little humorous scenes or melodramatic actions were played before the
camera, and the same emotions stirred which up to that time only the
true theater play had awakened. The aim seemed to be to have a real
substitute for the stage. The most evident gain of this new scheme was
the reduction of expenses. One actor is now able to entertain many
thousand audiences at the same time, one stage setting is sufficient to
give pleasure to millions. The theater can thus be democratized.
Everybody's purse allows him to see the greatest artists and in every
village a stage can be set up and the joy of a true theater performance
can be spread to the remotest corner of the lands. Just as the
graphophone can multiply without limit the music of the concert hall,
the singer, and the orchestra, so, it seemed, would the photoplay
reproduce the theater performance without end.

Of course, the substitute could not be equal to the original. The color
was lacking, the real depth of the objective stage was missing, and
above all the spoken word had been silenced. The few interspersed
descriptive texts, the so-called "leaders," had to hint at that which
in the real drama the speeches of the actors explain and elaborate. It
was thus surely only the shadow of a true theater, different not only as
a photograph is compared with a painting, but different as a photograph
is compared with the original man. And yet, however meager and
shadowlike the moving picture play appeared compared with the
performance of living actors, the advantage of the cheap multiplication
was so great that the ambition of the producers was natural, to go
forward from the little playlets to great dramas which held the
attention for hours. The kinematographic theater soon had its
Shakespeare repertoire; Ibsen has been played and the dramatized novels
on the screen became legion. Victor Hugo and Dickens scored new
triumphs. In a few years the way from the silly trite practical joke to