However dissimilar in its nature and circumstances, this
incident is comparable with the death of Othello, inasmuch as in each
case the poet, by a supreme felicity of invention, has succeeded in
doing a given thing in absolutely the most dramatic method conceivable.
Here we recognize in a consummate degree what has been called the
"fingering of the dramatist"; and I know not how better to express the
common quality of the two incidents than in saying that each is touched
with extraordinary crispness, so as to give to what in both cases has
for some time been expected and foreseen a sudden thrill of novelty and
unexpectedness. That is how to do a thing dramatically.[6]
And now, after all this discussion of the "dramatic" in theme and
incident, it remains to be said that the tendency of recent theory, and
of some recent practice, has been to widen the meaning of the word,
until it bursts the bonds of all definition. Plays have been written,
and have found some acceptance, in which the endeavour of the dramatist
has been to depict life, not in moments of crisis, but in its most level
and humdrum phases, and to avoid any crispness of touch in the
presentation of individual incidents.
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