Note
Reading edition
It must be thoroughly realized that the characters of this play are intended to give voice to their actual, private thought of the moment; but are intended to do so in the usual tone and manner of polite conventionality. Their gestures and voices must be those of people under perfectly normal conditions, and everything done to stimulate realization by the audience of the fact that it is the secret minds of the characters which are being portrayed. They, the characters, are simply saying what they are really thinking in the situation in which they are presented, instead of employing the empty social forms which we are accustomed to hearing people actually give voice to.