Plausibility, then, not abstract or concrete probability, and still less literal faithfulness to recorded fact, is what the dramatist is bound to aim at.  To understand this as a belittling of his art is to misunderstand the nature of art in general.  The plausibility of bad art is doubtless contemptible and may be harmful.  But to say that good art must be plausible is only to say that not every sort of truth, or every aspect of truth, is equally suitable for artistic representation—­or, in more general terms, that the artist, without prejudice to his allegiance to nature, must respect the conditions of the medium in which he works.

Our standards of plausibility, however, are far from being invariable.  To each separate form of art, a different standard is applicable.  In what may roughly be called realistic art, the terms plausible and probable are very nearly interchangeable.  Where the dramatist appeals to the sanction of our own experience and knowledge, he must not introduce matter against which our experience and knowledge cry out.  A very small inaccuracy in a picture which is otherwise photographic will often have a very disturbing effect.  In plays of society in particular, the criticism “No one does such things,” is held by a large class of playgoers to be conclusive and destructive.  One has known people despise a play because Lady So-and-so’s manner of speaking to her servants was not what they (the cavillers) were accustomed to.  On the other hand, one has heard a whole production highly applauded because the buttons on a particular uniform were absolutely right.  This merely means that when an effort after literal accuracy is apparent, the attention of the audience seizes on the most trifling details and is apt to magnify their importance.  Niceties of language in especial are keenly, and often unjustly, criticized.  If a particular expression does not happen to be current in the critic’s own circle, he concludes that nobody uses it, and that the author is a pedant or a vulgarian.  In view of this inevitable tendency, the prudent dramatist will try to keep out of his dialogue expressions that are peculiar to his own circle, and to use only what may be called everybody’s English, or the language undoubtedly current throughout the whole class to which his personage belongs.

It may be here pointed out that there are three different planes on which plausibility may or may not, be achieved.  There is first the purely external plane, which concerns the producer almost as much as the playwright.  On this plane we look for plausibility of costume, of manners, of dialect, of general environment.  Then we have plausibility of what may be called uncharacteristic event—­of such events as are independent of the will of the characters, and are not conditioned by their psychology.  On this plane we have to deal with chance and accident, coincidence, and all “circumstances over which we have no control.”  For instance, the playwright who makes the “Marseillaise”