[Footnote 5:  In all the arts, however, the very idea of craftsmanship implies some sort of external percipient, or, in other words, some sort of an audience.  In point of sheer self-expression, a child’s scrabblings with a box of crayons may deserve to rank with the most masterly canvas of Velasquez or Vermeer.  The real difference between the dramatist and other artists, is that they can be their own audience, in a sense in which he cannot.]

[Footnote 6:  Let me guard against the possibility that this might be interpreted as a sneer at The Dynasts—­a great work by a great poet.]

CHAPTER II

THE CHOICE OF A THEME

The first step towards writing a play is manifestly to choose a theme.

Even this simple statement, however, requires careful examination before we can grasp its full import.  What, in the first place, do we mean by a “theme”?  And, secondly, in what sense can we, or ought we to, “choose” one?

“Theme” may mean either of two things:  either the subject of a play, or its story.  The former is, perhaps, its proper or more convenient sense.  The theme of Romeo and Juliet is youthful love crossed by ancestral hate; the theme of Othello is jealousy; the theme of Le Tartufe is hypocrisy; the theme of Caste is fond hearts and coronets; the theme of Getting Married is getting married; the theme of Maternite is maternity.  To every play it is possible, at a pinch, to assign a theme; but in many plays it is evident that no theme expressible in abstract terms was present to the author’s mind.  Nor are these always plays of a low class.  It is only by a somewhat artificial process of abstraction that we can formulate a theme for As You Like It, for The Way of the World, or for Hedda Gabler.

The question now arises:  ought a theme, in its abstract form, to be the first germ of a play?  Ought the dramatist to say, “Go to, I will write a play on temperance, or on woman’s suffrage, or on capital and labour,” and then cast about for a story to illustrate his theme?  This is a possible, but not a promising, method of procedure.  A story made to the order of a moral concept is always apt to advertise its origin, to the detriment of its illusive quality.  If a play is to be a moral apologue at all, it is well to say so frankly—­probably in the title—­and aim, not at verisimilitude, but at neatness and appositeness in the working out of the fable.  The French proverbe proceeds on this principle, and is often very witty and charming.[1] A good example in English is A Pair of Spectacles, by Mr. Sydney Grundy, founded on a play by Labiche.  In this bright little comedy every incident and situation bears upon the general theme, and pleases us, not by its probability, but by its ingenious appropriateness.  The dramatic fable, in fact, holds very much the same rank in drama as the narrative fable holds in literature at large.  We take pleasure in them on condition that they be witty, and that they do not pretend to be what they are not.