No technical maxim is more frequently cited than the remark of the
younger Dumas: "The art of the theatre is the art of preparations." This
is true in a larger sense than he intended; but at the same time there
are limits to its truth, which we must not fail to observe.

Dumas, as we know, was an inveterate preacher, using the stage as a
pulpit for the promulgation of moral and social ideas which were, in
their day, considered very advanced and daring. The primary meaning of
his maxim, then, was that a startling idea, or a scene wherein such an
idea was implied, ought not to be sprung upon an audience wholly
unprepared to accept it. For instance, in _Monsieur Alphonse,_ a
husband, on discovering that his wife has had an intrigue before their
marriage, and that a little girl whom she wishes to adopt is really her
daughter, instantly raises her from the ground where she lies grovelling
at his feet, and says: "Creature de Dieu, toi qui as failli et te
repens, releve toi, je te pardonne." This evangelical attitude on the
part of Admiral de Montaiglin was in itself very surprising, and perhaps
not wholly admirable, to the Parisian public of 1873; but Dumas had so
"prepared" the _coup de theatre_ that it passed with very slight
difficulty on the first night, and with none at all at subsequent
performances and revivals. How had he "prepared" it? Why, by playing, in
a score of subtle ways, upon the sympathies and antipathies of the
audience. For instance, as Sarcey points out, he had made M. de
Montaiglin a sailor, "accustomed, during his distant voyages, to long
reveries in view of the boundless ocean, whence he had acquired a
mystical habit of mind.... Dumas certainly would never have placed this
pardon in the mouth of a stockbroker." So far so good; but
"preparation," in the sense of the word, is a device of rhetoric or of
propaganda rather than of dramatic craftsmanship. It is a method of
astutely undermining or outflanking prejudice. Desiring to enforce a
general principle, you invent a case which is specially favourable to
your argument, and insinuate it into the acceptance of the audience by
every possible subtlety of adjustment. You trust, it would seem, that
people who have applauded an act of pardon in an extreme case will be so
much the readier to exercise that high prerogative in the less carefully
"prepared" cases which present themselves in real life. This may or may
not be a sound principle of persuasion; as w