All plays taken together are called the drama, and the writers of them are called dramatists, from a Greek word dran, to act or do.
If we would picture to ourselves what these first English plays were like, we must not think of a brilliantly lighted theater pranked out and fine with red and gold and white such as we know.
All the plays of the cycle were commonly performed in a single day, beginning, at the first station, perhaps as early as five o'clock in the morning; but sometimes three days or even more were employed.
We have said that the plays were always composed in verse.
Nonetheless she insisted that I ought to go halves with her in the day's winnings, and offered me 800 gulden on condition that henceforth, I gambled only on those terms; but I refused to do so, once and for all--stating, as my reason, that I found myself unable to play on behalf of any one else, "I am not unwilling so to do," I added, "but in all probability I should lose."
"Well, absurd though it be, I place great hopes on your playing of roulette," she remarked musingly; "wherefore, you ought to play as my partner and on equal shares; wherefore, of course, you will do as I wish."
She sometimes liked to sit in the room of mornings when Madame Ratignolle
played or practiced.
There's no limit to any game he
plays, and you can stack on it that he
plays right up to the handle.
The first use she made of her solitude was to take up the volume which had been left on the table, and begin to acquaint herself with the
play of which she had heard so much.
Every afternoon, when school was over, the children came and
played with the Giant.
Violinist,
play that over again, now, 'Home, Sweet Home,'--let her go.
It is the same in the whole range of his
plays: they fill the scene, but if there is no scene they fill the soul.