In the whole range of the social fabric there are only two impartial
persons, the scientist and the artist, and under the latter heading such
dramatists as desire to write not only for to-day, but for to-morrow,
must strive to come.

But dramatists being as they are made--past remedy it is perhaps more
profitable to examine the various points at which their qualities and
defects are shown.

The plot! A good plot is that sure edifice which slowly rises out of the
interplay of circumstance on temperament, and temperament on
circumstance, within the enclosing atmosphere of an idea. A human being
is the best plot there is; it may be impossible to see why he is a good
plot, because the idea within which he was brought forth cannot be fully
grasped; but it is plain that he is a good plot. He is organic. And so
it must be with a good play. Reason alone produces no good plots; they
come by original sin, sure conception, and instinctive after-power of
selecting what benefits the germ. A bad plot, on the other hand, is
simply a row of stakes, with a character impaled on each--characters who
would have liked to live, but came to untimely grief; who started
bravely, but fell on these stakes, placed beforehand in a row, and were
transfixed one by one, while their ghosts stride on, squeaking and
gibbering, through the play. Whether these stakes are made of facts or
of ideas, according to the nature of the dramatist who planted them,
their effect on the unfortunate characters is the same; the creatures
were begotten to be staked, and staked they are! The demand for a good
plot, not unfrequently heard, commonly signifies: "Tickle my sensations
by stuffing the play with arbitrary adventures, so that I need not be
troubled to take the characters seriously. Set the persons of the play
to action, regardless of time, sequence, atmosphere, and probability!"