e of subject, and
also in treatment; this gives him an enormous advantage.

The second is that, whilst there are almost as many people in Paris who
will welcome rubbish as there are in London, there can also be found a
large number of playgoers with a good deal of intellectual curiosity,
whilst the intelligent amateur--using the phrase in its French sense--is
comparatively rare in London. Consequently, the French dramatist has not
only more freedom in subject and treatment than the English, but in
addition a greater public of playgoers who bring their intellect into
the auditorium. Probably "Percival" will claim that this second ground
of explanation enters into his, and there is some truth in this.

On the other hand, his statement of fact that our dramatists, with the
exception of Pinero, are mere story-tellers, and that the French authors
write plays based upon ideas, is quite inaccurate.

Roughly, one may put dramas into three categories--the play of anecdote,
the play of idea, and the play of character. "Percival" recognises the
third category by his remark that "sometimes your French dramatist just
takes people with characteristics and lets them work out their own play
for him." As a matter of fact, few plays belong exclusively to any one
of these categories. In which would "Percival" place Shakespeare's? He
began to write a play by borrowing the plot from somebody, and primarily
all his pieces may be regarded as anecdotal, but, in the passage of the
story through his mind to the pen, in some cases it became the vehicle
for an idea, and, in all, the story grew to be of infinitely less
importance than the characters.

Take _Othello_. You may give an account of it as a story in which it is
merely an adaptation of another man's work. You may treat it as a study
of the idea of jealousy, and be uncertain whether suspicion is not more
correct as a definition than jealousy, or you may consider it as an
amazing gallery of pictures of character. It may be put into each
category, and belongs to all.

Probably the question whether a drama belongs primarily to this, that,
or the other of the categories is as otiose as the discussion whether
the hen or the egg came first. No play lives that does not belong to the
second and third category, and it cannot be put upon the boards without
some reliance upon the first. On the other hand, whatever may be the
belief of individual dramatists, it is doubtful whether any dramas are