few writers of
prose-fiction have made shipwreck because they gave no heed to this
warning. Many a novelist is a sloven in the telling of his tale,
beginning it anywhere and ending it somehow, distracting attention on
characters of slight importance, huddling his incidents, confusing his
narrative, simply because he has never troubled himself with the
principles of construction and proportion with which every playwright
must needs make himself familiar. Just as the architectural students at
the Beaux Arts in Paris are required to develop at the same time the
elevation and the ground-plan and the cross-section of the edifice they
are designing, so the playwright, while he is working out his plot, must
be continually solving problems of exposition and of construction, of
contrast and of climax. These are questions with which the ordinary
novelist feels no need to concern himself, for the reading public makes
no demand on him and there is nothing urging him to attain a high
standard. It is worthy of remark that the newspaper reviewers of current
fiction very rarely comment on the construction of the novels they are
considering.

In other words, the novel is too easy to be wholly satisfactory to an
artist in literature. It is a loose form of hybrid ancestry; it may be
of any length; and it may be told in any manner,--in letters, as an
autobiography or as a narrative. It may win praise by its possession of
the mere externals of literature, by sheer style. It may seek to please
by description of scenery, or by dissection of motive. It may be empty
of action and filled with philosophy. It may be humorously perverse in
its license of digression,--as it was in Sterne's hands, for example. It
may be all things to all men: it is a very chameleon-weathercock. And it
is too varied, too negligent, too lax, to spur its writer to his utmost
effort, to that stern wrestle with technic which is a true artist's
never-failing tonic.

On the other hand, the drama is a rigid form, limited to the two hours'
traffic of the stage. Just as the decorative artist has to fill the
space assigned to him and must respect the dispositions of the
architect, so the playwright must work his will within the requirements
of the theater, turning to advantage the restrictions which he should
not evade. He must always appeal to the eye as well as to the ear, never
forgetting that the drama, while it is in one aspect a department of
literature, in another is