with
play-writing which I purpose to discuss. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides--perhaps we should give the entire credit, as some authorities
do, to Aeschylus--taught the future world the art of writing a play. But
they did not create the laws of dramatic construction. Those laws exist
in the passions and sympathies of the human race. They existed thousands
of years before the Father of the Drama was born: waiting, like the
other laws of nature, to be discovered and utilized by man.

A lecturer on "Animal Magnetism" failed to make his appearance one
night, many years ago, in the public hall of a little town in Michigan,
and a gentleman from Detroit consented to fill the vacant place. His
lecture began and ended as follows: "Animal magnetism is a great
subject, and the less said about it the better; we will proceed to
experiments."

I will take that wise man as my own exemplar today, and I will begin by
echoing his words: The drama in general is a great subject, and the less
I say about it the better; we will proceed to experiments.

It happens that one of my own plays has had a very curious history. It
has appeared before the American public in two forms, so radically
different that a description of the changes made, and of the reasons for
making them, will involve the consideration of some very interesting
laws of dramatic construction. I shall ask you to listen very carefully
to the story, or plot, of the piece as it was first produced in Chicago
in 1873. Then I shall trace the changes that were made in this story
before the play was produced in New York five years later. And after
that, to follow the very odd adventures of the same play still further,
I shall point out briefly the changes which were made necessary by
adapting it to English life with English characters, for its production
at the Court Theater, London, in 1879. All the changes which I shall
describe to you were forced upon me (as soon as I had decided to make
the general alterations in the play) by the laws of dramatic
construction; and it is to the experimental application of these laws to
a particular play that I ask your attention. The learned professors of
Harvard University know much more about them than I do, so far as a
study of dramatic literature, from the outside, can give them that
knowledge; and the great modern authorities on the subject--Hallam,
Lessing, Schlegel and many others--are open to the students of Harvard
in her library;