Where did anyone ever see a porch or peristyle of that sort?  What could be more opposed—­we will not say to the truth, for the scholastics hold it very cheap, but to probability?  The result is that everything that is too characteristic, too intimate, too local, to happen in the ante chamber or on the street-corner—­that is to say, the whole drama—­takes place in the wings.  We see on the stage only the elbows of the plot, so to speak; its hands are somewhere else.  Instead of scenes we have narrative, instead of tableaux, descriptions.  Solemn-faced characters, placed, as in the old chorus, between the drama and ourselves, tell us what is going on in the temple, in the palace, on the public square, until we are tempted many a time to call out to them:  “Indeed! then take us there!  It must be very entertaining—­a fine sight!” To which they would reply no doubt:  “It is quite possible that it might entertain or interest you, but that isn’t the question; we are the guardians of the dignity of the French Melpomene.”  And there you are!

“But,” someone will say, “this rule that you discard is borrowed from the Greek drama.”  Wherein, pray, do the Greek stage and drama resemble our stage and drama?  Moreover, we have already shown that the vast extent of the ancient stage enabled it to include a whole locality, so that the poet could, according to the exigencies of the plot, transport it at his pleasure from one part of the stage to another, which is practically equivalent to a change of stage-setting.  Curious contradiction! the Greek theatre, restricted as it was to a national and religious object, was much more free than ours, whose only object is the enjoyment, and, if you please, the instruction, of the spectator.  The reason is that the one obeys only the laws that are suited to it, while the other takes upon itself conditions of existence which are absolutely foreign to its essence.  One is artistic, the other artificial.

People are beginning to understand in our day that exact localization is one of the first elements of reality.  The speaking or acting characters are not the only ones who engrave on the minds of the spectators a faithful representation of the facts.  The place where this or that catastrophe took place becomes a terrible and inseparable witness thereof; and the absence of silent characters of this sort would make the greatest scenes of history incomplete in the drama.  Would the poet dare to murder Rizzio elsewhere than in Mary Stuart’s chamber? to stab Henri IV elsewhere than in Rue de la Ferronerie, all blocked with drays and carriages? to burn Jeanne d’Arc elsewhere than in the Vieux-Marche? to despatch the Duc de Guise elsewhere than in that chateau of Blois where his ambition roused a popular assemblage to frenzy? to behead Charles I and Louis XVI elsewhere than in those ill-omened localities whence Whitehall or the Tuileries may be seen, as if their scaffolds were appurtenances of their palaces?