e, that we take no particular interest
in it, and are rather disconcerted by the care with which it is led up
to, and the prominence assigned to it. This, however, is a trifling
fault. Far different is the case in the last act of _The Benefit of the
Doubt_, which goes near to ruining what is otherwise a very fine play.
The defect, indeed, is not purely technical: on looking into it we find
that the author is not in fact working towards an ending which can be
called either inevitable or conspicuously desirable. His failure to
point forward is no doubt partly due to his having nothing very
satisfactory to point forward to. But it is only in retrospect that this
becomes apparent. What we feel while the act is in progress is simply
the lack of any finger-post to afford us an inkling of the end towards
which we are proceeding. Through scene after scene we appear to be
making no progress, but going round and round in a depressing circle.
The tension, in a word, is fatally relaxed. It may perhaps be suggested
as a maxim that when an author finds a difficulty in placing the
requisite finger-posts, as he nears the end of his play, he will do well
to suspect that the end he has in view is defective, and to try if he
cannot amend it.

In the ancient, and in the modern romantic, drama, oracles, portents,
prophecies, horoscopes and such-like intromissions of the supernatural
afforded a very convenient aid to the placing of the requisite
finger-posts--"foreshadowing without forestalling." It has often been
said that _Macbeth_ approaches the nearest of all Shakespeare's
tragedies to the antique model: and in nothing is the resemblance
clearer than in the employment of the Witches to point their skinny
fingers into the fated future. In _Romeo and Juliet_, inward foreboding
takes the place of outward prophecy. I have quoted above Romeo's
prevision of "Some consequence yet hanging in the stars"; and beside it
may be placed Juliet's--

"I have no joy of this contract to-night;
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden,
Too like the lightning which doth cease to be
Ere one can say it lightens."

In _Othello,_ on the other hand, the most modern of all his plays,
Shakespeare had recourse neither to outward boding, nor to inward
foreboding, but planted a plain finger-post in the soil of human nature,
when he made Brabantio say--

"Look to her, Moor, if thou hast eyes to see:
She has deceived her father, and may thee."

Mr.