ord,
so startlingly as Ibsen's Nora; and we cannot but feel that the poet has
compressed into a week an evolution which, in fact, would have demanded
many months.

The complaint that a character preserves the same attitude throughout
means (if it be justified) that it is not a human being at all, but a
mere embodiment of two or three characteristics which are fully
displayed within the first ten minutes, and then keep on repeating
themselves, like a recurrent decimal. Strong theatrical effects can be
produced by this method, which is that of the comedy of types, or of
"humors." But it is now generally, and rightly, held that a character
should be primarily an individual, and only incidentally (if at all)
capable of classification under this type or that. It is a little
surprising to find Sarcey, so recently as 1889, laying it down that "a
character is a master faculty or passion, which absorbs all the rest....
To study and paint a character is, therefore, by placing a man in a
certain number of situations, to show how this principal motive force in
his nature annihilates or directs all those which, if he had been
another man, would probably have come into action." This dogma of the
"ruling passion" belongs rather to the eighteenth century than to the
close of the nineteenth.

* * * * *

We come now to the second of the questions above propounded, which I
will state more definitely in this form: Is "psychology" simply a more
pedantic term for "character-drawing"? Or can we establish a distinction
between the two ideas? I do not think that, as a matter of fact, any
difference is generally and clearly recognized; but I suggest that it is
possible to draw a distinction which might, if accepted, prove
serviceable both to critics and to playwrights.

Let me illustrate my meaning by an example. In _Bella Donna_, by Messrs.
Robert Hichens and James B. Fagan, we have a murder-story of a not
uncommon or improbable type. A woman of very shady reputation marries an
amiable idealist who is infatuated with her. She naturally finds his
idealism incomprehensible and his amiability tedious. His position as
heir-presumptive to a peerage is shattered by the birth of an
heir-apparent. She becomes passionately enamoured of an Egyptian
millionaire; and she sets to work to poison her husband with
sugar-of-lead, provided by her oriental lover. How her criminal purpose
is thwarted by a wise Jewish physician i