How to See a Play

A child tugging at a mother’s sleeve for “the end of the story” represents, Richard Burton suggests, the whole human race. Why do we need stories to make life feel whole?

In this early-20th-century guide to the theater, Burton argues that a play does more than tell a tale: it puts human beings before us, speaking and acting, while a roomful of strangers watches together. The stage has barely two hours to seize the telling moments, and its words, voices, gestures and scenery must all ring true. For the spectator, learning to notice those choices can turn an evening’s entertainment into a sharper pleasure—and a poor performance into something harder to overlook. What should you be watching and listening for when the curtain rises?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.