noblest part? Scarcely. It is by his blood and nerve that he lives, not
by his bones; and it is because his bones are, comparatively speaking,
dead matter that they continue to exist when the flesh has fallen away
from them. It is, therefore, if not a misreading of Aristotle,[4] at any
rate a perversion of reason, to maintain that the drama lives by action,
rather than by character. Action ought to exist for the sake of
character: when the relation is reversed, the play may be an ingenious
toy, but scarcely a vital work of art.

* * * * *

It is time now to consider just what we mean when we say that the first
step towards play-writing is the "choice" of a theme.

In many cases, no doubt, it is the plain and literal fact that the
impulse to write some play--any play--exists, so to speak, in the
abstract, unassociated with any particular subject, and that the
would-be playwright proceeds, as he thinks, to set his imagination to
work, and invent a story. But this frame of mind is to be regarded with
suspicion. Few plays of much value, one may guess, have resulted from
such an abstract impulse. Invention, in these cases, is apt to be
nothing but recollection in disguise, the shaking of a kaleidoscope
formed of fragmentary reminiscences. I remember once, in some momentary
access of ambition, trying to invent a play. I occupied several hours of
a long country walk in, as I believed, creating out of nothing at all a
dramatic story. When at last I had modelled it into some sort of
coherency, I stepped back from it in my mind, as it were, and
contemplated it as a whole. No sooner had I done so than it began to
seem vaguely familiar. "Where have I seen this story before?" I asked
myself; and it was only after cudgelling my brains for several minutes