If the maker of a dictionary, [1] hampered by space restrictions, finds it necessary to define “dramatic” by the word “theatrical,” we may safely assume that theatrical effect has a foundation in the very heart of man.  How many times have you heard someone say of another’s action, “Oh, he did that just for theatrical effect”?  Instantly you knew that the speaker was accusing the other of a desire to impress you by a carefully calculated action, either of the fineness of his own character or of the necessity and righteousness of your doing what he suggested so forcefully.  We need not go back several thousand years to Aristotle to determine what is dramatic.  In the promptings of our own hearts we can find the answer. [2]

[1] Webster’s Dictionary was chosen because it is, historically, closely associated with American life, and therefore would seem to reflect the best American thought upon the peculiar form of our own drama.

[2] Shelley, in his preface to Cenci, says:  “The highest moral purpose aimed at in the highest species of the drama is the teaching of the human heart, through its sympathies and antipathies, the knowledge of itself.”

What is dramatic, is not what falls out as things ordinarily occur in life’s flow of seemingly disconnected happenings; it is what occurs with precision and purpose, and with results which are eventually recognizable as being far beyond the forces that show upon its face.  In an illuminating flash that reveals character, we comprehend what led up to that instant and what will follow.  It is the revealing flash that is dramatic.  Drama is a series of revealing flashes.

“This is not every-day life,” we say, “but typical life—­life as it would be if it were compactly ordered—­life purposeful, and leading surely to an evident somewhere.”

And, as man’s heart beats high with hope and ever throbs with justice, those occurrences that fall out as he would wish them are the ones he loves the best; in this we find the reason for “poetic justice”—­the “happy ending.”  For, as “man is of such stuff as dreams are made of,” so are his plays made of his dreams.  Here is the foundation of what is dramatic.

Yet, the dramatic ending may be unhappy, if it rounds the play out with big and logical design.  Death is not necessarily poignantly sad upon the stage, because death is life’s logical end.  And who can die better than he who dies greatly? [1] Defeat, sorrow and suffering have a place as exquisitely fitting as success, laughter and gladness, because they are inalienable elements of life.  Into every life a little sadness must come, we know, and so the lives of our stage-loves may be “draped with woe,” and we but love them better.

[1] “The necessity that tragedy and the serious drama shall possess an element of greatness or largeness—­call it nobility, elevation, what you will—­has always been recognized.  The divergence has come when men have begun to say what they meant by that quality, and—­which is much the same thing—­how it is to be attained.  Even Aristotle, when he begins to analyze methods, sounds, at first hearing, a little superficial.”  Elizabeth Woodbridge, The Drama, pp. 23-24.