While they feel a strong inward conviction of their ability to master it, they are possessed with an idea, often exaggerated and superstitious, of its technical complexities.  Having, as a rule, little or no opportunity of closely examining or experimenting with it, they are eager to “read it up,” as they might any other machine.  That is the case of the average aspirant, who has neither the instinct of the theatre fully developed in his blood, nor such a congenital lack of that instinct as to be wholly inapprehensive of any technical difficulties or problems.  The intelligent novice, standing between these extremes, tends, as a rule, to overrate the efficacy of theoretical instruction, and to expect of analytic criticism more than it has to give.

There is thus a fine opening for pedantry on the one side, and quackery on the other, to rush in.  The pedant, in this context, is he who constructs a set of rules from metaphysical or psychological first principles, and professes to bring down a dramatic decalogue from the Sinai of some lecture-room in the University of Weissnichtwo.  The quack, on the other hand, is he who generalizes from the worst practices of the most vulgar theatrical journeymen, and has no higher ambition than to interpret the oracles of the box-office.  If he succeeded in so doing, his function would not be wholly despicable; but as he is generally devoid of insight, and as, moreover, the oracles of the box-office vary from season to season, if not from month to month, his lucubrations are about as valuable as those of Zadkiel or Old Moore.[1]

What, then, is the excuse for such a discussion as is here attempted?  Having admitted that there are no rules for dramatic composition, and that the quest of such rules is apt to result either in pedantry or quackery, why should I myself set forth upon so fruitless and foolhardy an enterprise?  It is precisely because I am alive to its dangers that I have some hope of avoiding them.  Rules there are none; but it does not follow that some of the thousands who are fascinated by the art of the playwright may not profit by having their attention called, in a plain and practical way, to some of its problems and possibilities.  I have myself felt the need of some such handbook, when would-be dramatists have come to me for advice and guidance.  It is easy to name excellent treatises on the drama; but the aim of such books is to guide the judgment of the critic rather than the creative impulse of the playwright.  There are also valuable collections of dramatic criticisms; but any practical hints that they may contain are scattered and unsystematic.  On the other hand, the advice one is apt to give to beginners—­“Go to the theatre; study its conditions and mechanism for yourself”—­is, in fact, of very doubtful value.  It might, in many cases, be wiser to warn the aspirant to keep himself unspotted from the playhouse.  To send him there is to imperil, on the one hand, his originality