Page:Foggerty.djvu/232

228 the punishment to be awarded to him who fails in such an attempt. The author of a translated play found all his materials ready at hand. There was the plot, there were the characters, there was the dialogue, there was the sequence of events (technically known as the construction), there were the situations, there were even the costumes and "make-up" all ready to his hand, all fire-new from the furnace, all duly assayed and stamped with the approving hall-mark of the wittiest and most theatrically disposed people in Europe. He had had the inestimable advantage of seeing the play "in the flesh." He could tell to a dead certainty where the play would drag if it were produced in London in its then form, and he could cut and modify accordingly. The Wedding March had been referred to by one of the witnesses in the highest terms, and it was a fact that the author thereof had received considerably more than two thousand pounds in return for the two days' labour he had spent upon it. But the Wedding March was little more than a bald translation. Every element that went to constitute it a success was deliberately copied from its French original. The dialogue was, in itself, contemptible. It derived its humour entirely from the "situations" in connection with which it was spoken. The dullest copying-clerk in Chancery Lane could have done the work as well as its so-called "author." At the same time, he was bound in fairness to admit that there were translations and translations, and that in some exceptional cases—he would instance Duty, by Mr. Albery—the translated play was distinctly in