III _Old Plays and New Playgoers_ 37 IV _Tragedies with Happy Endings_ 57 V _On the Advantage of Having a Pattern_ 79 VI _Did Shakspere Write Plays to Fit His Actors?_ 97 VII _Strange Shaksperian Performances_ 119 VIII _Thackeray and the Theater_ 137 IX _Mark Twain and the Theater_ 159 X _Henry James and the Theater_ 185 XI _Stage Humor_ 205 XII _The “Old Comedies”_ 227 XIII _The Organization of the Theater_ 245 XIV _Memories of Actors_ 281 I PLAYWRIGHTS ON PLAYMAKING I PLAYWRIGHTS ON PLAYMAKING I We have no right to expect that a creator of art should be also a critic of art. He is a creator because he can create, because he can paint a picture, model a statue, tell a story in action on the stage or delineate character in narrative; and he needs only enough of the critical faculty to enable him to achieve the obligatory self-criticism, without which he may go astray. If he is a born story-teller, for instance, he may tell stories by native gift, almost without taking thought as to how he does it; and even if he does it very well, he may be an artist in spite of himself, so to speak. He may achieve his effects without analyzing his processes, perhaps without understanding them or even perceiving them. His methods are intuitive rather than rational; they are personal to him; and he cannot impart them to others. He may in fact misconceive his own effort and see himself in a false light, sincerely believing that he is doing his work in one way when he is really doing it in another. Zola, for one, was entirely at fault in the opinion he held about his own novels; he was so uncritical that he supposed himself to be a Realist, avid of facts, whereas he was unmistakably a Romanticist, planning epic edifices symmetrical and fantastic and forcing the facts he diligently sought for to fit as best they could into the structure of the dream-dwelling he was building. Zola was a tireless worker dowered with constructive imagination, but he was not more intelligent than the average man; and he was distinctly deficient in critical insight, as was swiftly disclosed when he ventured to discuss the principles of novel-writing and the practices of his fellow-craftsmen.