g unawares
any audience after the first. Nine-tenths of all subsequent audiences
are sure to be on the look-out for it, and to know, or think they know,
"how it's done."[4] These are the things which theatrical gossip,
printed and oral, most industriously disseminates. The fine details of a
plot are much less easily conveyed and less likely to be remembered.

To sum up this branch of the argument: however oft-repeated and
much-discussed a play may be, the playwright must assume that in every
audience there will be an appreciable number of persons who know
practically nothing about it, and whose enjoyment will depend, like that
of the first-night audience, on the skill with which he develops his
story. On the other hand, he can never rely on taking an audience by
surprise at any particular point. The class of effect which depends on
surprise is precisely the class of effect which is certain to be
discounted.[5]

We come now to a third reason why a playwright is bound to assume that
the audience to which he addresses himself has no previous knowledge of
his fable. It is simply that no other assumption has, or can have, any
logical basis. If the audience is not to be conceived as ignorant, how
much is it to be assumed to know? There is clearly no possible answer to
this question, except a purely arbitrary one, having no relation to the
facts. In any audience after the first, there will doubtless be a
hundred degrees of knowledge and of ignorance. Many people will know
nothing at all about the play; some people will have seen or read it
yesterday, and will thus know all there is to know; while between these
extremes there will be every variety of clearness or vagueness of
knowledge. Some people will have read and remembered a detailed
newspaper notice; others will have read the same notice and forgotten
almost all of it. Some will have heard a correct and vivid account of
the play, others a vague and misleading summary. It would be absolutely
impossible to enumerate all the degrees of previous knowledge which are
pretty certain to be represented in an average audience; and to which
degree of knowledge is the playwright to address himself? If he is to
have any firm ground under his feet, he must clearly adopt the only
logical course, and address himself to a spectator assumed to have no
previous knowledge whatever. To proceed on any other assumption would
not only be to ignore the all-powerful first-night audience, but to