just as true as _Ghosts_. I mean merely that the people whom the
dramatist has conceived must act and speak at all points consistently with
the laws of their imagined existence, and that these laws must be in
harmony with the laws of actual life. Whenever people on the stage fail of
this consistency with law, a normal theatre-goer will feel instinctively,
"Oh, no, he did _not_ do that," or, "Those are _not_ the words she said."
It may safely be predicated that a play is really bad only when the
audience does not believe it; for a dramatist is not capable of a single
fault, either technical or otherwise, that may not be viewed as one phase
or another of untruthfulness.

XI

THE EFFECT OF PLAYS UPON THE PUBLIC

In the course of his glorious _Song of the Open Road_, Walt Whitman said,
"I and mine do not convince by arguments, similes, rhymes; we convince by
our presence"; and it has always seemed to me that this remark is
peculiarly applicable to dramatists and dramas. The primary purpose of a
play is to give a gathered multitude a larger sense of life by evoking its
emotions to a consciousness of terror and pity, laughter and love. Its
purpose is not primarily to rouse the intellect to thought or call the will
to action. In so far as the drama uplifts and edifies the audience, it does
so, not by precept or by syllogism, but by emotional suggestion. It teaches
not by what it says, but rather by what it deeply and mysteriously is. It
convinces not by its arguments, but by its presence.

It follows that those who think about the drama in relation to society at
large, and consider as a matter of serious importance the effect of the
theatre on the ticket-buying public, should devote profound consideration
to that subtle quality of plays which I may call their _tone_. Since the
drama convinces less by its arguments than by its presence, less by its
intellectual substance than by its emotional suggestion, we have a right to
demand that it shall be not only moral but also sweet and healthful and
inspiriting.

After witnessing the admirable performance of Mrs. Fiske and the members of
her skilfully selected company in Henrik Ibsen's dreary and depressing
_Rosmersholm_, I went home and sought solace from a reperusal of an old
play, by the buoyant and healthy Thomas Heywood, which is sweetly named
_The Fair Maid of the West_. _Rosmersholm_ is of all the social plays of
Ibsen the least interesting to witness on the stage