eve. From the point of view of its own period,
_The Maid's Tragedy_ of Beaumont and Fletcher is undoubtedly one of the
very greatest of Elizabethan plays; but it would be ineffective in the
modern theatre, because it presupposes a principle which a contemporary
audience would not accept. It was devised for an audience of aristocrats in
the reign of James I, and the dramatic struggle is founded upon the
doctrine of the divine right of kings. Amintor, in the play, has suffered a
profound personal injury at the hands of his sovereign; but he cannot
avenge this individual disgrace, because he is a subject of the royal
malefactor. The crisis and turning-point of the entire drama is a scene in
which Amintor, with the king at his mercy, lowers his sword with the
words:--

But there is
Divinity about you, that strikes dead
My rising passions: as you are my king,
I fall before you, and present my sword
To cut mine own flesh, if it be your will.

We may imagine the applause of the courtiers of James Stuart, the
Presumptuous; but never since the Cromwellian revolution has that scene
been really effective on the English stage. In order fully to appreciate a
dramatic struggle, an audience must sympathise with the motives that
occasion it.

It should now be evident, as was suggested at the outset, that all the
leading principles of the theory of the theatre may be deduced logically
from the axiom which was stated in the first sentence of this chapter; and
that axiom should constantly be borne in mind as the basis of all our
subsequent discussions. But in view of several important points which have
already come up for consideration, it may be profitable, before
relinquishing our initial question, to redefine a play more fully in the
following terms:--

A play is a representation, by actors, on a stage, before an audience, of a
struggle between individual human wills, motivated by emotion rather than
by intellect, and expressed in terms of objective action.

II

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THEATRE AUDIENCES

I

The drama is the only art, excepting oratory and certain forms of music,
that is designed to appeal to a crowd instead of to an individual. The
lyric poet writes for himself, and for such selected persons here and there
throughout the world as may be wisely sympathetic enough to understand his
musings. The essayist and the novelist write for a reader sitting alone in
his librar