Throughout a whole act it held us
spellbound, while the story of the play stood still, and we forgot its
existence. It was only within a few minutes of the end, when the story
was dragged in neck and crop, that the reality of the thing vanished,
and the interest with it.
* * * * *
If an abstract theme be not an advisable starting-point, what is? A
character? A situation? Or a story? On this point it would be absurd to
lay down any rule; the more so as, in many cases, a playwright is quite
unable to say in what form the germ of a play first floated into his
mind. The suggestion may come from a newspaper paragraph, from an
incident seen in the street, from an emotional adventure or a comic
misadventure, from a chance word dropped by an acquaintance, or from
some flotsam or jetsam of phrase or fable that has drifted from the
other end of history. Often, too, the original germ, whatever it may be,
is transformed beyond recognition before a play is done.
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