only thirty-six possible tragic situations, and that Schiller had taken
much trouble in trying to prove that there were more, only in the end to
find himself unable to gather even so many as Gozzi had collected. "It
is almost impossible, in the present day," commented Goethe, "to find a
situation which is thoroly new. Only the manner of looking at it can be
new, and the art of treating it and representing it."

Unfortunately, we have not Gozzi's list of the three dozen situations,
nor Schiller's smaller catalog to compare with it. Gérard de
Nerval--that strangest figure of a strange period--considered the matter
anew in the fervid days of French romanticism, and decided that there
were in reality only twenty-four typical situations available for the
theater; but his classification has also failed to come down to us.
However, in the last decade of the nineteenth century an ingenious
Frenchman, M. Georges Polti, accepting the number originally proposed by
Gozzi, examined the plots of several thousand plays, classified the
result of his arduous investigation, and published a little book of two
hundred pages on the '36 Situations Dramatiques.'

Highly interesting as is M. Polti's book, there is not a little
difficulty in grasping the theory upon which he has assorted his immense
collection into exactly three dozen divisions. The logic of his grouping
is not immediately apparent, as it would have been had he taken the
passions, for instance, as the several foundations. His first situation,
for example, is that which we find in one of the earliest of Greek
plays, the 'Suppliants.' M. Polti entitles it 'To Implore,' and he
indicates varying possible subdivisions: (A1) Fugitives imploring
shelter against their enemies, as in the tragedy of Æschylus, the second
act of Shakspere's 'King John,' and repeatedly in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin';
(B1) the ship-wrecked imploring hospitality, as in more than one ancient