The peculiar history of the play is my only justification for giving you all these details of its otherwise unimportant career. I only trust that I have shown you how very practical the laws of dramatic construction are in the way they influence a dramatist. The art of obeying them is merely the art of using your common sense in the study of your own and other people's emotions. All I now add is, if you want to write a play, be honest and sincere in using your common sense. A prominent lawyer once assured me that there was only one man he trembled before in the presence of a jury--not the learned man, nor the eloquent man; it was the sincere man. The public will be your jury. That public often condescends to be trifled with by mere tricksters, but, believe me, it is only a condescension and very contemptuous. In the long run, the public will judge you, and respect you, according to your artistic sincerity. NOTES This lecture was originally delivered in March, 1886, in the Sanders Theater, before the Shakspere Society of Harvard University; and it was repeated before the Nineteenth Century Club in New York in December, 1889. On the latter occasion two other dramatic authors were requested to debate the points made by the speaker; and as a result he added a few supplementary remarks: The Nineteenth Century Club looks for a discussion, I believe, on the subject brought forward in the paper of this evening. If the word "discussion" implies "argument," I fear there is nothing in the mere struggles of a dramatist in his workshop to justify that difference of opinion which is necessary to an argument. My American colleague, Mr. Brander Matthews, must feel like a man whose wife persists from day to day in saying nothing that he can object to, thereby making his home a desert and driving him to the club. As for the great Irish dramatist, this paper leaves him still wishing that some one would tread on the tail of his coat. But, with all true Irishmen, the second party in a quarrel is merely a convenience, not a necessity. Whenever Mr. Boucicault feels that a public discussion is desirable for any reason, he can always tread on the tail of his own coat, and make quite as good a fight of it all by himself as if some one was assisting him. And he ended with this reference to the constructive skill of Ibsen: Another thing strikes me in connection with this subject: the praise of Ibsen, the Scandinavian dramatist, is abroad in England; and again, as so often before, mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord in the direction of Boston. But some of the loudest worshippers of this truly great man in both countries either wilfully ignore, or else they know nothing about, his real greatness.