Fifty Contemporary One-Act Plays

Copyright, 1920, by STEWART & KIDD COMPANY All rights reserved Copyright in England
Tradition in the sphere of books is relentlessly imperious and will not be denied. The present anthology of one-act plays, in defiance of a keen reluctance on the part of the editors, is condemned at birth to the heritage of a title; for this practice, as is well known, has been the unchallenged punctilio of book-making and book-editing from time immemorial. And yet if the truth be told, the editors have found precisely this to be by far the most embarrassing of the various tasks that have arisen in connection with the project. In the selection of a title, the immediate problem was of course to avoid, so far as possible, the slightest pretense or assumption of categorical standards of choice or even the merest intimation that there existed somewhere, attainable or unattainable, an ideal norm according to which one-act plays could be faultlessly assessed and pigeon-holed.
In point of fact, so many tolerably good one-act plays are being written and acted nowadays, that the editors early concluded that the business of editing a volume of fifty one-act pieces implies, so to speak, inviting the devil or the spirit that denies to the feast. Thus all manner of obstinate ribaldries and mischief began to infest our path of progress.
If it were only a naïve question of adjudging a golden apple to one of three lovely women, earthly or divine, the matter would have proved comparatively simple; but the question was more complex: it offered the public a meager book which could never hope to compress within itself the core and quiddity of about a thousand plays, or more, which the editors were privileged to examine from the first moment when they launched upon their task eight months ago, to this. Moreover it frequently happened that when the editors had flattered themselves on having picked a sure winner, the sure winner forthwith got out of hand and no persuasive cajolings availed to allure it back. In other words, not a few plays which the editors sought to include in the book were found unavailable by reason of previous copyrights. In several cases the copyright had passed entirely out of the control of the author or his accredited representative.