of course that man is not the Comte de la Tremouille.'" CHAPTER XXVI A SENSATION "I can assure you that the situation was quite dramatic," continued the man in the corner, whilst his funny, claw-like hands took up a bit of string with renewed feverishness.

Drayton's great defect was the entire absence of that dramatic talent so marvellously developed among his contemporaries,a defect, as we shall presently see, sufficient of itself to disqualify him for the duties of Court Poet.

The masque, a form of dramatic representation, borrowed from the Italian, had been introduced into England during the reign of Elizabeth.

Marvels of ingenuity in plot and construction, they abound in "dainty invention," animated dialogue, and some of the finest lyric passages to be found in dramatic literature.

In the whole range of drama there is scarcely a passage which one would call more specifically dramatic than the Screen Scene in The School for Scandal; yet it would be the veriest quibbling to argue that any appreciable part of its effect arises from the clash of will against will.

What is the common quality of themes, scenes, and incidents, which we recognize as specifically dramatic?

A play is a more or less rapidly-developing crisis in destiny or circumstance, and a dramatic scene is a crisis within a crisis, clearly furthering the ultimate event.

How, then, do we distinguish a dramatic from a non-dramatic crisis?

There are, in this novel, indeed, many potentially dramatic crises; the trouble is that they are too numerous and individually too small to be suitable for theatrical presentment.

But bankruptcy sometimes occurs in the form of one or more sudden, sharp crises, and has, therefore, been utilized again and again as a dramatic motive.

So obviously dramatic is this incident that it has become sadly hackneyed.

I have summarized it up to its culminating point, because it happened to illustrate the difference between a bankruptcy, dramatic in its nature and treatment, and those undramatic bankruptcies to which reference has been made.

As regards individual incidents, it may be said in general that the dramatic way of treating them is the crisp and staccato, as opposed to the smooth or legato, method.

It may be thought a point of inferiority in dramatic art that it should deal so largely in shocks to the nerves, and should appeal by preference, wherever it is reasonably possible, to the cheap emotions of curiosity and surprise.

But this is a criticism, not of dramatic art, but of human nature.

We may wish that mankind took more pleasure in pure apprehension than in emotion; but so long as the fact is otherwise, that way of handling an incident by which the greatest variety of poignancy of emotion can be extracted from it will remain the specifically dramatic way.

That is the frame of mind which the author should try to beget in his audience; and Oscar Wilde, then almost a novice, had, in this one little passage between Lady Windermere and the butler, shown himself a master of the art of dramatic story-telling.

Hauptmann's Weavers certainly cannot be called a piece of dramatic architecture, like Rosmersholm or Iris; but that does not mean that it is a mere rambling series of tableaux.

Construction means dramatic architecture, or in other words, a careful pre-arrangement of proportions and interdependencies.

A great part of the secret of dramatic architecture lies in the one word "tension."

" That is, indeed, the inevitable symbol of dramatic tension: we see a sword of Damocles (even though it be only a farcical blade of painted lathe) impending over someone's head: and when once we are confident that it will fall at the fated moment, we do not mind having our attention momentarily diverted to other matters.

We know that Hamlet has hung a sword of Damocles over the King's head in the shape of the mimic murder-scene; and, while it is preparing, we are quite willing to have our attention switched off to certain abstract questions of dramatic criticism.

[Footnote 1: Of Dramatic Poesy, ed.

He wrote a work containing precepts and rules relating to every branch of dramatic writing, which appears to have been lost, but is constantly quoted by the commentators.

Miss Morrison nodded and smiled; the chauffeur wheeled his machine splendidly, making dramatic gestures which had the effect of causing commerce to pause till the princess was under way.