lot be not
impossible, no limits are imposed on his invention of mere incident: even
his characters will not give him pause, since they themselves have been
fashioned to fit the action. But of the author of tragedy we demand an
unquestionable inevitability: nothing may happen in his play which is not a
logical result of the nature of his characters. Of the melodramatist we
require merely the negative virtue that he shall not lie: of the tragedist
we require the positive virtue that he shall reveal some phase of the
absolute, eternal Truth.

The vast difference between merely saying something that is true and really
saying something that gives a glimpse of the august and all-controlling
Truth may be suggested by a verbal illustration. Suppose that, upon an
evening which at sunset has been threatened with a storm, I observe the sky
at midnight to be cloudless, and say, "The stars are shining still."
Assuredly I shall be telling something that is true; but I shall not be
giving in any way a revelation of the absolute. Consider now the aspect of
this very same remark, as it occurs in the fourth act of John Webster's
tragedy, _The Duchess of Malfi_. The Duchess, overwhelmed with despair, is
talking to Bosola:

_Duchess._ I'll go pray;--
No, I'll go curse.

_Bosola._ O, fie!

_Duchess._ I could curse the stars.

_Bosola._ O, fearful.

_Duchess._ And those three smiling seasons of the year
Into a Russian winter: nay, the world
To its first chaos.

_Bosola._ Look you, the stars shine still.

This brief sentence, which in the former instance was comparatively
meaningless, here suddenly flashes on the awed imagination a vista of
irrevocable law.

A similar difference exists between the august Truth of tragedy and the
less revelatory truthfulness of melodrama. To understand and to expound the
laws of life is a loftier task than merely to avoid misrepresenting them.
For this reason, though melodrama has always abounded, true tragedy has
always been extremely rare. Nearly all the tragic plays in the history of
the theatre have descended at certain moments into melodrama. Shakespeare's
final version of _Hamlet_ stands nearly on the highest level; but here and
there it still exhibits traces of that preexistent melodrama of the school
of Thomas Kyd from which it was derived. Sophocles is truly tragic, because
he affords a revelation of the absolute; but