Intrigue

“ The main plot, as a rule deceptively simple, is complicated from first to last by enormous and intricate ramifications of secondary actions; a characteristic due to the fact that every fresh individual introduced, whether in the central narrative, or in some excrescence from it, persists in recounting his own adventures at tremendous length. Thus we have story within story, wheel within wheel, 136till the reader completely loses his hold upon the tangled threads of intrigue, and collapses into a condition of dazed despair. ”

“ Hero, villain, cynic—are their parts so much the fresher? The love duets, are they so very new? The death-bed scenes, would you call them uncommonplace? Hate, and Evil, and Wrong—are their voices new to the booth? What are you waiting for, people? a play with a plot that is novel, with characters that have never strutted before? It will be ready for you, perhaps, when you are ready for it, with new tears and new laughter.
You, Mr. Merryman, were the true philosopher. You saved us from forgetting the reality when the fiction grew somewhat strenuous. ”

“ The abundance and the vividness of character-presentation; the liveliness and the abundance of the staging of that character; the variety of scene and incident—all most properly connected with the plot, but capable of existing and of being felt without it; the human dialogue; the admirable phrase in that dialogue and out of it, in the digressions, in the narrative, above, and through, and about, and below it all—these things and others (for it is practically impossible to exhaust the catalogue) fill up the cup to the brim, and keep it full, for the born lover of the special novel-pleasure. ”

“ The plot, although not an involved one, hides enough mystery to lend the spice of the unknown to the reader's zest, and the simple and natural dénouement emphasizes the high moral ethics of the story, and throws into strong relief the deep human sentiments that dominate the tale. ”

“ These are the epic poem, the drama, and the novel. Each purports to be, in some sort, a reflex of human life and action, as obeying certain laws and tending to a certain end. In each men are represented, not as at rest, or in contemplative isolation, but in co-operation or collision. In each there is a combination of two elements, an outer element of incident, an inner of passion and character. ”

“ There is romance of love, mystery, plot, and fighting, and a breathless dash and go about the telling which makes one quite forget about the improbabilities of the story; and it all ends in the old-fashioned healthy American way. ”

“ What more lurid than the depths of desire, what more mysterious than the hinterlands of conscience? And what event is so great a mystery as life itself? I believe that every tale should be a mystery tale. ”

“ Life is the drama here to-day
⁠And Death the villain of the plot.
It is a realistic play.
⁠Shall it end well or shall it not?
The hero? Oh, the hero's part
⁠Is vacant—to be played by you.
Then act it well! An orphan's heart
⁠May beat the lighter if you do. ”

“ There are many such,—dramas on the stage of history, life scenes that are pictures in action, tales pathetic, stirring, enlivening, full of the element of the unusual, of the stuff the novel and the romance are made of, yet with the advantage of being actual fact. ”

“ Their adventures, their illusions, their violence, their despair, their achievements, seem upon a hundred occasions to centre round particular men or certain conspicuous actions, in such a fashion that those men and these actions fit themselves into a story, the plot and interest of which absorb the reader. ”

“ The freshness of the new field which was opened up to the imagination—so full of vivid lights and shadows, light-hearted fun, grinding hardship, stirring adventure, heroic action, warm friendships, bitter hatreds—was in exhilarating contrast to the world of the historical romancer and the fashionable novelist, to which the mind of the general reader was at that date given over. ”

“ Character, situation, incident, humour, pathos, tragic force, are all in abundance; words alone are at a minimum. Of course these are "plain" tales, lightning-flash tales. A gleam, and there the whole tragedy or comedy is before you—elaborate it for yourself afterwards." ”

“ Now here, for instance, is a volume of fiction without even an attempt at a plot, and yet with a perfect enchainment of interest—a hero without adventures and without a heroine, yet whose fortunes we follow with a true excitement! ”

“ When circumstances cross the ruling passion, when rocks lie in the way and winds are contrary, then things happen, characters emerge, slight events are significant, mere adventures are transformed into a real plot. ”

