an picture,
_Pomander Walk_. But this only confuses the issue. Such drama may prove
delightful for other reasons; the thing to bear in mind is that they are
such in spite of the giving up of the peculiar, quintessential merit of
drama in its full sense. Their virtues are non-dramatic virtues, and
they succeed, in so far as success awaits them, in spite of the
violation of a principle, not because of it. They can be, and should be,
heartily enjoyed, so long as this is plainly understood and the two
accomplishments are perceived as separate. For it may be readily granted
that a pleasant and profitable evening at the theater may be spent,
without the very particular appeal which is dramatic coming into the
experience at all. There are more things in the modern theater than
drama; which is well, if we but make the discrimination.

But for the purposes of intelligent comprehension of what is drama, just
that and naught else, the theater-goer will find it not amiss to hold
fast to the idea that a play without its central scene hereinbefore
described is not a play in the exact definition of that form of art,
albeit ever so enjoyable entertainment. The history of drama in its
failures and successes bears out the statement. And of all nations,
France can be studied most profitably with this in mind, since the
French have always been past masters in the feeling for the essentially
dramatic, and centuries ago developed the skill to produce it. The fact
that we get such a term as the _scene a faire_ from them points to this
truth.

Accepting the fact, then, that a play sound in conception and
construction has and must have a central scene which acts as a
centripetal force upon the whole drama, unifying and solidifying it, the
next matter to consider is the subdivision of the play into acts and
scenes. Since the whole story is shown before the footlights, scenes and
acts are such divisions as shall best mark off and properly accentuate
the stages of the story, as it is unfolded. Convention has had something
to do with this arrangement and number, as we learn from a glance at the
development of the stage story. The earlier English drama accepted the
five-act division under classic influence, though the greatest dramatist
of the past, Shakespeare, did so only half-heartedly, as may be realized
by looking at the first complete edition of his plays, the First Folio
of 1621. _Hamlet_, for instance, as there printed, gives the first two