Just as the
writer of a play embodies his subject in visible action and audible
speech, so the novelist, dealing with a situation like Strether's,
represents it by means of the movement that flickers over the surface
of his mind. The impulses and reactions of his mood are the players
upon the new scene. In drama of the theatre a character must bear his
part unaided; if he is required to be a desperate man, harbouring
thoughts of crime, he cannot look to the author to appear at the side
of the stage and inform the audience of the fact; he must express it
for himself through his words and deeds, his looks and tones. The
playwright so arranges the matter that these will be enough, the
spectator will make the right inference. But suppose that instead of a
man upon the stage, concealing and betraying his thought, we watch the
thought itself, the hidden thing, as it twists to and fro in his
brain--watch it without any other aid to understanding but such as its
own manner of bearing may supply. The novelist, more free than the
playwright, could of course _tell_ us, if he chose, what lurks behind
this agitated spirit; he could step forward and explain the restless
appearance of the man's thought. But if he prefers the dramatic way,
admittedly the more effective, there is nothing to prevent him from
taking it. The man's thought, in its turn, can be made to reveal its
own inwardness.
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