MRS. SIDDONS AS QUEEN KATHARINE, ETC. 83 



Shakespeare did not work in this way, but in this one matter 

 of construction it may be worth while to listen to maxims de- 

 rived from the study of plays which in all other respects are 

 greatly inferior to his. Moreover, these maxims are ultimately 

 derived from the practice of Sophocles, no mean master. 



The French, following the Greeks in this, look on a play as 

 a representation of feelings rather than of actions. The inci- 

 dents which occasion the feelings, and the actions they lead to, 

 are alike kept in the background in French as in Greek plays. 

 Rapid action in a play does not, in France, mean a rapid succes- 

 sion of events, but a rapid development of feeling in the persons 

 of the drama. A scene in which the emotion represented is 

 monotonous will be dull even if crammed with incidents. 



The author who is penetrated with the belief that the aim of 

 the drama is to produce emotion will be indifferent to beauty 

 of language or of metaphor, to profound philosophy and to 

 brilliant sayings, except when these help to move the audience. 

 He will know that obscurity of language or of thought is fatal 

 to his purpose. The knot, crisis, or motive of his play will be 

 chosen by him to exhibit, not a striking event, but strong 

 feelings. He will so contrive the story leading to the crisis as 

 to exhibit a gradually culminating series of emotions, produced 

 by incidents arranged so as powerfully to affect the personages 

 of the drama, and through them the audience. The direct 

 action of incidents on the audience is of importance only in that 

 low form of art which aims at stirring the vulgar feeling of 

 curiosity and the vulgar love of gaping. 



The most telling play is that in which the feelings naturally 

 exhibited by the persons of the drama are strongest. The 

 greatest play is that which shows the feelings of the noblest 

 men and women. This, in the opinion of Plato and Aristotle, 

 is the object of the drama in its higher form. 



Plato, in ' The Laws,' after saying that no freeborn man or 

 woman should learn comic songs, grotesque dances, or bur- 

 lesques, but that it might be well to have these things presented 

 by slaves and hired strangers, in order better to understand by 

 contrast that which is truly beautiful, speaks thus, referring to 

 his ideal city : ' If any serious poets, such as write tragedies, 

 should ask us, " Shall we, strangers, come to your city and 



G 2 



