be taught?

The reason is clear, and is so far valid as to excuse, if not to
justify, such works as the present. The novel, as soon as it is legibly
written, exists, for what it is worth. The page of black and white is
the sole intermediary between the creative and the perceptive brain.
Even the act of printing merely widens the possible appeal: it does not
alter its nature. But the drama, before it can make its proper appeal at
all, must be run through a highly complex piece of mechanism--the
theatre--the precise conditions of which are, to most beginners, a
fascinating mystery. While they feel a strong inward conviction of their
ability to master it, they are possessed with an idea, often exaggerated
and superstitious, of its technical complexities. Having, as a rule,
little or no opportunity of closely examining or experimenting with it,
they are eager to "read it up," as they might any other machine. That is
the case of the average aspirant, who has neither the instinct of the
theatre fully developed in his blood, nor such a congenital lack of that
instinct as to be wholly inapprehensive of any technical difficulties or
problems. The intelligent novice, standing between these extremes,
tends, as a rule, to overrate the efficacy of theoretical instruction,
and to expect of analytic criticism more than it has to give.

There is thus a fine opening for pedantry on the one side, and quackery
on the other, to rush in. The pedant, in this context, is he who
constructs a set of rules from metaphysical or psychological first
principles, and professes to bring down a dramatic decalogue from the
Sinai of some lecture-room in the University of Weissnichtwo. The quack,
on the other hand, is he who generalizes from the worst practices of the
most vulgar theatrical journeymen, and has no higher ambition than to
interpret the oracles of the box-office. If he succeeded in so doing,