[Footnote 4:  The abuse of coincidence is a legacy to modern drama from the Latin comedy, which, again, was founded on the Greek New Comedy.  It is worth noting that in the days of Menander the world really was much smaller than it is to-day, when “thalassic” has grown into “oceanic” civilization.  Travellers in those days followed a few main routes; half a dozen great seaports were rendezvous for all the world; the slave-trade was active, and kidnappings and abductions with the corresponding meetings and recognitions were no doubt frequent.  Thus such a plot as that of the Menaechmi was by no means the sheer impossibility which Shakespeare made it by attaching indistinguishable Dromios to his indistinguishable Antipholuses.  To reduplicate a coincidence is in fact to multiply it by a figure far beyond my mathematics.  It may be noted, too, that the practice of exposing children, on which the Oedipus, and many plays of Menander, are founded, was common in historic Greece, and that the hapless children were generally provided with identification-tokens gnorismata.]

CHAPTER XVI

LOGIC

The term logic is often very vaguely used in relation to drama.  French writers especially, who regard logic as one of the peculiar faculties of their national genius, are apt to insist upon it in and out of season.  But, as we have already seen, logic is a gift which may easily be misapplied.  It too often leads such writers as M. Brieux and M. Hervieu to sacrifice the undulant and diverse rhythms of life to a stiff and symmetrical formalism.  The conception of a play as the exhaustive demonstration of a thesis has never taken a strong hold on the Anglo-Saxon mind; and, though some of M. Brieux’s plays are much more than mere dramatic arguments, we need not, in the main, envy the French their logician-dramatists.

But, though the presence of logic should never be forced upon the spectator’s attention, still less should he be disturbed and baffled by its conspicuous absence.  If the playwright announces a theme at all:  if he lets it be seen that some general idea underlies his work:  he is bound to present and develop that idea in a logical fashion, not to shift his ground, whether inadvertently or insidiously, and not to wander off into irrelevant side-issues.  He must face his problem squarely.  If he sets forth to prove anything at all, he must prove that thing and not some totally different thing.  He must beware of the red-herring across the trail.

For a clear example of defective logic, I turn to a French play—­Sardou’s Spiritisme.  Both from internal and from external evidence, it is certain that M. Sardou was a believer in spiritualism—­in the existence of disembodied intelligences, and their power of communicating with the living.  Yet he had not the courage to assign to them an essential part in his drama.  The spirits hover round the