Again, at one class of theatre, the author of a sporting play--is bound
to exhibit a horse-race on the stage, or he is held to have shirked his
obligatory scene. At another class of theatre, we shall have a scene,
perhaps, in a box in the Grand Stand, where some Lady Gay Spanker shall
breathlessly depict, from start to finish, the race which is visible to
her, but invisible to the audience. At a third class of the theatre, the
"specifically dramatic effect" to be extracted from a horse-race is
found in a scene in a Black-Country slum, where a group of working-men
and women are feverishly awaiting the evening paper which shall bring
them the result of the St. Leger, involving for some of them
opulence--to the extent, perhaps, of a L5 note--and for others ruin.[3]
The difficulty of deciding that any one form of scene is predestined by
the laws of dramatic effect is illustrated in Tolstoy's grisly drama,
_The Power of Darkness_. The scene in which Nikita kills Akoulina's
child was felt to be too horrible for representation; whereupon the
author wrote an alternative scene between Mitritch and Anna, which
passes simultaneously with the murder scene, in an adjoining room.
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