But no teaching or study can enable a
man to choose or invent a good story, and much less to do that which
alone lends dignity to dramatic story-telling--to observe and portray
human character. This is the aim and end of all serious drama; and it
will be apt to appear as though, in the following pages, this aim and
end were ignored. In reality it is not so. If I hold comparatively
mechanical questions of pure craftsmanship to be worth discussing, it is
because I believe that only by aid of competent craftsmanship can the
greatest genius enable his creations to live and breathe upon the stage.
The profoundest insight into human nature and destiny cannot find valid
expression through the medium of the theatre without some understanding
of the peculiar art of dramatic construction. Some people are born with
such an instinct for this art, that a very little practice renders them
masters of it. Some people are born with a hollow in their cranium where
the bump of drama ought to be.
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