But long-drawn, unhasting, unresting machination, with no
end in view beyond an ultimate unmasking, a turn of the tables--in a
word, a strong situation--this, I take it, belongs to a phase of
existence more leisurely than ours. There is no room in our crowded
century for such large and sustained passions. One could mention
plays--but they are happily forgotten--in which retribution was delayed
for some thirty or forty years, during which the unconscious object of
it enjoyed a happy and prosperous existence. These, no doubt, are
extreme instances; but cold-storage revenge, as a whole, ought to be as
rare on the stage as it is in real life. The serious playwright will do
well to leave it to the melodramatists.
A third theme to be handled with the greatest caution, if at all, is
that of heroic self-sacrifice. Not that self-sacrifice, like revenge, is
an outworn passion. It still rages in daily life; but no audience of
average intelligence will to-day accept it with the uncritical
admiration which it used to excite in the sentimental dramas of last
century.
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