[Footnote 5:  He was, in the first draft; and Lona Hessel was only a distant relative of Bernick’s.]

[Footnote 6:  The Greeks, who knew most things, knew the value of manageable dimensions and simple structure in a work of art, and had a word to express that combination of qualities—­the word eusynopton.]

CHAPTER IX

“CURIOSITY” AND “INTEREST”

The paradox of dramatic theory is this:  while our aim is, of course, to write plays which shall achieve immortality, or shall at any rate become highly popular, and consequently familiar in advance to a considerable proportion of any given audience, we are all the time studying how to awaken and to sustain that interest, or, more precisely, that curiosity, which can be felt only by those who see the play for the first time, without any previous knowledge of its action.  Under modern conditions especially, the spectators who come to the theatre with their minds an absolute blank as to what is awaiting them, are comparatively few; for newspaper criticism and society gossip very soon bruit abroad a general idea of the plot of any play which attains a reasonable measure of success.  Why, then, should we assume, in the ideal spectator to whom we address ourselves, a state of mind which, we hope and trust, will not be the state of mind of the majority of actual spectators?

To this question there are several answers.  The first and most obvious is that to one audience, at any rate, every play must be absolutely new, and that it is this first-night audience which in great measure determines its success or failure.  Many plays have survived a first-night failure, and still more have gone off in a rapid decline after a first-night success.  But these caprices of fortune are not to be counted on.  The only prudent course is for the dramatist to direct all his thought and care towards conciliating or dominating an audience to which his theme is entirely unknown,[1] and so coming triumphant through his first-night ordeal.  This principle is subject to a certain qualification in the case of historic and legendary themes.  In treating such subjects, the dramatist is not relieved of the necessity of developing his story clearly and interestingly, but has, on the contrary, an additional charge imposed upon him—­that of not flagrantly defying or disappointing popular knowledge or prejudice.  Charles I must not die in a green old age, Oliver Cromwell must not display the manners and graces of Sir Charles Grandison, Charles II must not be represented as a model of domestic virtue.  Historians may indict a hero or whitewash a villain at their leisure; but to the dramatist a hero must be (more or less) a hero, a villain (more or less) a villain, if accepted tradition so decrees it.[2] Thus popular knowledge can scarcely be said to lighten a dramatist’s task, but rather to impose a new limitation upon him.  In some cases, however, he can rely on a general knowledge