inal Richelieu is the
mainspring of the entire action, and the audience is led to feel that he
may at any moment enter upon the stage. But he is withheld until the very
final moment of the drama, and even then is merely carried mute across the
scene in a sedan-chair. Similarly, in Paul Heyse's _Mary of Magdala_, the
supreme person who guides and controls the souls of all the struggling
characters is never introduced upon the scene, but is suggested merely
through his effect on Mary, Judas, and the other visible figures in the
action.

One of the easiest means of emphasis is the use of repetition; and this is
a favorite device with Henrik Ibsen. Certain catch-words, which incorporate
a recurrent mood of character or situation, are repeated over and over
again throughout the course of his dialogue. The result is often similar to
that attained by Wagner, in his music-dramas, through the iteration of a
_leit-motiv_. Thus in _Rosmersholm_, whenever the action takes a turn that
foreshadows the tragic catastrophe, allusion is made to the weird symbol of
"white horses." Similarly, in _Hedda Gabler_--to take another instance--the
emphasis of repetition is flung on certain leading phrases,--"Fancy that,
Hedda!" "Wavy-haired Thea," "Vine-leaves in his hair," and "People don't do
such things!"

Another obvious means of emphasis in the drama is the use of
antithesis,--an expedient employed in every art. The design of a play is
not so much to expound characters as to contrast them. People of varied
views and opposing aims come nobly to the grapple in a struggle that
vitally concerns them; and the tensity of the struggle will be augmented if
the difference between the characters is marked. The comedies of Ben
Jonson, which held the stage for two centuries after their author's death,
owed their success largely to the fact that they presented a constant
contrast of mutually foiling personalities. But the expedient of antithesis
is most effectively employed in the balance of scene against scene. What is
known as "comic relief" is introduced in various plays, not only, as the
phrase suggests, to rest the sensibilities of the audience, but also to
emphasise the solemn scenes that come before and after it. It is for this
purpose that Shakespeare, in _Macbeth_, introduces a low-comic soliloquy
into the midst of a murder scene. Hamlet's ranting over the grave of
Ophelia is made more emphatic by antithesis with the foolish banter that
precede