that I found I had re-invented Ibsen's _Hedda Gabler_. Thus, when we
think we are choosing a plot out of the void, we are very apt to be, in
fact, ransacking the store-house of memory. The plot which chooses us
is much more to be depended upon--the idea which comes when we least
expect it, perhaps from the most unlikely quarter, clamours at the gates
of birth, and will not let us rest till it be clothed in dramatic flesh
and blood.[5] It may very well happen, of course, that it has to
wait--that it has to be pigeon-holed for a time, until its due turn
comes.[6] Occasionally, perhaps, it may slip out of its pigeon-hole for
an airing, only to be put back again in a slightly more developed form.
Then at last its convenient season will arrive, and the play will be
worked out, written, and launched into the struggle for life. In the
sense of selecting from among a number of embryonic themes stored in his
mind, the playwright has often to make a deliberate choice; but when,
moved by a purely abstract impulse, he goes out of set purpose to look
for a theme, it may be doubted whether he is likely to return with any
very valuable treasure-trove.[7]

The same principle holds good in the case of the ready-made poetic or
historical themes, which are--rightly or wrongly--considered suitable
for treatment in blank verse. Whether, and how far, the blank verse
drama can nowadays be regarded as a vital and viable form is a question
to be considered later. In the meantime it is sufficient to say that
whatever principles of conception and construction apply to the modern
prose drama, apply with equal cogency to the poetic drama. The
verse-poet may perhaps take one or two licenses denied to the
prose-poet. For instance, we may find reason to think the soliloquy more
excusable in verse than in prose. But fundamentally, the two forms are
ruled by the same set of conditions, which the verse-poet, no less than
the prose-poet, can ignore only at his peril. Unless, indeed, he