but never a
verdict of acquittal. Sarcey, on the other hand, brought up in the
school of the "well-made" play, would rather have held it a feather in
the playwright's cap that he should have known just where, and just how,
he might safely outrage probability [2]. The inference is that we now
take the dramatist's art more seriously than did the generation of the
Second Empire in France.

This brings us, however, to an important fact, which must by no means be
overlooked. There is a large class of plays--or rather, there are
several classes of plays, some of them not at all to be despised--the
charm of which resides, not in probability, but in ingenious and
delightful improbability. I am, of course, not thinking of sheer
fantasies, like _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, or _Peter Pan_, or _The
Blue Bird_. They may, indeed, possess plausibility of the third order,
but plausibility of the second order has no application to them. Its
writs do not run on their extramundane plane. The plays which appeal to
us in virtue of their pleasant departures from probability are romances,
farces, a certain order of light comedies and semi-comic melodramas--in
short, the thousand and one plays in which the author, without
altogether despising and abjuring truth, makes it on principle
subsidiary to delightfulness. Plays of the _Prisoner of Zenda_ type
would come under this head: so would Sir Arthur Pinero's farces, _The
Magistrate_, _The Schoolmistress_, _Dandy Dick_; so would Mr. Carton's
light comedies, _Lord and Lady Algy_, _Wheels within Wheels_, _Lady
Huntworth's Experiment_; so would most of Mr. Barrie's comedies; so
would Mr. Arnold Bennett's play, _The Honeymoon_. In a previous chapter
I have sketched the opening act of Mr. Carton's _Wheels within Wheels_,
which is a typical example of this style of work. Its charm lies in a
subtle, all-pervading improbability, an infusion of fantasy so delicate
that, while at no point can one say, "This is impossible," the total
effect is far more entertaining than that of any probable sequence of
events in real life. The whole atmosphere of such a play should be
impregnated with humour, without reaching that gross supersaturation
which we find in the lower order of farce-plays of the type of
_Charlie's Aunt_ or _Niobe_.

* * * * *

Plausibility of development, as distinct from plausibility of theme or
of character, depends very largely on the judicious handling of cha