As no two people, probably, ever did, or ever will, pursue the same
routine in play-making, it is manifestly impossible to lay down any
general rules on the subject. There are one or two considerations,
however, which it may not be wholly superfluous to suggest to beginners.

An invaluable insight into the methods of a master is provided by the
scenarios and drafts of plays published in Henrik Ibsen's _Efterladte
Skrifter_. The most important of these "fore-works," as he used to call
them, have now been translated under the title of _From Ibsen's
Workshop_ (Scribner), and may be studied with the greatest profit. Not
that the student should mechanically imitate even Ibsen's routine of
composition, which, indeed, varied considerably from play to play. The
great lesson to be learnt from Ibsen's practice is that the play should
be kept fluid or plastic as long as possible, and not suffered to become
immutably fixed, either in the author's mind or on paper, before it has
had time to grow and ripen. Many, if not most, of Ibsen's greatest
individual inspirations came to him as afterthoughts, after the play had
reached a point of development at which many authors would have held the
process of gestation ended, and the work of art ripe for birth. Among
these inspired afterthoughts may be reckoned Nora's great line,
"Millions of women have done that"--the most crushing repartee in
literature--Hedvig's threatened blindness, with all that ensues from it,
and Little Eyolf's crutch, used to such purpose as we have already seen.

This is not to say that the drawing-up of a tentative scenario ought not
to be one of the playwright's first proceedings. Indeed, if he is able
to dispense with a scenario on paper, it can only be because his mind is
so clear, and so retentive of its own ideas, as to enable him to carry