ic plays in which no very searching character-study
is attempted. _The Taming of the Shrew_ no doubt passed for a light
comedy in Shakespeare's day, though we describe it by a briefer name.
Its rapid, bustling action is possible because we are always ready to
take the character of a shrew for granted. It would have been a very
different play had the poet required to account for Katharine's
peculiarities of temper by a retrospective study of her heredity and
upbringing. Many eighteenth-century comedies are single-adventure plays,
or dual-adventure plays, in the sense that the main action sometimes
stands aside to let an underplot take the stage. Both _She Stoops to
Conquer_ and _The Rivals_ are good examples of the rapid working-out of
an intrigue, engendered, developed, and resolved all within the frame of
the picture. Single-adventure plays of a more modern type are the elder
Dumas's _Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle_, the younger Dumas's _Francillon_,
Sardou's _Divorcons_, Sir Arthur Pinero's _Gay Lord Quex_, Mr. Shaw's
_Devil's Disciple_, Oscar Wilde's _Importance of Being Earnest_, Mr.
Galsworthy's _Silver Box_. Widely as these plays differ in type and
tone, they are alike in this, that they do not attempt to present very
complex character-studies, or to probe the deeps of human experience.
The last play cited, _The Silver Box_, may perhaps be thought an
exception to this rule; but, though the experience of the hapless
charwoman is pitiful enough, hers is a simple soul, so inured to
suffering that a little more or less is no such great matter. The play
is an admirable genre-picture rather than a searching tragedy.

The point to be observed is that, under modern conditions, it is
difficult to produce a play of very complex psychological, moral, or
emotional substance, in which the whole crisis comes within the frame of
the picture. The method of attacking the crisis in the middle or towards
the end is really a device for relaxing, in some measure, the narrow
bounds of theatrical representation, and enabling the playwright to deal
with a larger segment of human experience. It may be asked why modern
conditions should in this respect differ from Elizabethan conditions,
and why, if Shakespeare could produce such profound and complex
tragedies as _Othello_ and _King Lear_ without a word of exposition or
retrospect, the modern dramatist should not go and do likewise? The
answer to this question is not simply that the modern dram