The execution of _Ben Hur_ is crude and commonplace, but the
conception is by no means inartistic. Historical figures of the highest
rank may perhaps be best adumbrated in this fashion, with or without one
personal appearance, so brief that there shall be no danger of
anti-climax.
The last paragraph reminds us that the accomplished playwright shows his
accomplishment quite as much in his recognition and avoidance of the
_scene a ne pas faire_ as in his divination of the obligatory scene.
There is always the chance that no one may miss a scene demanded by
logic or psychology; but an audience knows too well when it has been
bored or distressed by a superfluous, or inconsequent, or wantonly
painful scene.
Some twenty years ago, in criticizing a play named _Le Maitre d'Armes_,
M. Sarcey took the authors gravely to task, in the name of "Aristotle
and common sense," for following the modern and reprehensible tendency
to present "slices of life" rather than constructed and developed
dramas.
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