EPARATION: THE FINGER-POST
_CHAPTER XIII_ THE OBLIGATORY SCENE
_CHAPTER XIV_ THE PERIPETY
_CHAPTER XV_ PROBABILITY, CHANCE AND COINCIDENCE
_CHAPTER XVI_ LOGIC
_CHAPTER XVII_ KEEPING A SECRET

BOOK IV

THE END

_CHAPTER XVIII_ CLIMAX AND ANTICLIMAX
_CHAPTER XIX_ CONVERSION
_CHAPTER XX_ BLIND-ALLEY THEMES--AND OTHERS
_CHAPTER XXI_ THE FULL CLOSE

BOOK V

EPILOGUE

_CHAPTER XXII_ CHARACTER AND PSYCHOLOGY
_CHAPTER XXIII_ DIALOGUE AND DETAILS

_BOOK I_

PROLOGUE

_CHAPTER I_

INTRODUCTORY

There are no rules for writing a play. It is easy, indeed, to lay down
negative recommendations--to instruct the beginner how _not_ to do it.
But most of these "don'ts" are rather obvious; and those which are not
obvious are apt to be questionable. It is certain, for instance, that if
you want your play to be acted, anywhere else than in China, you must
not plan it in sixteen acts of an hour apiece; but where is the tyro who
needs a text-book to tell him that? On the other hand, most theorists of
to-day would make it an axiom that you must not let your characters
narrate their circumstances, or expound their motives, in speeches
addressed, either directly to the audience, or ostensibly to their
solitary selves. But when we remember that, of all dramatic openings,
there is none finer than that which shows Richard Plantagenet limping
down the empty stage to say--

"Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried"--

we feel that the axiom requires large qualifications. There are no
absolute rules, in fact, except such as are dictated by the plainest
common sense. Aristotle himself did not so much dogmatize as analyse,
classify, and generalize from, the practices of the Attic dramatists. He
said, "you had better" rather than "you must." It was Horace, in an age
of deep dramatic decadence, who re-stated the pseudo-Aristotelian
formulas of the Alexandrians as though they were unassailable dogmas
of art.

How comes it, then, that there is a constant demand for text-books of
the art and craft of drama? How comes it that so many people--and I
among the number--who could not write a play to save their lives, are
eager to tell others how to do so? And, stranger still, how comes it
that so many people are willing to sit at the feet of these instructors?
It is