To illustrate the meaning of preparation, as the word is here employed, I may perhaps be allowed to reprint a passage from a review of Mr. Israel Zangwill’s play Children of the Ghetto.[2]

“...  To those who have not read the novel, it must seem as though the mere illustrations of Jewish life entirely overlaid and overwhelmed the action.  It is not so in reality.  One who knows the story beforehand can often see that it is progressing even in scenes which seem purely episodic and unconnected either with each other or with the general scheme.  But Mr. Zangwill has omitted to provide finger-posts, if I may so express it, to show those who do not know the story beforehand whither he is leading them.  He has neglected the great art of forecasting, of keeping anticipation on the alert, which is half the secret of dramatic construction.  To forecast, without discounting, your effects—­that is all the Law and the Prophets.  In the first act of Children of the Ghetto, for instance, we see the marriage in jest of Hannah to Sam Levine, followed by the instant divorce with all its curious ceremonies.  This is amusing so far as it goes; but when the divorce is completed, the whole thing seems to be over and done with.  We have seen some people, in whom as yet we take no particular interest, enmeshed in a difficulty arising from a strange and primitive formalism in the interpretation of law; and we have seen the meshes cut to the satisfaction of all parties, and the incident to all appearance closed.  There is no finger-post to direct our anticipation on the way it should go; and those who have not read the book cannot possibly guess that this mock marriage, instantly and ceremoniously dissolved, can have any ulterior effect upon the fortunes of any one concerned.  Thus, the whole scene, however curious in itself, seems motiveless and resultless.  How the requisite finger-post was to be provided I cannot tell.  That is not my business; but a skilful dramatist would have made it his.  Then, in the second act, amid illustrations of social life in the Ghetto, we have the meeting of Hannah with David Brandon, a prettily-written scene of love-at-first-sight.  But, so far as any one can see, there is every prospect that the course of true love will run absolutely smooth.  Again we lack a finger-post to direct our interest forward; nor do we see anything that seems to bring this act into vital relation with its predecessor.  Those who have read the book know that David Brandon is a ‘Cohen,’ a priest, a descendant of Aaron, and that a priest may not marry a divorced woman.  Knowing this, we have a sense of irony, of impending disaster, which renders the love-scene of the second act dramatic.  But to those, and they must always be a majority in any given audience, who do not know this, the scene has no more dramatic quality than lies in its actual substance, which, although pretty enough, is entirely commonplace.  Not till the middle of the third act (out of four)