Just as the graphophone can multiply without limit the music of the concert hall, the singer, and the orchestra, so, it seemed, would the photoplay reproduce the theater performance without end.
Of course, the substitute could not be equal to the original.

The color was lacking, the real depth of the objective stage was missing, and above all the spoken word had been silenced.

The few interspersed descriptive texts, the so-called "leaders," had to hint at that which in the real drama the speeches of the actors explain and elaborate.

It was thus surely only the shadow of a true theater, different not only as a photograph is compared with a painting, but different as a photograph is compared with the original man.

And yet, however meager and shadowlike the moving picture play appeared compared with the performance of living actors, the advantage of the cheap multiplication was so great that the ambition of the producers was natural, to go forward from the little playlets to great dramas which held the attention for hours.