the middle than that it should
drag on tediously and ineffectually. But it would be foolish to make a
system of such an expedient. It is, after all, an evasion, not a
solution, of the artist's problem.

An incident which occurred during the rehearsals for the first
production of _A Doll's House_, at the Novelty Theatre, London,
illustrates the difference between the old, and what was then the new,
fashion of ending a play. The business manager of the company, a man of
ripe theatrical experience, happened to be present one day when Miss
Achurch and Mr. Waring were rehearsing the last great scene between Nora
and Helmar. At the end of it, he came up to me, in a state of high
excitement. "This is a fine play!" he said. "This is sure to be a big
thing!" I was greatly pleased. "If this scene, of all others," I
thought, "carries a man like Mr. Smith off his feet, it cannot fail to
hold the British public." But I was somewhat dashed when, a day or two
later, Mr. Smith came up to me again, in much less buoyant spirits. "I
made a mistake about that scene," he said. "They tell me it's the end of
the _last_ act--I thought it was the end of the _first_!"

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: The reader who wishes to pursue the theme may do so to
excellent advantage in Professor Bradley's _Shakespearean Tragedy_.]

[Footnote 2: It is true that in _A Doll's House_, Dr. Rank announces his
approaching demise: but he does not actually die, nor is his fate an
essential part of the action of the play.]

[Footnote 3: The duel, even in countries whose customs permit of it, is
essentially an inartistic end; for it leaves the catastrophe to be
decided either by Chance or Providence--two equally inadmissible
arbiters in modern drama. Alexandre Dumas _fils_, in his preface to
_Heloise Paranquet_, condemns the duel as a dramatic expedient. "Not to
mention," he says, "the fact that it has been much over-done, we are
bound to recognize that Providence, in a fit of absence of mind,
sometimes suffers the rascal to kill the honest man. Let me recommend my
young colleagues," he proceeds, "never to end a piece which pretends to
reproduce a phase of real life, by an intervention of chance." The
recommendation came rather oddly from the dramatist who, in
_L'Etrangere_, had disposed of his "vibrion," the Duc de Septmonts, by
making Clarkson kill him in a duel. Perhaps he did not reckon
_L'Etrangere_ as pretending to reproduce a pha