at whatever else divides a
play from a book, "dramatic quality" does not. Some arch-Mandarin may
launch at me one of those mandarinic epigrammatic questions which are
supposed to overthrow the adversary at one dart. "Do you seriously mean
to argue, sir, that drama need not be dramatic?" I do, if the word
dramatic is to be used in the mandarinic signification. I mean to state
that some of the finest plays of the modern age differ from a
psychological novel in nothing but the superficial form of telling.
Example, Henri Becque's _La Parisienne_, than which there is no better.
If I am asked to give my own definition of the adjective "dramatic," I
would say that that story is dramatic which is told in dialogue imagined
to be spoken by actors and actresses on the stage, and that any narrower
definition is bound to exclude some genuine plays universally accepted
as such--even by mandarins. For be it noted that the mandarin is never
consistent.

My definition brings me to the sole technical difference between a play
and a novel--in the play the story is told by means of a dialogue. It is
a difference less important than it seems, and not invariably even a
sure point of distinction between the two kinds of narrative. For a
novel may consist exclusively of dialogue. And plays may contain other
matter than dialogue. The classic chorus is not dialogue. But nowadays
we should consider the device of the chorus to be clumsy, as, nowadays,
it indeed would be. We have grown very ingenious and clever at the
trickery of making characters talk to the audience and explain
themselves and their past history while seemingly innocent of any such
intention. And here, I admit, the dramatist has to face a difficulty
special to himself, which the novelist can avoid. I believe it to be the
sole difficulty which is peculiar to the drama, and that it is not acute
is proved by the ease with which third-rate dramatists have generally
vanquished it. Mandarins are wont to assert that the dramatist is also
handicapped by the necessity for rigid economy in the use of material.
This is not so. Rigid economy in the use of material is equally
advisable in every form of art. If it is a necessity, it is a necessity
which all artists flout from time to time, and occasionally with
gorgeous results, and the successful dramatist has hitherto not been
less guilty of flouting it than the novelist or any other artist.

V

And now, having shown that some alle