“ Yes; it was all actually going to be drama, and that drama; than which nothing could be more to the occult purpose of the confirmed, the systematic story-seeker, or to that even of the mere ancient contemplative person curious of character. The very donnée of the piece could be given, the subject formulated: the great adventure of a society reaching out into the apparent void for the amenities, the consummations, after having earnestly gathered in so many of the preparations and necessities. ”

“ The Subject is always some serious and important Event, as the Expulsion of a Tyrant, the Death of a Hero, and the like; which Event turns, and depends intirely upon some violent Passion, either good or bad; as Ambition, Revenge, Friendship, and especially Love, (for Love, as I have before observ'd, is the chief Subject of the modern Drama, whether Tragedy, or Comedy;) ”

“ There has been the hope that by going back to our nurse’s or our mother’s knee we may find the secret of human destinies. But above and beyond this folk-lore appeals to all that which goes to make romance: the myth, the saga, the legend, combine with the mysterious lore of the unseen which lies at the root of what we term superstition. ”

“ A delightful moment, followed, as the hunt swished past, by the sudden sense that these men and women, thus whirled off into what may well be the sole poetry of their lives, are but noisy intruders into these fields and spinnies, whose solemn, secret speech they drown with clatter and yelp, whose mystery and charm stand aside on their passage, like an interrupted, a profaned rite. ”

“ If anyone says these are narrow bounds wherein to confine fiction I answer there has been room enough within them for the highest tragedy, the deepest pathos, the broadest humour, the widest range of character, the most moving incident, that the world has ever enjoyed. ”

“ This is the plot; but to make a character speak, act, rave, love, live, die, through a whole lifetime of events, even as the readers feel convinced he must have acted, must have lived and died, this demands at least so much experience of a somewhat similar nature as may serve for a base to one's imagination, a reserve of certainty and reassurance on which to draw in times of perplexity and doubt. ”

“ It is based upon a plot that awakens curiosity and keeps it alive throughout. The hero and heroine are marked with individuality, the love-passages are finely drawn, and the story developed with judgment.”—The Civil Service Gazette. ”

“ In the drama this expedient must be used with great delicacy, because a sudden and startling shock of surprise is likely to scatter the attention of the spectators and flurry them out of a true conception of the scene. The reader of a novel, when he discovers with surprise that he has been skilfully deceived through several pages, may pause to reconstruct his conception of the narrative, and may even re-read the entire passage through which the secret has been withheld from him. ”

“ One of these, less known to the public in later times, we think transcends all the others in boldness of conception, regularity of plot, variety of passion and character displayed, and horror and pathos of catastrophe. ”

“ To impress the mind by the narrative of heroic, or melt it by that of tragic events—to delineate the varieties of character, incident, and catastrophes—to unfold the secret springs which influence the most important changes, and often confound the wisest anticipations—to trace the chain of causes and effects in human transactions from their unobserved origin to their ultimate results, is equally the object of both arts. ”

“ The most conspicuous are the want of one prominent interest, and the lack of definite climax; at least four equally important threads are kept running through the play, and the dramatic tension is at an almost constant pitch throughout. These characteristics are those of the narrative romance and of the novel of adventure respectively, and are fatal to the success of the dramatic form. ”

“ Accurate biographies record narratives which no romancer's imagination could hope to rival. Researches, sufferings, labors, triumphs, agonies and disasters, the defeats of destiny, glory, which is the "sunlight of the dead," illuminating the past, whether fortunate or tragic,—such is what the lives of Great Men reveal to us, or, if the phrase be allowed, paint for us in a series of fascinating and dramatic pictures. ”

“ It contains enough of plot, mystery, adventure, and the like, to hold the attention, while the underlying thought of dissatisfaction with the heathen gods, and expectation of something better, lifts it far above the level of mere sensational fiction. ”

