few crises come to a definite or dramatic conclusion!
Nine times out of ten they end in some petty compromise, or do not end
at all, but simply subside, like the waves of the sea when the storm has
blown itself out. It is the playwright's chief difficulty to find a
crisis with an ending which satisfies at once his artistic conscience
and the requirements of dramatic effect.

And the difficulty becomes greater the nearer we approach to reality. In
the days when tragedy and comedy were cast in fixed, conventional
moulds, the playwright's task was much simpler. It was thoroughly
understood that a tragedy ended with one or more deaths, a comedy with
one or more marriages; so that the question of a strong or a weak ending
did not arise. The end might be strongly or weakly led up to, but, in
itself, it was fore-ordained. Now that these moulds are broken, and both
marriage and death may be said to have lost their prestige as the be-all
and end-all of drama, the playwright's range of choice is unlimited, and
the difficulty of choosing has become infinitely greater. Our comedies
are much more apt to begin than to end with marriage, and death has come
to be regarded as a rather cheap and conventional expedient for cutting
the knots of life.

From the fact that "the difficulty becomes greater the nearer we
approach to reality," it further follows that the higher the form of
drama, the more probable is it that the demands of truth and the
requirements of dramatic effect may be found to clash. In melodrama, the
curtain falls of its own accord, so to speak, when the handcuffs are
transferred from the hero's wrists to the villain's. In an
adventure-play, whether farcical or romantic, when the adventure is over
the play is done. The author's task is merely to keep the interest of
the adventure afoot until he is ready to drop his curtain. This is a
point of craftsmanship in which playwrights often fail; but it is a
point of craftsmanship only. In plays of a higher order, on the other
hand, the difficulty is often inherent in the theme, and not to be
overcome by any feat of craftsmanship. If the dramatist were to eschew
all crises that could not be made to resolve themselves with
specifically dramatic crispness and decisiveness, he would very
seriously limit the domain of his art. Many excellent themes would be
distorted and ruined by having an emphatic ending forced upon them. It
is surely much better that they should be brought to th