Let us now determine definitely what a playlet plot is, consider its structural elements and then take one of the fine examples of a playlet in the Appendix and see how its plot is constructed.

The plot of a playlet is its story.  It is the general outline, the plan, the skeleton which is covered by the flesh of the characters and clothed by their words.  If the theme or problem is the heart that beats with life, then the scenery amid which the animated body moves is its habitation, and the dramatic spirit is the soul that reveals meaning in the whole.

To hazard a definition: 

A playlet plot is a sequence of events logically developed out of a theme or problem, into a crisis or entanglement due to a conflict of the characters’ wills, and then logically untangled again, leaving the characters in a different relation to each other—­changed in themselves by the crisis.

Note that a mere series of incidents does not make a plot—­the presence of crisis is absolutely necessary to plot.  If the series of events does not develop a complication that changes the characters in themselves and in their relations to each other, there can be no plot.  If this is so, let us now take the sequence of events that compose the story of “The Lollard” [1] and see what constitutes them a plot.  I shall not restate its story, only repeat it in the examination of its various points [2].

[1] Edgar Allan Woolf’s fine satirical comedy to be found in the Appendix.

[2] As a side light, you see how a playlet theme differs from a playlet plot.  You will recall that in the chapter on “The Germ Idea,” the theme of The Lollard was thus stated in terms of a playlet problem:  “A foolish young woman may leave her husband because she has ‘found him out,’ yet return to him when she discovers that another man is no better than he is.”  Compare this brief statement with the full statement of the plot given hereafter.

The coming of Angela Maxwell to Miss Carey’s door at 2 A.M.—­unusual as is the hour—­is just an event; the fact that Angela has left her husband, Harry, basic as it is, is but little more than an event; the entrance of the lodger, Fred Saltus, is but another event, and even Harry Maxwell’s coming in search of his wife is merely an event—­for if Harry had sat down and argued Angela out of her pique, even though Fred were present, there would have been no complication, save for the cornerstone motive of her having left him.  If this sequence of events forms merely a mildly interesting narrative, what, then, is the complication that weaves them into a plot?

The answer is, in Angela’s falling in love with Fred’s broad shoulders, wealth of hair and general good looks—­this complication develops the crisis out of Harry’s wanting Angela.  If Harry hadn’t cared, there would have been no drama—­the drama comes from Harry’s wanting Angela when Angela wants Fred; Angela wants something that runs counter to Harry’s will—­there is the clash of wills out of which flashes the dramatic.