There is, however, one recent play of this order which holds
a certain place in dramatic literature. I do not know that Mr. Granville
Barker was well-advised in printing _The Marrying of Anne Leete_ along
with such immeasurably maturer and saner productions as _The Voysey
Inheritance_ and _Waste_; but by doing so he has served my present purpose
in providing me with a perfect example of a play as to which we cannot
tell whether it possesses plausibility of the third degree, so
absolutely does it lack that plausibility of the second degree which is
its indispensable condition precedent.
Francisque Sarcey was fond of insisting that an audience would generally
accept without cavil any postulates in reason which an author chose to
impose upon it, with regard to events supposed to have occurred before
the rise of the curtain; always provided that the consequences deduced
from them within the limits of the play were logical, plausible, and
entertaining. The public will swallow a camel, he would maintain, in the
past, though they will strain at a gnat in the present.
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