Boucicault, the lustre of all their talents has been dimmed by this one
dirty vice of filching the product of other men's brains; and the only
dramatists free from the reproach have been those who have come to the
boards from outside, like Bulwer and Sheridan. I do not here mean to
include avowed translations like "Pizarro" and the "Stranger," nor
avowed dramatizations of novels like Boucicault's "Heart of Mid
Lothian." Such things are not thefts, any more than the use of history
for the basis of a novel; they are open to all. But the unavowed
stealing of unknown French plays, the surreptitious filching of
chapters from forgotten novels, no more becomes right after quoting
Shakespeare and Moliere as exemplars, than cowardice and treason become
noble because St. Peter sneaked out of Caiaphas's petty sessions once
on a time.

Spite of this degrading meanness, however, there is no doubt that
actor-authors have so far written the greatest number of good plays
that hold the stage, in consequence of just one thing, their
_experience_, which reveals itself as the first quality necessary
in the dramatist. After experience of the stage, the next qualification
that meets us in such dramatists as Shakespeare, Dumas, Lope de Vega,
and Boucicault, is their marvellous fecundity of invention, implying an
amount of information on various subjects simply amazing. Nothing comes
amiss to them, and they seem to have a smattering of every science, to
have skimmed the private history of the whole world. Variety of
information comes next after stage experience. A man may be a great
fool on most subjects, and yet write a fair acting play from stage
experience alone, if he filches enough, but if he have plenty of
general information, he will be able to double the value of his play,
while some plays have been made quite successful by the use of nothing
but stage experience and some special line of information, by men who
could not have written an original story to save their necks.

Last of the qualifications for dramatic success come _ideas_, and the
possession of ideas implies also genius or at least talent, without
which, after all, the really successful dramatist cannot work and leave
enduring work behind him. All the ephemeral successes of the stage lack
this one element, the one thing that cannot be taught, but must be born
in a man. With genius, with real talent, everything is at last possible
to a writer ambitious of stage success. Li