with such degrading comedies and pseudotragedies.  The world literature of the stage contains an abundance of works of eternal value.  It is a purely social and not an esthetic question, why the theaters around the “White Way” yield to the vulgar taste instead of using the truly beautiful drama for the raising of the public mind.  The moving picture theaters face an entirely different situation.  Their managers may have the best intentions to give better plays; and yet they are unable to do so because the scenario literature has so far nothing which can be compared with the master works of the drama; and nothing of this higher type can be expected or hoped for until the creation of photoplays is recognized as worthy of the highest ideal endeavor.

Nobody denies that the photoplay shares the characteristic features of the drama.  Both depend upon the conflict of interests and of acts.  These conflicts, tragic or comic, demand a similar development and solution on the stage and on the screen.  A mere showing of human activity without will conflict might give very pleasant moving pictures of idyllic or romantic character or perhaps of practical interest.  The result would be a kind of lyric or epic poem on the screen, or a travelogue or what not, but it would never shape itself into a photoplay as long as that conflict of human interests which the drama demands was lacking.  Yet, as this conflict of will is expressed in the one case by living speaking men, in the other by moving pictures, the difference in the artistic conception must surely be as great as the similarity.  Hence one of the supreme demands must be for an original literature of real power and significance, in which every thought is generated by the idea of the screen.  As long as the photoplays are fed by the literature of the stage, the new art can never come to its own and can never reach its real goal.  It is surely no fault of Shakespeare that Hamlet and King Lear are very poor photoplays.  If ever a Shakespeare arises for the screen, his work would be equally unsatisfactory if it were dragged to the stage.  Peer Gynt is no longer Ibsen’s if the actors are dumb.

The novel, in certain respects, fares still worse, but in other respects some degrees better.  It is true that in the superficial literature written for the hour the demarcation line between dramatic and narrative works is often ignored.  The best sellers of the novel counter are often warmed over into successful theater plays, and no society play with a long run on Broadway escapes its transformation into a serial novel for the newspapers.  But where literature is at its height, the deep difference can be felt distinctly.  The epic art, including the novel, traces the experiences and the development of a character, while the drama is dependent upon the conflict of character.  Mere adventures of a personality are never sufficient for a good drama and are not less unsatisfactory for the plot of a photoplay.  In the novel the opposing characters