In a sense, this is undoubtedly true.  We see every day that a mere story-play—­a play which appeals to us solely by reason of the adroit stimulation and satisfaction of curiosity—­very rapidly exhausts its success.  No one cares to see it a second time; and spectators who happen to have read the plot in advance, find its attraction discounted even on a first hearing.  But if we jump to the conclusion that the skilful marshalling and development of the story is an unimportant detail, which matters little when once the first-night ordeal is past, we shall go very far astray.  Experience shows us that dramatic interest is entirely distinct from mere curiosity, and survives when curiosity is dead.  Though a skilfully-told story is not of itself enough to secure long life for a play, it materially and permanently enhances the attractions of a play which has other and higher claims to longevity.  Character, poetry, philosophy, atmosphere, are all very good in their way; but they all show to greater advantage by aid of a well-ordered fable.  In a picture, I take it, drawing is not everything; but drawing will always count for much.

This separation of interest from curiosity is partly explicable by one very simple reflection.  However well we may know a play beforehand, we seldom know it by heart or nearly by heart; so that, though we may anticipate a development in general outline, we do not clearly foresee the ordering of its details, which, therefore, may give us almost the same sort of pleasure that it gave us when the story was new to us.  Most playgoers will, I think, bear me out in saying that we constantly find a great scene or act to be in reality richer in invention and more ingenious in arrangement than we remembered it to be.

We come, now, to another point that must not be overlooked.  It needs no subtle introspection to assure us that we, the audience, do our own little bit of acting, and instinctively place ourselves at the point of view of a spectator before whose eyes the drama is unrolling itself for the first time.  If the play has any richness of texture, we have many sensations that he cannot have.  We are conscious of ironies and subtleties which necessarily escape him, or which he can but dimly divine.  But in regard to the actual development of the story, we imagine ourselves back into his condition of ignorance, with this difference, that we can more fully appreciate the dramatist’s skill, and more clearly resent his clumsiness or slovenliness.  Our sensations, in short, are not simply conditioned by our knowledge or ignorance of what is to come.  The mood of dramatic receptivity is a complex one.  We instinctively and without any effort remember that the dramatist is bound by the rules of the game, or, in other words, by the inherent conditions of his craft, to unfold his tale before an audience to which it is unknown; and it is with implicit reference to these conditions that we enjoy and appreciate his