It would have
been a painful, a delicate, a difficult scene, but it was the obligatory
scene of the play; and had we been allowed clearly to foresee it at the
end of the second act, our interest would have been decisively carried
forward. The scene, too, might have given the play a moral relevance
which in fact it lacks. The readjustment of Agatha's scheme of things,
so as to make room for her mother's history, might have been made
explicit and partly intellectual, instead of implicit, inarticulate and
wholly emotional.
This case, then, clearly falls under our second heading. We cannot say
that it is the logic of the theme which demands the scene, for no thesis
or abstract idea is enunciated. Nor can we say that the course of events
is unnatural or improbable; our complaint is that, without being at all
less natural, they might have been highly dramatic, and that in fact
they are not so.
In a very different type of play, we find another example of the
ignoring of a dramatically obligatory scene.
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