Julie. Well I shan’t forget this 10th of August in a hurry.
(At back a National Guard wounded in the leg supported by two other guards enters at L., is taken into the druggist’s shop. All the people move towards the shop.)[4]
Lapse of time between two acts, if important to the development of the plot, should also be clearly stated. Dramatists like to depend on the programs for such information, but they run the chance that many auditors will not see the printed note. Doubtless a program would give these words from the stage direction at the beginning of the fourth act of Hauptmann’s Lonely Lives: “Time between 4 and 5 P.M.,” but the quick passage of time is so important a fact in the development of the plot that six or seven pages later there is the following dialogue:
Braun. (Looks at telegram.) It is the six o’clock train that Mr. Vockerat is coming by? What o’clock is it now?
Mrs. Vockerat. Not half-past four yet.
Braun. (After a moment of reflection.) Has there been no change in the course of the week?
Mrs. Vockerat. (Shakes her head hopelessly.) None.
Braun. Has she given no hint of any intention to go?[5]
In The Galloper, by Richard Harding Davis, what the audience hears will place the play in a hotel at Athens, even if the scenery does not: