rt from the tyranny of a code of rules and
definitions. The only really valid definition of the dramatic is: Any
representation of imaginary personages which is capable of interesting
an average audience assembled in a theatre. We must say "representation
of imaginary personages" in order to exclude a lecture or a prize-fight;
and we must say "an average audience" (or something to that effect) in
order to exclude a dialogue of Plato or of Landor, the recitation of
which might interest a specially selected public. Any further attempt to
limit the content of the term "dramatic" is simply the expression of an
opinion that such-and-such forms of representation will not be found to
interest an audience; and this opinion may always be rebutted by
experiment. In all that I have said, then, as to the dramatic and the
non-dramatic, I must be taken as meaning: "Such-and-such forms and
methods have been found to please, and will probably please again. They
are, so to speak, safer and easier than other forms and methods. But it
is the part of original genius to override the dictates of experience,
and nothing in these pages is designed to discourage original genius
from making the attempt." We have already seen, indeed, that in a
certain type of play--the broad picture of a social phenomenon or
environment--it is preferable that no attempt should be made to depict a
marked crisis. There should be just enough story to afford a plausible
excuse for raising and for lowering the curtain.[7]

Let us not, however, seem to grant too much to the innovators and the
quietists. To say that a drama should be, or tends to be, the
presentation of a crisis in the life of certain characters, is by no
means to insist on a mere arbitrary convention. It is to make at once an
induction from the overwhelming majority of existing dramas, and a
deduction from the nature and inherent conditions of theatrical
presentation. The fact that theatrical conditions often encourage a
violent exaggeration of the characteristically dramatic elements in life
does not make these elements any the less real or any the less
characteristically dramatic. It is true that crispness of handling may
easily degenerate into the pursuit of mere picture-poster situation; but
that is no reason why the artist should not seek to achieve crispness
within the bounds prescribed by nature and common sense. There is a
drama--I have myself seen it--in which the heroine, fleeing from the
vi