Style, in prose drama, is the sifting
of common speech.
It is true, however, that, with equal concentration and equal
naturalness, one man may give his work a beauty of cadence and phrasing
which another man may entirely miss. Two recent writers of English
dramatic prose have stood out from their fellows in respect of the sheer
beauty of their style--I need scarcely name Oscar Wilde and J.M. Synge.
But Wilde's dialogue can by no means be called free from mannerism,[1]
while Synge wrote in a language which had a music of its own, even
before his genius took hold of it.
It does not seem very profitable to try to concentrate into a definition
the distinctive qualities of dramatic dialogue. The late Mrs. Craigie
("John Oliver Hobbes") attempted to do so in the preface to a charming
play, _The Ambassador_; and the result at any rate the sequel--was that
her next play, _The Wisdom of the Wise_, was singularly self-conscious
and artificial. She found in "emotion" the test of dramatic quality in
any given utterance.
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