of their liver. In this average process of financial decline, there may
be--there has been--matter for many excellent novels, but scarcely for a
drama. That admirable chapter in _Little Dorrit,_ wherein Dickens
describes the gradual degradation of the Father of the Marshalsea, shows
how a master of fiction deals with such a subject; but it would be quite
impossible to transfer this chapter to the stage. So, too, with the
bankruptcy of Colonel Newcome--certain emotional crises arising from it
have, indeed, been placed on the stage, but only after all Thackeray's
knowledge of the world and fine gradations of art had been eliminated.
Mr. Hardy's _Mayor of Casterbridge_ has, I think, been dramatized, but
not, I think, with success. A somewhat similar story of financial ruin,
the grimly powerful _House with the Green Shutters_, has not even
tempted the dramatiser. There are, in this novel, indeed, many
potentially dramatic crises; the trouble is that they are too numerous
and individually too small to be suitable for theatrical presentment.
Moreover, they are crises affecting a taciturn and inarticulate race,[3]
a fact which places further difficulties in the way of the playwright.
In all these cases, in short, the bankruptcy portrayed is a matter of
slow development, with no great outstanding moments, and is consequently
suited for treatment in fiction rather than in drama.

But bankruptcy sometimes occurs in the form of one or more sudden, sharp
crises, and has, therefore, been utilized again and again as a dramatic
motive. In a hundred domestic dramas or melodramas, we have seen the
head of a happy household open a newspaper or a telegram announcing the
failure of some enterprise in which all his fortune is embarked. So
obviously dramatic is this incident that it has become sadly hackneyed.
Again, we have bankruptcy following upon a course of gambling, generally
in stocks. Here there is evident opportunity, which has been frequently
utilized, for a series of crises of somewhat violent and commonplace