ns should accept a
representation of Cromwell as

"A mouthing patriot, with an itching palm,
In one hand menace, in the other greed."]

[Footnote 2: It is only fair to say that Sarcey drew a distinction
between antecedent _events_ and what he calls "postulates of character."
He did not maintain that an audience ought to accept a psychological
impossibility, merely because it was placed outside the frame of the
picture. See _Quarante Ans de Theatre_, vii, p. 395.]

[Footnote 3: This phrase, which occurs in Mr. Haddon Chambers's romantic
melodrama, _Captain Swift_, was greeted with a burst of laughter by the
first-night audience; but little did we then think that Mr. Chambers was
enriching the English language. It is not, on examination, a
particularly luminous phrase: "the three or four arms of coincidence"
would really be more to the point. But it is not always the most
accurate expression that is fittest to survive.]

[Footnote 4: The abuse of coincidence is a legacy to modern drama from
the Latin comedy, which, again, was founded on the Greek New Comedy. It
is worth noting that in the days of Menander the world really was much
smaller than it is to-day, when "thalassic" has grown into "oceanic"
civilization. Travellers in those days followed a few main routes; half
a dozen great seaports were rendezvous for all the world; the
slave-trade was active, and kidnappings and abductions with the
corresponding meetings and recognitions were no doubt frequent. Thus
such a plot as that of the _Menaechmi_ was by no means the sheer
impossibility which Shakespeare made it by attaching indistinguishable
Dromios to his indistinguishable Antipholuses. To reduplicate a
coincidence is in fact to multiply it by a figure far beyond my
mathematics. It may be noted, too, that the practice of exposing
children, on which the _Oedipus_, and many plays of Menander, are
founded, was common in historic Greece, and that the hapless children
were generally provided with identification-tokens _gnorismata_.]

_CHAPTER XVI_

LOGIC

The term logic is often very vaguely used in relation to drama. French
writers especially, who regard logic as one of the peculiar faculties of
their national genius, are apt to insist upon it in and out of season.
But, as we have already seen, logic is a gift which may easily be
misapplied. It too often leads such writers as M. Brieux and M. Hervieu
to sacrifice the undulant and diverse rhythms of lif