the terms plausible and
probable are very nearly interchangeable. Where the dramatist appeals to
the sanction of our own experience and knowledge, he must not introduce
matter against which our experience and knowledge cry out. A very small
inaccuracy in a picture which is otherwise photographic will often have
a very disturbing effect. In plays of society in particular, the
criticism "No one does such things," is held by a large class of
playgoers to be conclusive and destructive. One has known people despise
a play because Lady So-and-so's manner of speaking to her servants was
not what they (the cavillers) were accustomed to. On the other hand, one
has heard a whole production highly applauded because the buttons on a
particular uniform were absolutely right. This merely means that when an
effort after literal accuracy is apparent, the attention of the audience
seizes on the most trifling details and is apt to magnify their
importance. Niceties of language in especial are keenly, and often
unjustly, criticized. If a particular expression does not happen to be
current in the critic's own circle, he concludes that nobody uses it,
and that the author is a pedant or a vulgarian. In view of this
inevitable tendency, the prudent dramatist will try to keep out of his
dialogue expressions that are peculiar to his own circle, and to use
only what may be called everybody's English, or the language undoubtedly
current throughout the whole class to which his personage belongs.

It may be here pointed out that there are three different planes on
which plausibility may or may not, be achieved. There is first the
purely external plane, which concerns the producer almost as much as the
playwright. On this plane we look for plausibility of costume, of
manners, of dialect, of general environment. Then we have plausibility
of what may be called uncharacteristic event--of such events as are
independent of the will of the characters, and are not conditioned by
their psychology. On this plane we have to deal with chance and
accident, coincidence, and all "circumstances over which we have no
control." For instance, the playwright who makes the "Marseillaise"
become popular throughout Paris within half-an-hour of its having left
the composer's desk, is guilty of a breach of plausibility on this
plane. So, too, if I were to make my hero enter Parliament for the first
time, and rise in a single session to be Prime Minister of
England--there