For light comedy in particular is this a desirable
form, and for romantic plays in which no very searching character-study
is attempted. _The Taming of the Shrew_ no doubt passed for a light
comedy in Shakespeare's day, though we describe it by a briefer name.
Its rapid, bustling action is possible because we are always ready to
take the character of a shrew for granted. It would have been a very
different play had the poet required to account for Katharine's
peculiarities of temper by a retrospective study of her heredity and
upbringing. Many eighteenth-century comedies are single-adventure plays,
or dual-adventure plays, in the sense that the main action sometimes
stands aside to let an underplot take the stage. Both _She Stoops to
Conquer_ and _The Rivals_ are good examples of the rapid working-out of
an intrigue, engendered, developed, and resolved all within the frame of
the picture. Single-adventure plays of a more modern type are the elder
Dumas's _Mademoiselle de Belle-Isle_, the younger Dumas's _Francillon_,
Sardou's _Divorcons_, Sir Arthur Pinero's _Gay Lord Quex_, Mr.
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