Again, at one class of theatre, the author of a sporting play—­is bound to exhibit a horse-race on the stage, or he is held to have shirked his obligatory scene.  At another class of theatre, we shall have a scene, perhaps, in a box in the Grand Stand, where some Lady Gay Spanker shall breathlessly depict, from start to finish, the race which is visible to her, but invisible to the audience.  At a third class of the theatre, the “specifically dramatic effect” to be extracted from a horse-race is found in a scene in a Black-Country slum, where a group of working-men and women are feverishly awaiting the evening paper which shall bring them the result of the St. Leger, involving for some of them opulence—­to the extent, perhaps, of a L5 note—­and for others ruin.[3]

The difficulty of deciding that any one form of scene is predestined by the laws of dramatic effect is illustrated in Tolstoy’s grisly drama, The Power of Darkness.  The scene in which Nikita kills Akoulina’s child was felt to be too horrible for representation; whereupon the author wrote an alternative scene between Mitritch and Anna, which passes simultaneously with the murder scene, in an adjoining room.  The two scenes fulfil exactly the same function in the economy of the play; it can be acted with either of them, it might be acted with both; and it is impossible to say which produces the intenser or more “specifically dramatic effect.”

The fact remains, however, that there is almost always a dramatic and undramatic, a more dramatic and a less dramatic, way of doing a thing; and an author who allows us to foresee and expect a dramatic way of attaining a given end, and then chooses an undramatic or less dramatic way, is guilty of having missed the obligatory scene.  For a general discussion of what we mean by the terms “dramatic” and “undramatic” the reader may refer back to Chapter III.  Here I need only give one or two particular illustrations.

It will be remembered that one of the scenes a faire which M. Sarcey foresaw in Les Fourchambault was the encounter between the two brothers; the illegitimate Bernard and the legitimate Leopold.  It would have been quite possible, and quite natural, to let the action of the play work itself out without any such encounter; or to let the encounter take place behind the scenes; but this would have been a patent ignoring of dramatic possibilities, and M. Sarcey would have had ample reason to pour the vials of his wrath on Augier’s head.  He was right, however, in his confidence that Augier would not fail to “make” the scene.  And how did he “make” it?  The one thing inevitable about it was that the truth should be revealed to Leopold; but there were a dozen different ways in which that might have been effected.  Perhaps, in real life, Bernard would have said something to this effect:  “Young man, you are making questionable advances to a lady in whom I am interested.  I beg that you will