[1] Yet again, the social position and environment of
the great Shakespearean characters is taken for granted. No time is
spent in "placing" them in a given stratum of society, or in
establishing their heredity, traditions, education, and so forth. And,
finally, the very copiousness of expression permitted by the rhetorical
Elizabethan form came to Shakespeare's aid. The modern dramatist is
hampered by all sorts of reticences. He has often to work rather in
indirect suggestion than in direct expression. He has, in short, to
submit to a hundred hampering conditions from which Shakespeare was
exempt; wherefore, even if he had Shakespeare's genius, he would find it
difficult to produce a very profound effect in a crisis worked out from
first to last before the eyes of the audience.
Nevertheless, as before stated, such a crisis has a charm of its own.
There is a peculiar interest in watching the rise and development out of
nothing, as it were, of a dramatic complication. For this class of play
(despite the Shakespearean precedents) a quiet opening is often
advisable, rather than a strong _einleitende Akkord_.
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