pains to make
the obstacle between Andrea and Ilaria absolutely unreal. The fact that
Andrea has as yet taken no irrevocable vow is not the essence of the
matter. Vow or no vow, there would have been a tragic conflict if Andrea
had felt absolutely certain of his calling to the priesthood, and had
defied Heaven, and imperilled his immortal soul, because of his
overwhelming passion. That would have been a tragic situation; but the
author had carefully avoided it. From the very first--before Andrea had
ever seen Ilaria--it had been impressed upon us that he had no priestly
vocation. There was no struggle in his soul between passion and duty;
there was no struggle at all in his soul. His struggles are all with
external forces and influences; wherefore the play, which a real
obstacle might have converted into a tragedy, remained a sentimental
romance--and is forgotten.

* * * * *

What, then, is the essence of drama, if conflict be not it? What is the
common quality of themes, scenes, and incidents, which we recognize as
specifically dramatic? Perhaps we shall scarcely come nearer to a
helpful definition than if we say that the essence of drama is _crisis_.
A play is a more or less rapidly-developing crisis in destiny or
circumstance, and a dramatic scene is a crisis within a crisis, clearly
furthering the ultimate event. The drama may be called the art of
crises, as fiction is the art of gradual developments. It is the
slowness of its processes which differentiates the typical novel from
the typical play. If the novelist does not take advantage of the
facilities offered by his form for portraying gradual change, whether in
the way of growth or of decay, he renounces his own birthright, in order
to trespass on the domain of the dramatist. Most great novels embrace
considerable segments of many lives; whereas the drama gives us only the
culminating points--or shall we say the intersecting culminations?--two
or three destinies. Some novelists have excelled precisely in the art
with which they have made the gradations of change in character or
circumstance so delicate as to be imperceptible from page to page, and
measurable, as in real life, only when we look back over a considerable
period. The dramatist, on the other hand, deals in rapid and startling
changes, the "peripeties," as the Greeks called them, which may be the
outcome of long, slow processes, but which actually occur in very brief
s