" The
author may object that such criticism would end in paralysing the
playwright, and that, if men always profited by the lessons of the
stage, the world would long ago have become so wise that there would be
no more room in it for drama, which lives on human folly. "You will tell
me next," he may say, "that I must not make groundless jealousy the
theme of a play, because every one who has seen Othello would at once
detect the machinations of an Iago!" The retort is logically specious,
but it mistakes the point. It would certainly be rash to put any limit
to human gullibility, or to deny that Sir William Saumarez, in the given
situation, might conceivably be hoodwinked. The question is not one of
psychology but of theatrical expediency: and the point is that when a
situation is at once highly improbable in real life and exceedingly
familiar on the stage, we cannot help mentally caricaturing it as it
proceeds, and are thus prevented from lending it the provisional
credence on which interest and emotion depend.
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