ference
between the novel and the play, and that difference (to which I shall
come later) is not the difference which would be generally named as
distinguishing the play from the novel. The apparent differences are
superficial, and are due chiefly to considerations of convenience.

Whether in a play or in a novel the creative artist has to tell a
story--using the word story in a very wide sense. Just as a novel is
divided into chapters, and for a similar reason, a play is divided into
acts. But neither chapters nor acts are necessary. Some of Balzac's
chief novels have no chapter-divisions, and it has been proved that a
theatre audience can and will listen for two hours to "talk," and even
recitative singing, on the stage, without a pause. Indeed, audiences,
under the compulsion of an artist strong and imperious enough, could, I
am sure, be trained to marvellous feats of prolonged receptivity.
However, chapters and acts are usual, and they involve the same
constructional processes on the part of the artist. The entire play or
novel must tell a complete story--that is, arouse a curiosity and
reasonably satisfy it, raise a main question and then settle it. And
each act or other chief division must tell a definite portion of the
story, satisfy part of the curiosity, settle part of the question. And
each scene or other minor division must do the same according to its
scale. Everything basic that applies to the technique of the novel
applies equally to the technique of the play.

In particular, I would urge that a play, any more than a novel, need not
be dramatic, employing the term as it is usually employed. In so far as
it suspends the listener's interest, every tale, however told, may be
said to be dramatic. In this sense _The Golden Bowl_ is dramatic; so are
_Dominique_ and _Persuasion_. A play need not be more dramatic than
that. Very emphatically a play need not be dramatic in the stage sense.
It need never induce interest to the degree of excitement. It need have
nothing that resembles what would be recognisable in the theatre as a
situation. It may amble on--and it will still be a play, and it may
succeed in pleasing either the fastidious hundreds or the unfastidious
hundreds of thousands, according to the talent of the author. Without
doubt mandarins will continue for about a century yet to excommunicate
certain plays from the category of plays. But nobody will be any the
worse. And dramatists will go on proving th