On this plane we have to deal with chance and
accident, coincidence, and all "circumstances over which we have no
control." For instance, the playwright who makes the "Marseillaise"
become popular throughout Paris within half-an-hour of its having left
the composer's desk, is guilty of a breach of plausibility on this
plane. So, too, if I were to make my hero enter Parliament for the first
time, and rise in a single session to be Prime Minister of
England--there would be no absolute impossibility in the feat, but it
would be a rather gross improbability of the second order. On the third
plane we come to psychological plausibility, the plausibility of events
dependent mainly or entirely on character. For example--to cite a much
disputed instance--is it plausible that Nora, in _A Doll's House_,
should suddenly develop the mastery of dialectics with which she crushes
Helmer in the final scene, and should desert her husband and children,
slamming the door behind her?
It need scarcely be said that plausibility on the third plane is vastly
the most important.
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