good craftsman will be guided by the nature of his theme. In a broad
social study or a picturesque romance, you may have as many auxiliary
figures as you please. In a subtle comedy, or a psychological tragedy,
the essential characters should have the stage as much as possible to
themselves. In Becque's _La Parisienne_ there are only four characters
and a servant; in Rostand's _Cyrano de Bergerac_ there are fifty-four
personages named in the playbill, to say nothing of supernumeraries. In
_Peer Gynt_, a satiric phantasmagory, Ibsen introduces some fifty
individual characters, with numberless supernumeraries; in _An Enemy of
the People_, a social comedy, he has eleven characters and a crowd; for
_Ghosts_ and _Rosmersholm_, psychological tragedies, six persons apiece
are sufficient.

It can scarcely be necessary, at this time of day, to say much on the
subject of nomenclature. One does occasionally, in manuscripts of a
quite hopeless type, find the millionaire's daughter figuring as "Miss
Aurea Golden," and her poor but sprightly cousin as "Miss Lalage Gay";
but the veriest tyro realizes, as a rule, that this sort of punning
characterization went out with the eighteenth century, or survived into
the nineteenth century only as a flagrant anachronism, like
knee-breeches and hair-powder.

A curious essay might be written on the reasons why such names as Sir
John Brute, Sir Tunbelly Clumsy, Sir Peter Teazle, Sir Anthony Absolute,
Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Lord Foppington, Lord Rake, Colonel Bully,
Lovewell, Heartfree, Gripe, Shark and the rest were regarded as a matter
of course in "the comedy of manners," but have become offensive to-day,
except in deliberate imitations of the eighteenth-century style. The
explanation does not lie merely in the contrast between "conventional"
comedy and "realistic" drama. Our forefathers (whatever Lamb may say)