ay not have
many qualities, but it must be emotional." Here we have a statement
which is true in a vague and general sense, untrue in the definite and
particular sense in which alone it could afford any practical guidance.
"My lord, the carriage waits," may be, in its right place, a highly
dramatic speech, even though it be uttered with no emotion, and arouse
no emotion in the person addressed. What Mrs. Craigie meant, I take it,
was that, to be really dramatic, every speech must have some bearing,
direct or indirect, prospective, present, or retrospective, upon
individual human destinies. The dull play, the dull scene, the dull
speech, is that in which we do not perceive this connection; but when
once we are interested in the individuals concerned, we are so quick to
perceive the connection, even though it be exceedingly distant and
indirect, that the dramatist who should always hold the fear of Mrs.
Craigie's aphorism consciously before his eyes would unnecessarily
fetter and restrict himself. Even the driest scientific proposition may,
under special circumstances, become electrical with drama. The statement
that the earth moves round the sun does not, in itself, stir our pulses;
yet what playwright has ever invented a more dramatic utterance than
that which some one invented for Galileo: "E pur si muove!"? In all
this, to be sure, I am illustrating, not confuting, Mrs. Craigie's
maxim. I have no wish to confute it, for, in the largest interpretation,
it is true; but I suggest that it is true only when attenuated almost
beyond recognition, and quite beyond the point at which it can be of any
practical help to the practical dramatist. He must rely on his instinct,
not numb and bewilder it by constantly subjecting it to the dictates of
hard-and-fast aesthetic theory.

We shall scarcely come much nearer to helpful truth than the point we
have already reached, in the principle that all dialogue, except the
merely mechanical parts--the connective tissue of the play--should
consist either of "mots de caractere" or of "mots de situation." But if
we go to French critics for this principle, do not let us go to French
dramatists for models of practice. It is part of the abiding insularity
of our criticism that the same writers who cannot forgive an English
dramatist what they conceive to be a stilted turn of phrase, will pass
without remark, if not with positive admiration, the outrageously
rhetorical style which is still preva