careful and properly educated critic feels justified
in using the word "construction," may be jotted down as follows:

I. The actual strength of the main incident of a play.

II. Relative strength of the main incident, in reference to the
importance of the subject; and also to the length of the play.

III. Adequacy of the story in relation to the importance and
dignity of the main incident and of the subject.

IV. Adequacy of the original motives on which the rest of the play
depends.

V. Logical sequence of events by which the main incident is
reached.

VI. Logical results of the story after the main incident is passed.

VII. The choice of the characters by which the sequence of events
is developed.

VIII. Logical, otherwise natural, use of motives in these
particular characters, in leading from one incident to another.

IX. The use of such human emotions and passions as are universally
recognized as true, without those special explanations which
belong to general fiction and not to the stage.

X. The relation of the story and incidents to the sympathies of the
audience as a collection of human beings.

XI. The relation of the story and incidents to the sympathies of
the particular audience for which the play is written; to its
knowledge and ignorance; its views of life; its social customs; and
to its political institutions, so far as they may modify its social
views, as in the case of a democracy or an aristocracy.

Minor matters--such as the use of comic relief, the relation of
dialog to action, the proper use of superfluous characters to
prevent an appearance of artificiality in the treatment, and a
thousand other details belonging to the constructive side of a
play--must also be within the critic's view; but a list of them
here would be too long for the space available. When the young
critic has made a careful study of the standard English drama, with
a special view to the proper considerations above indicated, his
opinion on the "construction" of a play will be of more or less
value to American dramatic literature.

There is, of course, no overt novelty in the theory advanced by Bronson
Howard in his address. The same theory was held by Francisque Sarcey,
who declared that all the principles of playmaking might be deduced from