A novelist may lose his readers for a few pages; a playwright never dares lose his audience for a minute.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Rattigan contrasts the novelist's flexibility with the playwright's need to hold the audience's attention constantly.
- In plain terms
- Novelists can let readers go briefly, but playwrights cannot.
- What can you take from it?
- Theater requires continuous engagement unlike books.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- What keeps an audience engaged?
- How does medium affect story?
Another view
Some novels may be boring for long stretches and still succeed.
More from Terence Rattigan
Let us invent a character, a nice respectable, middle-class, middle-aged, maiden lady, with time on her hands and the money to help her pass it. She enjoys pic…
Permalink to quote #3 Do you know what le vice Anglais - the English vice - really is? Not flagellation, not pederasty - whatever the French believe it to be. It's our refusal to ad…
Permalink to quote #5 When you're between any kind of devil and the deep blue sea, the deep blue sea sometimes looks very inviting.
Permalink to quote #2
Related quotes
Well, all the plays that I was trying to write : were plays that would grab an audience by the throat and not release them, rather than presenting an emotion w…
Arthur MillerArthur Miller quote #29 Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw's prefaces.
James AgateJames Agate quote #2 There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.
Doris LessingDoris Lessing quote #12