Niceties of language in especial are keenly, and often
unjustly, criticized. If a particular expression does not happen to be
current in the critic's own circle, he concludes that nobody uses it,
and that the author is a pedant or a vulgarian. In view of this
inevitable tendency, the prudent dramatist will try to keep out of his
dialogue expressions that are peculiar to his own circle, and to use
only what may be called everybody's English, or the language undoubtedly
current throughout the whole class to which his personage belongs.
It may be here pointed out that there are three different planes on
which plausibility may or may not, be achieved. There is first the
purely external plane, which concerns the producer almost as much as the
playwright. On this plane we look for plausibility of costume, of
manners, of dialect, of general environment. Then we have plausibility
of what may be called uncharacteristic event--of such events as are
independent of the will of the characters, and are not conditioned by
their psychology.
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