ents to the stage, may be
advised to defy both critical and managerial prejudice, and give his
tableau-play just so much of story as may naturally and inevitably fall
within its limits.

One of the most admirable and enthralling scenes I ever saw on any stage
was that of the Trafalgar Square suffrage meeting in Miss Elizabeth
Robins's _Votes for Women_. Throughout a whole act it held us
spellbound, while the story of the play stood still, and we forgot its
existence. It was only within a few minutes of the end, when the story
was dragged in neck and crop, that the reality of the thing vanished,
and the interest with it.

* * * * *

If an abstract theme be not an advisable starting-point, what is? A
character? A situation? Or a story? On this point it would be absurd to
lay down any rule; the more so as, in many cases, a playwright is quite
unable to say in what form the germ of a play first floated into his
mind. The suggestion may come from a newspaper paragraph, from an
incident seen in the street, from an emotional adventure or a comic
misadventure, from a chance word dropped by an acquaintance, or from
some flotsam or jetsam of phrase or fable that has drifted from the
other end of history. Often, too, the original germ, whatever it may be,
is transformed beyond recognition before a play is done.[3] In the mind
of the playwright figs grow from thistles, and a silk purse--perhaps a
Fortunatus' purse--may often be made from a sow's ear. The whole
delicate texture of Ibsen's _Doll's House_ was woven from a commonplace
story of a woman who forged a cheque in order to redecorate her
drawing-room. Stevenson's romance of _Prince Otto_ (to take an example
from fiction) grew out of a tragedy on the subject of Semiramis!

One thing, however, we may say with tolerable confidence: whatever may
be the germ of a play--whether it be an anecdote, a situation, or what
not--the play will be of small account as a work of art unless
character, at a very early point, enters into and conditions its
development. The story which is independent of character--which can be
carried through by a given number of ready-made puppets--is essentially
a trivial thing. Unless, at an early stage of the organizing process,
character begins to take the upper hand--unless the playwright finds
himself thinking, "Oh, yes, George is just the man to do this," or,
"That is quite foreign to Jane's temperament"--he may be prett