of Colonel Newcome—­certain emotional crises arising from it have, indeed, been placed on the stage, but only after all Thackeray’s knowledge of the world and fine gradations of art had been eliminated.  Mr. Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge has, I think, been dramatized, but not, I think, with success.  A somewhat similar story of financial ruin, the grimly powerful House with the Green Shutters, has not even tempted the dramatiser.  There are, in this novel, indeed, many potentially dramatic crises; the trouble is that they are too numerous and individually too small to be suitable for theatrical presentment.  Moreover, they are crises affecting a taciturn and inarticulate race,[3] a fact which places further difficulties in the way of the playwright.  In all these cases, in short, the bankruptcy portrayed is a matter of slow development, with no great outstanding moments, and is consequently suited for treatment in fiction rather than in drama.

But bankruptcy sometimes occurs in the form of one or more sudden, sharp crises, and has, therefore, been utilized again and again as a dramatic motive.  In a hundred domestic dramas or melodramas, we have seen the head of a happy household open a newspaper or a telegram announcing the failure of some enterprise in which all his fortune is embarked.  So obviously dramatic is this incident that it has become sadly hackneyed.  Again, we have bankruptcy following upon a course of gambling, generally in stocks.  Here there is evident opportunity, which has been frequently utilized, for a series of crises of somewhat violent and commonplace emotion.  In American drama especially, the duels of Wall Street, the combats of bull and bear, form a very popular theme, which clearly falls under the Brunetiere formula.  Few American dramatists can resist the temptation of showing some masterful financier feverishly watching the “ticker” which proclaims him a millionaire or a beggar.  The “ticker” had not been invented in the days when Ibsen wrote The League of Youth, otherwise he would doubtless have made use of it in the fourth act of that play.  The most popular of all Bjoernson’s plays is specifically entitled A Bankruptcy.  Here the poet has had the art to select a typical phase of business life, which naturally presents itself in the form of an ascending curve, so to speak, of emotional crises.  We see the energetic, active business man, with a number of irons in the fire, aware in his heart that he is insolvent, but not absolutely clear as to his position, and hoping against hope to retrieve it.  We see him give a great dinner-party, in order to throw dust in the eyes of the world, and to secure the support of a financial magnate, who is the guest of honour.  The financial magnate is inclined to “bite,” and goes off, leaving the merchant under the impression that he is saved.  This is an interesting and natural, but scarcely a thrilling, crisis.  It does not, therefore, discount the supreme crisis of