ded to lock the door, and continue his conversation
with Lady Langham in the firelight. Thus, when the lady's husband came
knocking at the door, Mrs. Daventry was able to rescue the guilty pair
from an apparently hopeless predicament, by calmly switching on the
lights and opening the door to Sir John Langham. The situation was
undoubtedly a "strong" one; but the tendency of modern technic is to
hold "strength" too dearly purchased at such reckless expense of
preparation.

There are, then, very clear limits to the validity of the Dumas maxim
that "The art of the theatre is the art of preparations." Certain it is
that over-preparation is the most fatal of errors. The clumsiest thing a
dramatist can possibly do is to lay a long and elaborate train for the
ignition of a squib. We take pleasure in an event which has been
"prepared" in the sense that we have been led to desire it, and have
wondered how it was to be brought about. But we scoff at an occurrence
which nothing but our knowledge of the tricks of the stage could
possibly lead us to expect, yet which, knowing these tricks, we have
foreseen from afar, and resented in advance.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: _Of Dramatic Poesy,_ ed. Arnold, 1903, p. 60.]

[Footnote 2: _The World_, December 20, 1899.]

[Footnote 3: At the end of the first act of _Lady Inger of Ostraat_,
Ibsen evidently intends to produce a startling effect through the sudden
appearance of Olaf Skaktavl in Lady Inger's hall. But as he has totally
omitted to tell us who the strange man is, the incident has no meaning
for us. In 1855 Ibsen had all his technical lessons yet to learn.]

[Footnote 4: The fact that Mr. Phillips should have deemed such a
foreshadowing necessary shows how instinctively a dramatist feels that
the logic of his art requires him to assume that his audience is
ignorant of his fable. In reality, very few members of the first-night
audience, or of any other, can have depended on old Angela's
vaticination for the requisite foresight of events. But this does not
prove Angela to be artistically superfluous.]

[Footnote 5: See pp. 118, 240.]

[Footnote 6: There is no special harm in this: the question of exits and
entrances and their mechanism is discussed in Chapter XXIII.]

[Footnote 7: This might be said of the scene of the second act of _The
Benefit of the Doubt_; but here the actual stage-topography is natural
enough. The author, however, is rather o