not actually exist, if it had divided itself, if there was such a thing
as a novel and such a thing as a play, then that could be only because
we go to the theater to get a specific pleasure which we cannot get in
the library. The practical critic gave them the sound advice that, if
they sought to succeed in the theater as they had succeeded in the
library, they should study the art of the playwright, endeavoring to
perceive wherein it differs from the art of the story-teller.

The points of agreement between the novel and the play are so obvious
that there is some excuse for overlooking the fact that the points of
disagreement are almost as numerous. It is true that, in the play as in
the novel, a story is developed by means of characters whose
conversation is reproduced. So the game of golf is like the game of
lawn-tennis, in so far as there are in both of them balls to be placed
by the aid of certain implements. But as the balls are different and as
the implements are different, the two games are really not at all alike;
and it is when they are played most skilfully and most strictly
according to the rules that they are most unlike.

The play is least dramatic when it most closely resembles the novel, as
it did in the days of Peele and Greene, whose dramas are little more
than narratives presented in dialog. In the three centuries since Peele
and Greene, the play and the novel have been getting further and further
away from each other. Each has been steadily specializing, seeking its
true self, casting out the extraneous elements proved to be useless. The
novel in its highest development is now a single narrative, no longer
distended and delayed by intercalated tales, such as we find in 'Don
Quixote' and 'Tom Jones,' in 'Wilhelm Meister' and in 'Pickwick,'
inserted for no artistic reason, but merely because the author happened
to have them on hand. The play in its highest development is now a