Aristotle indulges in an often-quoted paradox to the effect that, in drama, the probable impossible is to be preferred to the improbable possible.  With all respect, this seems to be a somewhat cumbrous way of stating the fact that plausibility is of more importance on the stage than what may be called demonstrable probability.  There is no time, in the rush of a dramatic action, for a mathematical calculation of the chances for and against a given event, or for experimental proof that such and such a thing can or cannot be done.  If a thing seem plausible, an audience will accept it without cavil; if it, seem incredible on the face of it, no evidence of its credibility will be of much avail.  This is merely a corollary from the fundamental principle that the stage is the realm of appearances; not of realities, where paste jewels are at least as effective as real ones, and a painted forest is far more sylvan than a few wilted and drooping saplings, insecurely planted upon the boards.

That is why an improbable or otherwise inacceptable incident cannot be validly defended on the plea that it actually happened:  that it is on record in history or in the newspapers.  In the first place, the dramatist can never put it on the stage as it happened.  The bare fact may be historical, but it is not the bare fact that matters.  The dramatist cannot restore it to its place in that intricate plexus of cause and effect, which is the essence and meaning of reality.  He can only give his interpretation of the fact; and one knows not how to calculate the chances that his interpretation may be a false one.  But even if this difficulty could be overcome; if the dramatist could prove that he had reproduced the event with photographic and cinematographic accuracy, his position would not thereby be improved.  He would still have failed in his peculiar task, which is precisely that of interpretation.  Not truth, but verisimilitude, is his aim; for the stage is the realm of appearances, in which intrusive realities become unreal.  There are, as I have said, incalculable chances to one that the playwright’s version of a given event will not coincide with that of the Recording Angel:  but it may be true and convincing in relation to human nature in general, in which case it will belong to the sphere of great art; or, on a lower level, it may be agreeable and entertaining without being conspicuously false to human nature, in which case it will do no harm, since it makes no pretence to historic truth.  It may be objected that the sixteenth-century public, and even, in the next century, the great Duke of Marlborough, got their knowledge of English history from Shakespeare, and the other writers of chronicle-plays.  Well, I leave it to historians to determine whether this very defective and, in great measure, false vision of the past was better or worse than none.  The danger at any rate, if danger there was, is now past and done with.  Even our generals no longer go to the theatre or to the First Folio for their history.  The dramatist may, with an easy conscience, interpret historic fact in the light of his general insight into human nature, so long as he does not so falsify the recorded event that common knowledge cries out against him.[1]