ry
rules and conventions, on the stage it abolishes them altogether, and
puts in their place nothing but the whim of each author and of each
public.

The drama also displays in an especial manner the truth of what I have
said before in speaking more generally of style and art in democratic
literature. In reading the criticisms which were occasioned by the
dramatic productions of the age of Louis XIV, one is surprised to remark
the great stress which the public laid on the probability of the plot,
and the importance which was attached to the perfect consistency of
the characters, and to their doing nothing which could not be easily
explained and understood. The value which was set upon the forms of
language at that period, and the paltry strife about words with which
dramatic authors were assailed, are no less surprising. It would
seem that the men of the age of Louis XIV attached very exaggerated
importance to those details, which may be perceived in the study, but
which escape attention on the stage. For, after all, the principal
object of a dramatic piece is to be performed, and its chief merit is to
affect the audience. But the audience and the readers in that age were
the same: on quitting the theatre they called up the author for judgment
to their own firesides. In democracies, dramatic pieces are listened to,
but not read. Most of those who frequent the amusements of the stage do
not go there to seek the pleasures of the mind, but the keen emotions of
the heart. They do not expect to hear a fine literary work, but to see
a play; and provided the author writes the language of his country
correctly enough to be understood, and that his characters excite
curiosity and awaken sympathy, the audience are satisfied. They ask no
more of fiction, and immediately return to real life. Accuracy of style
is therefore less required, because the attentive observance of its
rules is less perceptible on the stage. As for the probability of the
plot, it is incompatible with perpetual novelty, surprise, and rapidity
of invention. It is therefore neglected, and the public excuses the
neglect. You may be sure that if you succeed in bringing your audience
into the presence of something that affects them, they will not care by
what road you brought them there; and they will never reproach you for
having excited their emotions in spite of dramatic rules.

The Americans very broadly display all the different propensities which
I have he