Tanqueray_, by which Ellean meets
and falls in love with one of Paula's ex-lovers, has been very severely
criticized. It is certainly not one of the strong points of the play;
but, unlike the series of chances we have just been examining, it places
no excessive strain on our credulity. Such coincidences do occur in real
life; we have all of us seen or heard of them; the worst we can say of
this one is that it is neither positively good nor positively bad--a
piece of indifferent craftsmanship. On the other hand, if we turn to
_Letty_, the chance which, in the third act, leads Letchmere's party and
Mandeville's party to choose the same restaurant, seems to me entirely
justified. It is not really a coincidence at all, but one of those
everyday happenings which are not only admissible in drama, but
positively desirable, as part of the ordinary surface-texture of life.
Entirely to eliminate chance from our representation of life would be a
very unreasonable austerity. Strictly speaking, indeed, it is
impossible; for even when we have worked out an unbroken chain of
rational and commensurate causes and effects, it remains a chance, and
an unlikely chance, that chance should not have interfered with it.
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