in the drama. The dramatic author has to paint his beaches
with real sand: real live men and women move about the stage;
we hear real voices; what is feigned merely puts a sense upon
what is; we do actually see a woman go behind a screen as
Lady Teazle, and, after a certain interval, we do actually
see her very shamefully produced again. Now all these
things, that remain as they were in life, and are not
transmuted into any artistic convention, are terribly
stubborn and difficult to deal with; and hence there are for
the dramatist many resultant limitations in time and space.
These limitations in some sort approximate towards those of
painting: the dramatic author is tied down, not indeed to a
moment, but to the duration of each scene or act; he is
confined to the stage, almost as the painter is confined
within his frame. But the great restriction is this, that a
dramatic author must deal with his actors, and with his
actors alone. Certain moments of suspense, certain
significant dispositions of personages, a certain logical
growth of emotion, these are the only means at the disposal
of the playwright. It is true that, with the assistance of
the scene-painter, the costumier and the conductor of the
orchestra, he may add to this something of pageant, something
of sound and fury; but these are, for the dramatic writer,
beside the mark, and do not come under the vivifying touch of
his genius. When we turn to romance, we find this no longer.
Here nothing is reproduced to our senses directly. Not only
the main conception of the work, but the scenery, the
appliances, the mechanism by which this conception is brought
home to us, have been put through the crucible of another
man's mind, and come out again, one and all, in the form of