toy, but scarcely a vital work of art.

* * * * *

It is time now to consider just what we mean when we say that the first
step towards play-writing is the "choice" of a theme.

In many cases, no doubt, it is the plain and literal fact that the
impulse to write some play--any play--exists, so to speak, in the
abstract, unassociated with any particular subject, and that the
would-be playwright proceeds, as he thinks, to set his imagination to
work, and invent a story. But this frame of mind is to be regarded with
suspicion. Few plays of much value, one may guess, have resulted from
such an abstract impulse. Invention, in these cases, is apt to be
nothing but recollection in disguise, the shaking of a kaleidoscope
formed of fragmentary reminiscences. I remember once, in some momentary
access of ambition, trying to invent a play. I occupied several hours of
a long country walk in, as I believed, creating out of nothing at all a
dramatic story. When at last I had modelled it into some sort of
coherency, I stepped back from it in my mind, as it were, and
contemplated it as a whole. No sooner had I done so than it began to
seem vaguely familiar. "Where have I seen this story before?" I asked
myself; and it was only after cudgelling my brains for several minutes
that I found I had re-invented Ibsen's _Hedda Gabler_. Thus, when we
think we are choosing a plot out of the void, we are very apt to be, in
fact, ransacking the store-house of memory. The plot which chooses us
is much more to be depended upon--the idea which comes when we least
expect it, perhaps from the most unlikely quarter, clamours at the gates
of birth, and will not let us rest till it be clothed in dramatic flesh
and blood.[5] It may very well happen, of course, that it has to
wait--that it has to be pigeon-holed for a time, until its due turn
comes.[6] Occasionally, perhaps, it may slip out of its pigeon-hole for
an airing, only to be put back again in a slightly more developed form.
Then at last its convenient season will arrive, and the play will be
worked out, written, and launched into the struggle for life. In the
sense of selecting from among a number of embryonic themes stored in his
mind, the playwright has often to make a deliberate choice; but when,
moved by a purely abstract impulse, he goes out of set purpose to look
for a theme, it may be doubted whether he is likely to return with any
very valuable treasure-trove