Nevertheless I conceive Aristotle’s position in the present matter to have been a sensible one, though it has oftentimes been sadly disregarded and even flouted. One school has ignored the spectacle as a factor in dramatic criticism. The other school has exalted it to the chief place. In my opinion both attitudes are erroneous. The former party is the older and more numerous. I fancy that most adherents of this view err unconsciously. It is particularly easy in dealing with the dramatic remains of bygone ages to ignore or minimize the effect which the manner of presentation must have exercised and practically to confine one’s attention to literary criticism in the narrowest sense of the term. To this tendency classical scholars have been peculiarly prone. But there are many others who are quite aware of the full meaning of the position they occupy. One of these is Spingarn, who roundly declares: “A play is a creative work of the imagination, and must be considered as such always, _and as such only_.”[5] The opposing view seems to have been promulgated first by Castelvetro (1570) and enjoyed no particular popularity until recently. It was adopted by the Abbé d’Aubignac in the seventeenth century, by Diderot in the eighteenth century, by A. W. Schlegel during the first half of the nineteenth century, and by Francisque Sarcey during the latter half. There is no space here to trace the developments of the doctrine; for that the interested reader may consult Spingarn’s article. But the general position of the school is as follows: “A play is a story (_a_) devised to be presented (_b_) by actors (_c_) on a stage (_d_) before an audience.”[6] These are not merely important elements or essential elements; they are the prime elements. They outweigh all other considerations. It was Diderot’s central idea that the essential part of a play was not created by the poet at all, but by the actor. The “closet-drama” they hold up to scorn as a contradiction in terms. The “psychology of the crowd,” long before that name for it had been invented, was an integral part of this teaching. The inadequacy of this point of view is aptly expressed in Goethe’s words concerning Schlegel: “His criticism is completely one-sided, because in all theatrical pieces he merely regards the skeleton of the plot and arrangement, and only points out small points of resemblance to great predecessors, without troubling himself in the least as to what the author brings forward of graceful life and the culture of a high soul.”[7]