a greater stimulation of poetic fancy among amateur producers than any drama, short or long, written in recent years. When the Washington Square Players, for the most part amateurs of the theatre, began their experiment in the spring of 1915, they began with a bill of one-act plays. With but two exceptions, all their succeeding productions have been composed of one-act plays, usually in groups of four, the last one for the evening sometimes being a pantomime. (It should be noted that a program of four one-act plays has the unity of a collection. A short play following a long one is overbalanced and the program seems to most of us awry.) The reason for this choice was not entirely a devotion to the art of the one-act play. When players are inexperienced, it is far easier to present a group of plays of one act than it is to sustain a single set of characters for an entire evening. The action moves more rapidly, the tale is told before the monotony of the actors becomes too apparent. Moreover, the difference between the plays helps to furnish that variety which the players themselves cannot supply by their impersonations. Still again, it was no doubt easier for the Washington Square Players to find novelties within their capacity in the one-act form than in the longer medium. At any rate, they did produce one-act plays, and are still producing them.