ABSTRACT
The silent cinema, therefore, could communicate only situations and landscapes: for motivation and information of an abstract nature it had to rely on the written word—captions. Radio, on the other hand, can evoke the visual element by suggestion alone. The dialogue can carry the scenery and the costume within it and the human voice can powerfully suggest human appearance. Radio, thus, must be regarded as a perfectly adequate medium for the performance of dramatic works. In a public service radio organization like the BBC, the medium's ability to diffuse material written for the stage rapidly, cheaply, and relatively widely must obviously receive its due consideration. Low production costs—and the insatiable demands of the medium for material: the BBC broadcasts some one thousand radio plays every year—also make it possible on radio, and on radio alone, to keep the whole corpus of standard classical drama, and the tried successes of the more recent repertoire, constantly before the public.
