A great deal of ink has been wasted in controversy over a remark of Aristotle’s that the action or muthos, not the character or ethos, is the essential element in drama.  The statement is absolutely true and wholly unimportant.  A play can exist without anything that can be called character, but not without some sort of action.  This is implied in the very word “drama,” which means a doing, not a mere saying or existing.  It would be possible, no doubt, to place Don Quixote, or Falstaff, or Peer Gynt, on the stage, and let him develop his character in mere conversation, or even monologue, without ever moving from his chair.  But it is a truism that deeds, not words, are the demonstration and test of character; wherefore, from time immemorial, it has been the recognized business of the theatre to exhibit character in action.  Historically, too, we find that drama has everywhere originated in the portrayal of an action—­some exploit or some calamity in the career of some demigod or hero.  Thus story or plot is by definition, tradition, and practical reason, the fundamental element in drama; but does it therefore follow that it is the noblest element, or that by which its value should be measured?  Assuredly not.  The skeleton is, in a sense, the fundamental element in the human organism.  It can exist, and, with a little assistance, retain its form, when stripped of muscle and blood and nerve; whereas a boneless man would be an amorphous heap, more helpless than a jelly-fish.  But do we therefore account the skeleton man’s noblest part?  Scarcely.  It is by his blood and nerve that he lives, not by his bones; and it is because his bones are, comparatively speaking, dead matter that they continue to exist when the flesh has fallen away from them.  It is, therefore, if not a misreading of Aristotle,[4] at any rate a perversion of reason, to maintain that the drama lives by action, rather than by character.  Action ought to exist for the sake of character:  when the relation is reversed, the play may be an ingenious toy, but scarcely a vital work of art.

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It is time now to consider just what we mean when we say that the first step towards play-writing is the “choice” of a theme.

In many cases, no doubt, it is the plain and literal fact that the impulse to write some play—­any play—­exists, so to speak, in the abstract, unassociated with any particular subject, and that the would-be playwright proceeds, as he thinks, to set his imagination to work, and invent a story.  But this frame of mind is to be regarded with suspicion.  Few plays of much value, one may guess, have resulted from such an abstract impulse.  Invention, in these cases, is apt to be nothing but recollection in disguise, the shaking of a kaleidoscope formed of fragmentary reminiscences.  I remember once, in some momentary access of ambition, trying to invent a play.  I occupied several hours of a long country