Note 100 — JOURNAL. (continued 7)

Among the many signs of the total decay of dramatic mind and spirit in this age, a frequent piece of criticism passed upon modern plays appears to me a very conclusive one—"Such a play is exceedingly full of dramatic effect, but there's no poetry in it." "Such a playwright understands situation and character, but really, reading his plays, you find no poetry in them." I have heard this bright comment passed repeatedly upon the best dramatic composition of modern times,—the Hunchback; a play whose immense popularity every where is the surest and truest warrant of its excellence,—a play containing the most dramatic situations, the most pathetic and comic effects, and by far the finest conception of a female character of any play since the old golden dramatic age. I do not hesitate to say that this is a most false piece of criticism, induced alone by a want of perception of what are the requisites in a dramatic poem, and a total absence of true dramatic feeling. First, in the ingredients of a fine play, comes the fiction,—the invention; to this belong those same much-sneered-at stage effects, and theatrical situations; next comes the skilful and powerful delineation of individual character; lastly comes the item of a poetical diction. One alone has united these in their utmost perfection; for such another the world may look in vain. But I think the play-goers of Shakspeare's time would have been tolerably satisfied with a most interesting fiction, and a true and vigorous delineation of character; and let me ask, is there no poetry besides that of words?—is there no poetry in the fable of a play—none in the faithful portraying of a human being's mind and passions? As for all pretty speeches, lengthy descriptions, abstract disquisitions,—unless things placed in the mouth of characters to whose identity such mental manifestations belong,—they are inadmissible in a right good play, and should by all means be confined to the pages of those anomalous modern growths, plays for the closet. In all our elder dramatists, Shakspeare alone excepted, the main quality of a play, the story, is often defective to an excess, not only in morality, but in probability and consistency; and the same defects exist in the delineation of character in many of their noblest plays.