Excerpt from Four PlaysMy dear Mr. Clark:As I had occasion to explain to you when you were planning, the present volume, I can see among the numerous reasons for the success which it will achieve that it is above all a timely book, introducing as it does the work of Emile Augier to the American public at the moment when the evolution of the taste of that public is directing it precisely toward that form of dramatic art which is exemplified by the author of "Le Gendrede M.Poirier." No longer content merely with dramas of adventure and plays in which sensational incidents and arbitrary development render them closely akin to the newspaper serial or the fairy-tale, this public has ceased looking to the theatre solely as an amusement, a pleasant recreation and distraction from its daily occupations; it is now interested in more complex problems; it is willing to listen to arguments - a process more taxing, possibly, than the other, but thereby only the more fascinating. Avid of progress and bent on the quest of the most recent and most profound manifestations of thought, it cannot fail at this time to take an interest in the theatre of ideas. Indeed, if the drama of Ibsen has already attracted the attention of this public it is certain that there has existed some transitional form of dramatic art between that drama and the works first presented in America.Each epoch has its particular way of thinking and its particular kind of plays. Our epoch is that of the social play.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com