and the ornaments of language; these, when not animated by some higher
excellence, are the least effective on the stage; but I speak of the
poetry in the spirit and design of a piece; and this may exist in as high
a degree when the drama is written in prose as in verse. What is it, then,
that makes a drama poetical? The very same, assuredly, that makes other
works so. It must in the first place be a connected whole, complete and
satisfactory within itself. But this is merely the negative definition of
a work of art, by which it is distinguished from the phenomena of nature,
which run into each other, and do not possess in themselves a complete and
independent existence. To be poetical it is necessary that a composition
should be a mirror of ideas, that is, thoughts and feelings which in their
character are necessary and eternally true, and soar above this earthly
life, and also that it should exhibit them embodied before us. What the
ideas are, which in this view are essential to the different departments
of the drama, will hereafter be the subject of our investigation. We shall
also, on the other hand, show that without them a drama becomes altogether
prosaic and empirical, that is to say, patched together by the
understanding out of the observations it has gathered from literal
reality.

But how does a dramatic work become theatrical, or fitted to appear with
advantage on the stage? In single instances it is often difficult to
determine whether a work possesses such a property or not. It is indeed
frequently the subject of great controversy, especially when the self-love
of authors and actors comes into collision; each shifts the blame of
failure on the other, and those who advocate the cause of the author
appeal to an imaginary perfection of the histrionic art, and complain of
the insufficiency of the existing means for its realization. But in
general the answer to this question is by no means so difficult. The
object proposed is to produce an impression on an assembled multitude, to