Playtime

“ I only claim one game, and my games never last more than a quarter of an hour; and then we will both escort you, and you shall dance a set into the bargain with a black-eyed houri, all Nazarine as thou art. ”

“ Play, like other instincts, besides serving the present, looks in two directions, into the past and into the future. From the past come the shadowy interests which, taking form from the touch of our environment, determine the character of the play activities. From the future come the premonitions of the activities that are to be. The boy adjusting himself to the requirements of the game, seeking control over his companions or giving in to them, is practicing in miniature the larger game which he will play in business or profession a little later. ”

“ Then there is the conception of play as the utilisation in art of the superfluous energies left unemployed in the practical work of life; this enlarging and harmonising function of play, while in the lower ranges it may be spent trivially, leads in the higher ranges to the production of the most magnificent human achievements. But there is yet a third conception of play, according to which it exerts a direct internal influence—health-giving, developmental, and balancing—on the whole organism of the player himself. ”

“ Came a voice low calling, calling me to come
⁠To my lonely sleeping, leaving work and play.
With sad, mournful glances do I look to see
⁠If a heart should loving pause and turn aside
From the happy circles and then come to me,
⁠Sighing, “Do not leave us—still with us abide.”
No! they still are playing, chatting in a ring,
⁠Eager voices seeking other games to know. ”

“ The unity of time they comprehend in twenty-four hours, the compass of a natural day, or as near as it can be contrived; and the reason of it is obvious to every one,—that the time of the feigned action, or fable of the play, should be proportioned as near as can be to the duration of that time in which it is represented: since therefore all plays are acted on the theatre in a space of time much within the compass of twenty-four hours, that play is to be thought the nearest imitation of nature, whose plot or action is confined within that time. ”

“ The subject of play has to be considered from two points of view, that of the children and ours. Theirs is concerned chiefly with the present and ours with the future, far although we do not want every play-hour to be haunted with a spectral presence that speaks of improvement and advancement, yet we cannot lose sight of the fact that every hour of play is telling on the future, deepening the mark of the character, strengthening the habits, and guiding the lines of after life into this or that channel. ”

“ There is no reason why a mind thus wandering in ecstasy should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field.
The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. ”

“ GAMES. The annual calendar of dates when certain of the pastimes and songs of our street children become fashionable is an uncertain one, yet games have their seasons most wonderfully and faithfully marked. Yearly all boys seem to know the actual time for the revivification of a custom, whether it be of whipping tops, flirting [59] marbles, spinning peg-tops, or playing tip-cat or piggy. ”

“ Such rehearsing of a play already studied should terminate the minute analysis in order to show the material for what it is—actable drama. It will vivify the play again, and make the characters live in your memory as mere reading never will. You will see the moving people, the grouped situations, the developed story, the impressive climax, and the satisfying conclusion.
In dealing with scenes from a long play—whether linked or disconnected—pupils will always have a [313] feeling of incompleteness. In a full-length play no situation is complete in itself. ”

“ Coming now to active play, we find here, too, in the region which seems to owe its very existence to the childish instinct of enjoyment, traces of the same seriousness. For most children, one suspects, play would become a tame thing were there not the fearful to conjure with. The favourite play-haunts, the dark corners under the table, behind the curtains, and so forth, show what a vital element of play is supplied by the excitement of the state of half-dread. ”

“ "I play the game for the game's own sake," said he. ”

“ We see every day that a mere story-play--a play which appeals to us solely by reason of the adroit stimulation and satisfaction of curiosity--very rapidly exhausts its success. No one cares to see it a second time; and spectators who happen to have read the plot in advance, find its attraction discounted even on a first hearing. But if we jump to the conclusion that the skilful marshalling and development of the story is an unimportant detail, which matters little when once the first-night ordeal is past, we shall go very far astray. ”

“ The hour of recreation was their play-time with the boy and the older men would look on smiling and observe with satisfaction how such innocent and childish amusements could please the younger brethren. ”

“ Whatever be the correct theory of play—that it is practice in the line of future methods of conduct, that it is simply the discharge of the surplus energy of the young, or that it is for the purpose of relaxation and recreation only—whatever theory be adopted, the inestimable value of play to the child and to the nation cannot be gainsaid. Play is an irrepressible method of self-expression.... ”

“ One old game treads on the heels of another—twenty within the hour—and many a new game never heard of before nor since, struck out by the collision of kindred spirits in their glee, the transitory fancies of genius inventive through very delight. ”

“ CHAPTER XXX. THE PLAY.
The first night of one new play is much the same as that of another, I suppose, all the world over. The opening and shutting of doors, the rustling of silks and satins, the murmur of expectancy, cannot hush the beating of the young author’s breast, as he sits at the back of the box and longs, like the sick man, for the morning. Everybody who is anybody (a charming phrase indicating about one billionth of the human race) is there. Men of fashion and women of wit: gossips and critics; playwriters who have been damned and hope for company in their Inferno ”

“ But play which is not quite play, coming after something which has been not quite lessons, loses the tingling delight of contrast. The funereal tolling of a bell for real lessons made a dark background against which the rapture of release for real play shone out with a brilliancy which more than made up for it. At home, the system of ten minutes' lessons at short intervals seems to answer well for young children; it exerts just enough pressure to give rebound in the intervals of play. ”

“ Sometimes, late at night, even after a long day of play—those violent and never-pausing exertions that we call play, in boyhood—I would still try to read, hiding the light, until my eyes closed in spite of me. ”

