No great work was ever produced without a grand plan. "Some critics," says our author, "have ventured to assert that my six acts may easily be reduced to the usual five, without injury to the conduct of the fable." To reply to this required a complete analysis of the tragedy, which, having been found more voluminous than the tragedy itself, he considerately "published separately." It would be curious to ascertain whether a single copy of the analysis of a condemned tragedy was ever sold. And yet this critical analysis was such an admirable and demonstrative criticism, that the author assures us that it proved the absolute impossibility, "and the most absolute too," that his piece could not suffer the slightest curtailment. It demonstrated more--that the gradation and the development of interest required necessarily _seven acts!_ but, from dread of carrying this innovation too far, the author omitted _one act_, which passed behind the scenes![170] but which ought to have come in between the fifth and sixth! Another point is proved, that the attention of an audience, the physical powers of man, can be kept up with interest much longer than has been calculated; that his piece only takes up two hours and three quarters, or three hours at most, if some of the most impassioned parts were but declaimed rapidly.[171] Now we come to the history of all the disasters which happened at the acting of this tragedy. "How can people complain that my piece is tedious, when, after the first act, they would never listen ten minutes to it? Why did they attend to the first scenes, and even applaud one? Let me not be told, because these were sublime, and commanded the respect of the cabal raised against it; because there are other scenes far more sublime in the piece, which they perpetually interrupted. Will it be believed, that they pitched upon the scene of the sacrifice of Volgesie, as one of the most tedious?--the scene of Volgesie, which is the finest in my piece; not a verse, not a word in it, can be omitted![172] Everything tends towards the catastrophe; and it reads in the closet as well as it would affect us on the stage. I was not, however, astonished at this; what men hear, and do not understand, is always tedious; and it was recited in so shocking a tone by the actress, who, not having entirely recovered from a fit of illness, was flurried by the tumult of the audience. She declaimed in a twanging tone like psalm-singing; so that the audience could not hear, among the fatiguing discordances (he means their own hissing), nor separate the thoughts and words from the full chant which accompanied them. They objected perpetually to the use of the word _Madame_ between two female rivals, as too comic; one of the pit, when an actress said _Madame_, cried out 'Say _Princesse!_' This disconcerted the actress. They also objected to the words _àpropos_ and _mal-àpropos_. Yet, after all, how are there too