In those countries where the play has
succeeded, I cannot but suspect that the appeal it made was not wholly
to the higher instincts of the public.]
[Footnote 3: I am not sure what was the precise relationship of this
play to the same author's _Beau Brummel_. D'Orsay's death scene was
certainly a repetition of Brummel's.]
_CHAPTER XXI_
THE FULL CLOSE
In an earlier chapter, I have tried to show that a certain tolerance for
anticlimax, for a fourth or fifth act of calm after the storm of the
penultimate act, is consonant with right reason, and is a practically
inevitable result of a really intimate relation between drama and life.
But it would be a complete misunderstanding of my argument to suppose
that I deny the practical, and even the artistic, superiority of those
themes in which the tension can be maintained and heightened to the
very end.
The fact that tragedy has from of old been recognized as a higher form
than comedy is partly due, no doubt, to the tragic poet's traditional
right to round off a human destiny in death.
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