oth in content and in method between novelistic and
dramatic fiction, because the latter is produced under special
conditions which impose definite limitations upon the author. A
drama is, in essence, a story devised to be presented by actors on a
stage before an audience. The dramatist, therefore, works ever
under the sway of three influences to which the novelist is not
submitted:--namely, the temperament of the actors by whom his plays
are to be performed, the physical conditions of the theatre in which
they are to be produced, and the psychologic nature of the audience
before which they are to be presented. The combined force of these
three external influences upon the dramatist accounts for all of
the essential differences between the drama and the novel.

=1. Influence of the Actor.=--First of all, because of the influence
of his actors, the dramatist is obliged to draw character through
action, and to eliminate from his work almost every other means of
characterization. He must therefore select from life such moments as
are active rather than passive. His characters must constantly be
doing something; they may not pause for careful contemplation.
Consequently the novelist has a wider range of subject than the
dramatist, because he is able to consider life more calmly, and to
concern himself, if need be, with thoughts and feelings that do not
translate themselves into action. In depicting objective events in
which the element of action is paramount, the drama is more
immediate and vivid; but the novel may depict subjective events
which are quite beyond the presentation of actors in a theatre.
Furthermore, since he is not obliged to think of actors, the
novelist has a greater freedom in creating characters than the
dramatist. The great characters of the drama have been devised by
playwrights who have already attained command of the theatre of
their place and time, and who therefore have fashioned their parts to
fit the individual actors they have found ready to perform them.
Consequently they have endowed their characters with the physical, and
even to some extent the mental, characteristics of certain actual
actors. M. Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac is not merely Cyrano, but
also Constant Coquelin; Sardou's La Tosca is not merely La Tosca, but
also Mme. Sarah Bernhardt; Moliere's Celimene is not merely Celimene,
but also Mlle. Moliere; Shakespeare's Hamlet is not merely Hamlet,
but also Richard Burbage. In working