le, no drama," has since become a commonplace
of dramatic criticism. The reason for this is simply that characters
are interesting to a crowd mainly in those crises of emotion that
bring them to the grapple. A single individual, like the reader of
a novel, may be interested intellectually in those gentle influences
beneath which a character unfolds itself as mildly as a blowing rose;
but to the gathered multitude a character does not appeal except
in moments of contention. Hence the drama, to interest at all, must
present its characters in some struggle of the wills,--whether it be
merely flippant, as in the case of Benedick and Beatrice, or gentle,
as in that of Viola and Orsino, or terrible, with Macbeth, or piteous,
with Lear. The drama, therefore, is akin to the epic, in that it must
represent a struggle; but it is more akin to the novel, in that
it deals with human character in its individual, rather than its
communal, aspects. But in range of representing characters, the drama
is more restricted than the novel; for though the novelist is at
liberty to exhibit a struggle of individual human wills whenever he
may choose to do so, he is not, like the dramatist, prohibited from
representing anything else. In covering this special province, the
drama is undeniably more vivid and emphatic; but many momentous phases
of human experience are not contentious but contemplative; and these
the novel may reveal serenely, without employment of the sound and
fury of the drama.

Since the mind of the multitude is more emotional than intellectual,
the dramatist, for his most effective moments, is obliged to set forth
action with emotion for its motive. But the novelist, in motivating
action, may be more considerate and intellectual, since his appeal is
made to the individual mind. In its psychologic processes, the crowd
is more commonplace and more traditional than is the individual. The
drama, therefore, is less serviceable than the novel as a vehicle for
conveying unaccustomed and advanced ideas of life. The crowd has no
speculation in its eyes: it is impatient of original thought, and of
any but inherited emotion: it evinces little favor for the original,
the questioning, the new. Therefore if an author holds ideas of
religion, or of politics, or of social law that are in advance of his
time, he will do better to embody them in a novel than in a drama;
because the former makes its appeal to the individual mind, which has
more p