the medium of the theatre without some understanding
of the peculiar art of dramatic construction. Some people are born with
such an instinct for this art, that a very little practice renders them
masters of it. Some people are born with a hollow in their cranium where
the bump of drama ought to be. But between these extremes, as I said
before, there are many people with moderately developed and cultivable
faculty; and it is these who, I trust, may find some profit in the
following discussions.[3] Let them not forget, however, that the topics
treated of are merely the indispensable rudiments of the art, and are
not for a moment to be mistaken for its ultimate and incommunicable
secrets. Beethoven could not have composed the Ninth Symphony without a
mastery of harmony and counterpoint; but there are thousands of masters
of harmony and counterpoint who could not compose the Ninth Symphony.

The art of theatrical story-telling is necessarily relative to the
audience to whom the story is to be told. One must assume an audience of
a certain status and characteristics before one can rationally discuss
the best methods of appealing to its intelligence and its sympathies.
The audience I have throughout assumed is drawn from what may be called
the ordinary educated public of London and New York. It is not an ideal
or a specially selected audience; but it is somewhat above the average
of the theatre-going public, that average being sadly pulled down by the
myriad frequenters of musical farce and absolutely worthless melodrama.
It is such an audience as assembles every night at, say, the half-dozen
best theatres of each city. A peculiarly intellectual audience it
certainly is not. I gladly admit that theatrical art owes much, in both
countries, to voluntary organizations of intelligent or would-be
intelligent[4] playgoers, who have combined to provide themselves with
forms of drama which specially interest them, and do not attract the
great public. But I am entirely convinced that the drama renounces its
chief privilege and glory when it waives its claim to be a popular art,
and is content to address itself to coteries, however "high-browed."
Shakespeare did not write for a coterie: yet he produced some works of
considerable subtlety and profundity. Moliere was popular with the
ordinary parterre of his day: yet his plays have endured for over two
centuries, and the end of their vitality does not seem to be in sight.
Ibsen did not