“ It is the plot that furnishes excitement, and for perhaps the majority of readers constitutes the chief interest. In some stories the plot lies upon the surface all the time, and everything is made subservient to the purpose of holding interest, keeping up excitement and mystifying the reader until the climax is reached. Thrilling detective stories of the poorer class, exciting love stories and the cheap juvenile tales of Indian fighting, with heroines in dire distress and heroes struggling to rescue them, are illustrations of this type. ”

“ Well, but life is full, also, of endings, of the results in concrete action of character, of completed dramas. And we expect and give, in the stories we hear and tell in ordinary intercourse, some point, some outcome, an end of some sort. If you interest me in the preparations of two persons who are starting on a journey, and expend all your ingenuity in describing their outfit and their characters, and do not tell me where they went or what befell them afterwards, I do not call that a story. ”

“ In the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, our imperfect civilization, our superstitious beliefs, our strange and half-barbarous customs mingled romance with everything: characters were strongly marked, imagination was powerful, existence mysterious and concealed. ”

“ If the play is not intended to show by degrees how a brave, superstitious, and ambitious man of honourable character can be led astray by occult warnings of the inevitableness of destiny, by the taunts of a contemptuous wife, and by the spurrings of a vaulting ambition, then it was written to small purpose. ”

“ I am sure that these secret dramas, genuine pictures of real life, would be found interesting even after the perusal of our modern novels, whose heroes, in their amorous phrensy, might cleave mountains, rifle pedestrians, and set the universe on fire, in order to obtain their fair one, but who would be incapable of adding up figures and of working like journeymen for her sake. ”

“ You have all heard that impressive dictum that some particular theatrical display, although moving, interesting, and continually entertaining from start to finish, was for occult technical reasons "not a play," and in the same way you are continually having your appreciation of fiction dashed by the mysterious parallel condemnation, that the story you like "isn't a novel." ”

“ Any charm of the story-tellers of the ages has entered into the body of the tale, which has become an objective presentment of a reality that concentrates on itself and keeps personality out of sight. ”

“ But mere plot is the very least merit of this marvellously effective play. The incidents and developments are those of a supreme master, so that the whole forms one of the most important contributions of the present age not only to drama, but to literature in general. ”

“ One Chance in a Hundred.
Plot material is the stuff that souls are made of; it is the composition from which careers are moulded; it is sparks from the forge of nobility and salt distilled from the tears of humanity. ”

“ But the pleasure he derives from the sense of completeness, the sense that a walk or a story has a beginning and a middle and an end, the real plot pleasure, is negligible compared with the pleasure he gets in the action itself. ”

“ In looking back, those stand out as the real things—the prosaic grind of existence falls away and shows itself as mere illusion. After all, what would life be without contrasts? They are the chief elements of drama. ”

“ As an exquisite embodiment of the poet's visions and a realisation of human intellectuality, gilding with refulgent light our dreamy moments, and laying open a new and magic world before the mental eye, the drama is gone—perfectly gone. ”

“ The quarrel with which the chief story begins is delightfully unreasonable, progressive, inevitable, and the interest never flags for a line to the thoroughly natural and human end. The author is so clever that she makes us ready to attest the truth of her most venturesome improbabilities, and her wit is charming.”—The World. ”

“ In Literature the same truth might be exhibited in the manifold effects of the primitive mystery-play, not only as originating the modern drama, but as affecting through it other kinds of poetry and fiction ”

“ For the drama of our time it must always remain the model. The interest of the story, the quiet art with which it is unfolded, the naturalness and soberness of the means that are used, and by which great effects are produced, the brilliancy and richness of the dialogue—all these things make it a singularly perfect and interesting work. ”

“ No consistent narrative that we might have concocted would, it seems to us, have been half as interesting to them as to allow them to follow the devious paths opened up by those who entered on the search for the heart of the mystery. ”

“ The tales deal chiefly with those elemental problems of the mysteries of life,—pain, the unknown, the strange kinship of man and beast in the struggle for existence,—the enigmas which occur chiefly to the primitive folk on the backwoods fringe of civilization, and they arrest attention for their sincerity, their freshness of first-hand knowledge, and their superior craft. ”