“ Occasionally, also, young fellows about town, of different social rank, but brought together by a pursuit of amusement in common, met here on neutral ground, where, after a certain hour, the supper-table was turned into a gaming-table, enlivened by the clinking of glasses and the rattle of the croupier’s rake, and where to the excitement of good cheer was added that of high play, with its alternations of unexpected gains and disastrous losses. ”

“ This toy world would not be here, this play could not go on, if we were knowing players. We must play blindfolded. Some of us have taken the part of the rogue of the play, some heroic — never mind, it is all play. ”

“ Spend my time in play when there are things to be done?"
"We think it best to balance the mind's work with the mind's ability to play. You'll find that our fun and games are just as advanced as are our aims and our day's work. ”

“ I do not mean cards or tennis or golf or any of the famous outdoor and indoor sports, but just games, the sort of things that are sometimes called stunts and that make the life of the party—or, by their absence or failure, rob the evening gathering of all its vitality. For the people who play games, 219 Edna Geister is the one best bet. Edna Geister knows all about stunts and games and parties and she brims over with clever ideas for the hostess or recreation leader. You will find them in her book Ice-breakers and the Ice-breaker Herself. ”

“ When a play begins, we have no difficulty to enter into the scene of action, however distant it be in time or in place. We know that the play is a representation only: and the imagination, with facility, accommodates itself to every circumstance. ”

“ What need of scolding and force, to induce children to read, write, and love books? What need of cards, dice, or of any games, to 'kill time;' but, in fact, to implant in the infant heart a love of gaming, one of the most destructive of all human vices? We did not want to 'kill time;' we were always busy, wet weather or dry weather, winter or summer. ”

“ Their evenings are given over to the best play—play with others, play with masses, or play at home. They have time for study, time for art, yet time for one another. Each loosens in himself and gives to the world his sublime possibilities. ”

“ CHAPTER XVI DIALOGUE IN THE PLAYLET We have now come to one of the least important elements of the playlet—yet a decorative element which wit and cleverness can make exceedingly valuable.
If it is true that scenery is the habitation in which the playlet moves, that its problem is the heart beating with life, that the dramatic is the soul which shines with meaning through the whole, that plot is the playlet's skeleton which is covered by the flesh of the characters—then the dialogue is, indeed, merely a playlet's clothes. ”

“ A novel we read at one or a half-dozen sittings, as we please. When we so wish, we can pause to consider what we have just read, or can re-read it. In the theatre, a play must be seen as a whole and at once. Listening to it, we cannot turn back, we cannot pause to reflect, for the play pushes steadily on to the close of each act. ”

“ And then a first night is always a bit jungly—not quite fair on the play or the company, or the audience either for that matter. A play's the same as a ship, if there's any real art in it. It needs time to find itself. ”

“ The more carefully the play reflected the surface of life the more would the elements be limited to those that naturally display themselves during so many minutes of our ordinary affairs. It is only by extravagance, by an emphasis far greater than that of life as we observe it, that we can crowd into a few minutes the knowledge of years. ”

“ The one-act play in our country to-day is an ally of the amateurs and the innovators. For that very reason, perhaps, it is the form which will bear the most watching for signs of imagination and for flashes of insight and interpretative significance. ”

“ A period play was a period play when they presented it. You never saw a French clock on a Dutch mantel in a Hahn & Lohman production. No hybrid hangings marred their back drop. No matter what the play, the firm provided its furnishings from the star's slippers to the chandeliers. Did a play last a year or a week, at the end of its run furniture, hangings, scenery, rugs, gowns, everything, went off in wagonloads to the already crowded storehouse on East Forty-third Street. ”

“ And if this be so in the case of plays which have held the stage for generations, are studied in schools, and are every day cited as matters of common knowledge, how much more certain may we be that even the most popular modern play will have to appeal night after night to a considerable number of people who have no previous acquaintance with either its story or its characters! ”

“ I recall distinctly some of the great nights when I have been present, such as the first performance of THE FORTUNE HUNTER, ON TRIAL, RAIN, WHAT PRICE GLORY, BROADWAY, BURLESQUE, COQUETTE and many more where a wave of enthusiastic cheering swept the play into instantaneous success. We of the theater, I think, when we watch these first nights with an anxious eye, are apt to forget that the reason a play goes over with a bang is because it is a good play, or a novel play, or the sort of play that at that moment is the play the public wants and the play makes the first night enthusiasm. ”

“ For the purpose of clearness, let me define the ending of a playlet as a scene that lies between the climax or culminating scene—in which the audience has been made to feel the coming-to-an-end effect—and the very last word on which the curtain descends. If you have ever watched a sailor splicing a rope, you will know what I mean when I say that the worker, reaching for the loose ends to finish the job off neatly, is like the playlet writer who reaches here and there for the playlet's loose ends and gathers them all up into a neat, workmanlike finish. ”

“ And to Froebel the chief significance of play lies in this spontaneity.
"Play is the highest phase of human development at this stage, because it is spontaneous expression of what is within produced by an inner necessity and impulse. Play is the most characteristic, most spiritual manifestation of man at this stage, and, at the same time, is typical of human life as a whole." ”

“ The play activities must follow along the line of the developing instincts and capacities. As the nerve tracts governing certain responses become ready to act, these responses become the controlling ones in play. So it is that for a time play is controlled largely by the instinct of manipulation, at another time physical activity combined with competition is most prominent, at another period imagination controls, still later the puzzle-solving tendency comes to the point followed by all the games involving an intellectual factor. ”