owledge of English
dramatic literature--Familiarity with Elizabethan plays shown in his
novels--His Essay on the Drama--Ancient drama--French
drama--Dramatic unities--German drama--Elizabethan
drama--Shakspere--Ben Jonson--Dryden and other Restoration
dramatists--Morality of theater-going--Character of Scott's interest
in the drama.

Like most of his characteristics, Scott's taste for the theater was
exhibited in his childhood. We find him reverting, in a review written
in 1826,[108] to his rapturous emotions on the occasion of seeing his
first play; and in the private theatricals which he and his brothers and
sister performed in the family dining-room he was always the manager. In
1810 he was active in helping to bring out in Edinburgh the _Family
Legend_ of his friend Joanna Baillie.[109] One of the actors on that
occasion was Daniel Terry,[110] who became an intimate friend of
Scott's. For Terry Scott wrote _The Doom of Devorgoil_, but the piece
was not found suitable for presentation. Several of the novels were more
successfully dramatized by the same friend, so that we find the "Author"
humorously complaining in the "Introductory Epistle" to _The Fortunes of
Nigel_, "I believe my muse would be _Terry_fied into treading the stage
even if I should write a sermon." Among Scott's friends were several
other actors, particularly Mrs. Siddons and her brother John Kemble, and
the comedian Charles Mathews. In Scott's review of _Kelly's
Reminiscences and the Life of Kemble_ we find recorded many of the
discriminations he was fond of making in regard to the talents of
particular actors.

In his childhood Scott felt well qualified to take the part of Richard
III., for he considered that his limp "would do well enough to represent
the hump."[111] After a similar fashion we find him commenting on the
improbabilities of the tragedy of _Douglas_: "But the spectator should,
and indeed must, make considerable allowances if he expects to receive
pleasure from the drama. He must get his mind, according to Tony
Lumpkin's phrase, into 'a concatenation accordingly,'[112] since he
cannot reasonably expect that scenes of deep and complicated interest
shall be placed before him, in close succession, without some force
being put upon ordinary probability; and the question is not, how far
you have sacrificed your judgment in order to accommodate the fiction,
but rather, what is the degree of delight you have received