nd. Neither one nor the other
should ever forget that the one and only fundamental unity in drama,
past, present and to come, is unity of idea, and the unity of action
which gathers about that idea as surely as iron filings around the
magnetized center. The unities of time and place are conditional upon
the kind of drama aimed at, and the temporal and physical characteristic
of the theater; the Greeks obeyed them for reasons peculiar to the
Greeks, and many lands, beginning with the Romans, have imitated these
so-called laws since. But Shakespeare destroyed them for England, and
to-day, if unity of time and place are to be seen in an Ibsen play, it
simply means that, in the psychological drama he writes, time and place
are naturally restricted. But in the unity of action which means unity
of theme we have a principle which looks to the constitution of the
human mind; for the sake of that ease of attention which helps to hold
interest and produce pleasure, such unity there must be; the mind of man
(when he has one) is made that way.

There is a special reason why the intelligent play-goer must insist upon
this fundamental unity: because much in our present imaginative
literature is, as to form, in direct conflict with that appeal to a
sustained effect of unity offered by a well-wrought drama. The short
story that is all too brief, the vaudeville turn, the magazine habit of
reading a host of unrelated scamped trifles, all militate against the
habit of concentrated attention; all the more reason why it should be
cultivated.

Let me return to the thought that the dramatist, in making the theme his
own, may be tempted to present a view of life not only personal but
eccentric and vagarious to the point of insanity.

His view, to put it bluntly, may represent a crack-brained distortion of
life rather than life as it is experienced by men in general. In such a
case, and obviously, his drama will be ineffective and objectionable, in
the exact degree that it departs from what may be called broadly the
normal and the possible. As I have already asserted, distortion for
distortion, even a crazy handling of theme that is honest is to be
preferred to one consciously a deflection from belief. But the former is
not right because the latter is wrong. Both should be avoided, and will
be if the play-maker be at the same time sincere and healthily
representative in his reaction to life of humanity at large. The really
great plays, and t