Action after action ensues
whose mystery we can not unlock without the little key which these
barbarians have thrown away and lost. Our weariness increases in
proportion to the number of these embarrassments, and if the play
escape damnation at all it escapes in spite of that intrigue to which,
in nine cases out of ten, the author attributes his success, and which
he will persist in valuing exactly in proportion to the misapplied
labour it has cost him.
But dramas of this kind are said, in our customary parlance, to
"abound in plot." We have never yet met any one, however, who could
tell us what precise ideas he connected with the phrase. A mere
succession of incidents, even the most spirited, will no more
constitute a plot than a multiplication of zeros, even the most
infinite, will result in the production of a unit. This all will
admit- but few trouble themselves to think further. The common
notion seems be in favour of mere complexity; but a plot, properly
understood, is perfect only inasmuch as we shall find ourselves unable
to detach from it or disarrange any single incident involved,
without destruction to the mass.
This we say is the point of perfection- a point never yet
attained, but not on that account unattainable. Practically, we may
consider a plot as of high excellence, when no one of its component
parts shall be susceptible of removal without detriment to the
whole.
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