Does the ending satisfy you? Even if you do not find it happy and enjoyable, does it seem the natural and perhaps the inevitable result of the forces at work--in _Riders to the Sea_ and _Campbell of Kilmhor_, for instance? Or has the author interfered to make characters do what they would not naturally do, or used chance and coincidence, like the accidentally discovered will or the long-lost relative in melodramas, to bring about a result he prefers--a "happy ending," or a clap-trap surprise, or a supposed proof of some theory about politics or morals? Does the interest mount steadily from beginning to end, or does it droop and fail somewhere? You may find it interesting to try drawing the diagram of interest for a play, as suggested in chapter X of Dr. Brander Matthews's _Study of the Drama_, and accounting for the drop in interest, if you find any. 3. _The Playwright's Purpose._ What was the author trying to do in writing the play? It may have been:-- Merely to tell a good story To paint a picture of life in the Arran Islands or in old France or in a modern industrial town To show us character and its development, as in novels like Thackeray's and Eliot's (Of course, brief plays like these cannot show development of character, but only critical points in such development--the result of forces perhaps long at work, or the awakening of new ideas and other determinants of character.) To portray a social situation, such as the relation between workmen and employers, or between men and women To show the inevitable effects of action and motive, as of the determined loyalty of Dugald Stewart and his mother, or the battle of fisher-folk or weavers with grinding poverty. Of course, no play will probably do any one of these things exclusively, but usually each is concerned most with some one purpose. What effect has the play on you? Even if its tragedy is painful or its account of human character makes you uncomfortable, is it good for you to realize these things, or merely uselessly unpleasant? Is the play stupidly and falsely cheering because it presents untrue "happy endings" or other distortions of things as they are? Do you think the play has merely temporary, or genuine and permanent, appeal? NOTES ON THE DRAMAS AND THE DRAMATISTS _Harold Chapin_: THE PHILOSOPHER OF BUTTERBIGGENS