, and reduces her to whimpering
dismay, the following little passage occurs:

Mrs. Warren: You're very rough with me, Vivie.

Vivie: Nonsense. What about bed? It's past ten.

Mrs. Warren (passionately): What's the use of my going to bed? Do
you think I could sleep?

Vivie: Why not? I shall.

Then the mother turns upon the daughter's stony self-righteousness, and
pours forth her sordid history in such a way as to throw a searchlight
on the conditions which make such histories possible; until, exhausted
by her outburst, she says, "Oh, dear! I do believe I am getting sleepy
after all," and Vivie replies, "I believe it is I who will not be able
to sleep now." Mr. Shaw, we see, is at pains to emphasize his peripety.

Some "great scenes" consist, not of one decisive turning of the tables,
but of a whole series of minor vicissitudes of fortune. Such a scene is
the third act of _The Gay Lord Quex_, a prolonged and thrilling duel, in
which Sophy Fullgarney passes by degrees from impertinent exultation to
abject surrender and then springs up again to a mood of reckless
defiance. In the "great scene" of _The Thunderbolt_, on the other
hand--the scene of Thaddeus's false confession of having destroyed his
brother's will--though there is, in fact, a great peripety, it is not
that which attracts and absorbs our interest. All the greedy Mortimore
family fall from the height of jubilant confidence in their new-found
wealth to the depth of disappointment and exasperation. But this is not
the aspect of the scene which grips and moves us. Our attention is
centred on Thaddeus's struggle to take his wife's misdeed upon himself;
and his failure cannot be described as a peripety, seeing that it sinks
him only one degree lower in the slough of despair. Like the scene in
Mrs. Dane's Defence, this is practically a piece of judicial drama--a
hard-fought cross-examination. But as there is no reversal of fortune
for the character in whom we are chiefly interested, it scarcely ranks
as a scene of peripety.[5]

Before leaving this subject, we may note that a favourite effect of
romantic drama is an upward reversal of fortune through the
recognition--the _anagnorisis_--of some great personage in disguise.
Victor Hugo excelled in the superb gestures appropriate to such a scene:
witness the passage in _Hernani_, before the tomb of Charlemagne, where
the obscure bandit claims the right to take his place at the head of the
princes and no