Only by that method of sharp visual contrast could
one hope to bring to light the masked interde-
pendence of the action-plot and idea-plot and the
curious way in which the one is warped and maimed
in being made to serve as the vehicle for the other.
One would have been better able to show by the
method of parallel columns that the action-plot is
well-nigh meaningless without the key of the idea-
plot ; that regarded as an independent entity it is
often trivial and sometimes null ; and that it is because
of this parasitic nature of the action-plot, because of
its weakness, its haphazardness, its unnaturalness,
considered as a "thing in itself," that one finds the
play as a play unsatisfying.
The idea-plot I am not called upon to criticise.
In the playhouse a dramatist's ideas are postulates
not to be called in question. Theories of Schopenhauer
about woman and the sex-instinct or of Nietzsche



MAN AND SUPERMAN 227

about a revised system of conduct are most assuredly-
open to discussion, but not by the dramatic critic.
His business is, first and foremost, with the action-plot.
