30 L. A. Sherman 



the plot, as in Love's Labour's Lost; it means all the play, and the 

 play means nothing else. Where Plautus had one pair of twin 

 brothers so featured that they could not be told apart, Shake- 

 speare adds another pair, and the fun is drawn out with astonish- 

 ing dexterity. Let three things, however, be observed : ( i ) The 

 feat is achieved at a total loss of character — and indeed he who 

 starts out tO' confuse identity must, consciously or not, set him- 

 self the task of obliterating character. (2) Unless a convention 

 of pasteboard be accepted as substitute for flesh and blood, the 

 events are incredible. (3) On the stage of Plautus the conven- 

 tion of two men being like enough in feature to deceive even their 

 wives might pass. It was actually a convention of pasteboard, 

 since the players wore masks. Paint two masks alike, and (since 

 masks mufBe voices) the trick is done. But (4) Shakespeare, 

 dispensing with the masks, doubled the confusion by tacking a 

 pair of Dromios on to a pair of Antipholuses ; and to double one 

 situation so improbable is to multiply its improbability by the 

 hundred. 



" It is all done, to be sure, with such amazing resource that, 

 were ingenuity of stagecraft the test of great drama, we might 

 say, ' Here is a man who has little or nothing to learn.' But 

 ingenuity of stagecraft is not the test of great drama ; and in fact 

 Shakespeare had more than a vast deal to learn. He had a vast 

 deal to unlearn. 



" A dramatic author must start by mastering certain stage- 

 mechanics. Having mastered them, he must — to be great — un- 

 learn reliance on them, learn to cut them away as he grows to 

 perceive that the secret of his art resides in playing human beings 

 against human beings, man against woman, character against 

 character, will against will — not in devising ' situations ' or ' cur- 

 tains ' and operating his puppets to produce these. His art 

 touches climax when his ' situations ' and curtains so befall that 

 we tell ourselves, ' It is wonderful — yet what else could have 

 happened?' Othello is one of the cleverest stage plays ever 

 written. What does it leave us to say but, in an awe of pity, 

 ' This is most terrible, but it must have happened so ' ? In great 

 art, as in life, character makes the bed it lies on or dies on. 



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