But that neither a condensed play, nor one “big” scene or a single act from a long play, is not a playlet should be apparent when you remember the impression of inadequacy left on your own mind by such a vehicle, even when a famous actor or actress has endowed it with all of his or her charm and wonderful art.

(b) The Curtain-Raiser.  First used to supplement or preface a short three-act play so as to eke out a full evening’s entertainment, the little play was known as either an “afterpiece” or a “curtain-raiser”; usually, however, it was presented before the three-act drama, to give those who came early their full money’s worth and still permit the fashionables, who “always come late,” to be present in time to witness the important play of the evening.  Then it was that “curtain-raiser” was considered a term of reproach.  But often in these days a curtain-raiser, like Sir James M. Barrie’s “The Twelve Pound Look,” proves even more entertaining and worth while than the ambitious play it precedes.

That Ethel Barrymore took “The Twelve Pound Look” into vaudeville does not prove, however, that the curtain-raiser and the vaudeville playlet are like forms.  As in the past, the curtain-raiser of today usually is more kin to the long play than to the playlet.  But it is nevertheless true that in some recent curtain-raisers the compact swiftness and meaningful effect of the playlet form has become more apparent—­they differ from the vaudeville playlet less in form than in legitimate feeling.

Historically, however, the curtain-raiser stands in much the same position in the genealogy of the playlet that the forms discussed in the preceding section occupy.  As in the other short plays, there was no sense of oneness of plot and little feeling of coming-to-the-end that mark a good playlet.

Therefore, since the short play could not fully satisfy the vaudeville patron’s natural desire for drama, the sketch held the vaudeville stage unchallenged until the playlet came.

4.  Vaudeville Sketches

The vaudeville sketch in the old days was almost anything you might care to name, in dramatic form.  Any vaudeville two-act that stepped behind the Olio and was able to hold a bit of a plot alive amid its murdering of the King’s English and its slap-stick ways, took the name of “a sketch.”  But the “proper sketch,” as the English would say—­the child of vaudeville and elder half-brother to the playlet—­did not make use of other entertainment forms.  It depended on dialogue, business and acting and a more or less consistent plot or near-plot for its appeal.  Usually a comedy—­yet sometimes a melodrama—­the vaudeville sketch of yesterday and of today rarely makes plot a chief element.  The story of a sketch usually means little in its general effect.  The general effect of the sketch is—­general.  That is one of the chief differences between it and the playlet.