he
_scene a ne pas faire_ as in his divination of the obligatory scene.
There is always the chance that no one may miss a scene demanded by
logic or psychology; but an audience knows too well when it has been
bored or distressed by a superfluous, or inconsequent, or wantonly
painful scene.

Some twenty years ago, in criticizing a play named _Le Maitre d'Armes_,
M. Sarcey took the authors gravely to task, in the name of "Aristotle
and common sense," for following the modern and reprehensible tendency
to present "slices of life" rather than constructed and developed
dramas. Especially he reproached them with deliberately omitting the
_scene a faire_. A young lady is seduced, he says, and, for the sake of
her child, implores her betrayer to keep his promise of marriage. He
renews the promise, without the slightest intention of fulfilling it,
and goes on board his yacht in order to make his escape. She discovers
his purpose and follows him on board the yacht. "What is the scene,"
asks M. Sarcey--here I translate literally--"which you expect, you, the
public? It is the scene between the abandoned fair one and her seducer.
The author may make it in a hundred ways, but make it he must!" Instead
of which, the critic proceeds, we are fobbed off with a storm-scene, a
rescue, and other sensational incidents, and hear no word of what passes
between the villain and his victim. Here, I think, M. Sarcey is mistaken
in his application of his pet principle. Words cannot express our
unconcern as to what passes between the heroine and the villain on board
the yacht--nay, more, our gratitude for being spared that painful and
threadbare scene of recrimination. The plot demands, observe, that the
villain shall not relent. We know quite well that he cannot, for if he
did the play would fall to pieces. Why, then, should we expect or demand
a sordid squabble which can lead to nothing? We--and by "we" I mean the
public which relishes such plays--cannot possibly have any keen appetite
for copious re-hashes of such very cold mutton as the appeals of the
penitent heroine to the recalcitrant villain. And the moral seems to be
that in this class of play--the drama, if one may call it so, of
foregone character--the _scene a faire_ is precisely the scene to
be omitted.

In plays of a more ambitious class, skill is often shown by the
indication, in place of the formal presentment, even of an important
scene which the audience may, or might, have expec