The
dramatist having little time in which to evolve his story, feels that
every scene which does not forward the progress of the action or
intensify the interest in the characters is an artistic defect; though
in itself it may be charmingly written, and may excite applause, it is
away from his immediate purpose. And what is true of purposeless scenes
and characters which divert the current of progress, is equally true,
in a minor degree, of speeches and sentences which arrest the
culminating interest by calling attention away to other objects. It is
an error which arises from a deficient earnestness on the writer's
part, or from a too pliant facility. The DRAMATIS PERSONAE wander in
their dialogue, not swayed by the fluctuations of feeling, but by the
author's desire to show his wit and wisdom, or else by his want of
power to control the vagrant suggestions of his fancy. The desire for
display and the inability to control are weaknesses that lead to almost
every transgression of Simplicity; but sometimes the transgressions are
made in more or less conscious obedience to the law of Variety,
although the highest reach of art is to secure variety by an opulent
simplicity.
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