that:  “An old man, seated in his armchair, waiting patiently, with his lamp beside him—­submitting with bent head to the presence of his soul and his destiny—­motionless as he is, does yet live in reality a deeper, more human, and more universal life than the lover who strangles his mistress, the captain who conquers in battle, or the husband who ‘avenges his honour.’” They do not observe that Maeterlinck, in his own practice, constantly deals with crises, and often with violent and startling ones.

At the same time, I am far from suggesting that the reaction against the traditional “dramatic” is a wholly mistaken movement.  It is a valuable corrective of conventional theatricalism; and it has, at some points, positively enlarged the domain of dramatic art.  Any movement is good which helps to free art from the tyranny of a code of rules and definitions.  The only really valid definition of the dramatic is:  Any representation of imaginary personages which is capable of interesting an average audience assembled in a theatre.  We must say “representation of imaginary personages” in order to exclude a lecture or a prize-fight; and we must say “an average audience” (or something to that effect) in order to exclude a dialogue of Plato or of Landor, the recitation of which might interest a specially selected public.  Any further attempt to limit the content of the term “dramatic” is simply the expression of an opinion that such-and-such forms of representation will not be found to interest an audience; and this opinion may always be rebutted by experiment.  In all that I have said, then, as to the dramatic and the non-dramatic, I must be taken as meaning:  “Such-and-such forms and methods have been found to please, and will probably please again.  They are, so to speak, safer and easier than other forms and methods.  But it is the part of original genius to override the dictates of experience, and nothing in these pages is designed to discourage original genius from making the attempt.”  We have already seen, indeed, that in a certain type of play—­the broad picture of a social phenomenon or environment—­it is preferable that no attempt should be made to depict a marked crisis.  There should be just enough story to afford a plausible excuse for raising and for lowering the curtain.[7]

Let us not, however, seem to grant too much to the innovators and the quietists.  To say that a drama should be, or tends to be, the presentation of a crisis in the life of certain characters, is by no means to insist on a mere arbitrary convention.  It is to make at once an induction from the overwhelming majority of existing dramas, and a deduction from the nature and inherent conditions of theatrical presentation.  The fact that theatrical conditions often encourage a violent exaggeration of the characteristically dramatic elements in life does not make these elements any the less real or any the less characteristically dramatic.  It is true that crispness of handling may easily degenerate