That such dramatic unity became sometimes a bondage in seventeenth-century French classical drama was due not to any defect of the Aristotelian principle, but partly to making the practise too rigidly a code, and still more to stiffening the movement into tableau. The classical French application of the principle of dramatic unity is not, as has often been pointed out, altogether Aristotelian. Least of all is it Aristotelian when it hinders dramatic movement. French classical tragedy when it is cold—and to think of it as generally cold is a prejudice—is static; it is feeble in movement. The free movement, not to say the loose movement, of Elizabethan plays, which was hailed by Hugo and other Romanticists as a deliverance from the classical code, is indeed better than tableau; but it is compatible with bad playwriting. He would be rash who should assert that Elizabethan plays are in general more effective dramatically than French classical plays. Rather, since the two traditions bring out different dramatic values, each has something to learn from the other. But it is plain that the progress of the Elizabethans in dramaturgy was in the direction of unity, of more highly organized movement. To see this we need go no farther than Shakspere. The difference between his earlier plays and _Othello_ is largely a difference in unification. _Othello_ by itself is sufficient proof of the value of dramatic unity for dramatic intensity. And with or without unity, with the Greek and the French focus of time or the Elizabethan lapse of years, drama demands movement from scene to scene. The value of unity is only to heighten this sense of movement. Drama, of course, has its differences of age and of race. We are not to think that at its best it must always be Greek. One of the large differences between ancient drama and modern is, indeed, a difference of emphasis. Ancient drama relies more on plot, modern drama on characterization. The ancient playwright had above all, for his theater, to realize the emotional values of a situation by seeing that his play was well put together; the modern playwright has sometimes, in a theatre giving opportunity for facial expression, relied far more on realizing his persons, on writing what the actor calls a good part. Nevertheless, though playwriting does not always need the compactness of Greek form, many modern plays have chosen this compactness, this closely organized movement, for intensity.[56]