Page:The thirty-six dramatic situations (1921).djvu/122

 120 THIRTY-SIX DRAMATIC SITUATIONS tuted a group of characters animated by a single desire, each member of the group reflecting that desire under a different light. There is, moreover (as I have already shown), no Situation which may not be combined with any one of its neighbors, nay, with two, three, four, five, six of them and more! Now, these combinations may be of many sorts; in" the first case, the situations develop successively and logically one from another; in the second case they dispose themselves in a dilemma, in the midst of which hesitates the distracted hero; in the third case, each one of them will appertain to a particular group or a particular role; in the fourth, fifth, sixth cases, etc., they are represented according to two, or according to all three of the cases already brought together in one situation, and together they escape from it, but the majority of them fall therefrom into a posi- tion not less critical, which may even offer but a choice between two courses equally painful; after finding a way between this Scylla and Charybdis, the very leap by which they escape precipitates them into a final Situation resulting from the preceding ones, and which sweeps them all away together. . . This, be it understood, is but one combination among a thousand, for I cannot here elaborate the system by which this study of the Thirty-Six Situations may be continued, and by means of which they may be endlessly multi- plied; that is a subject for a separate work upon the "Laws of Literary Invention." The composition or arrangement of the chosen Sit- uations --and at the same time of the episodes and characters introduced - - may be deduced in a manner somewhat novel and interesting, from the same theory of the "Thirty-Six." Considering, in effect, that "every dra- matic situation springs from a conflict between two prin- cipal directions of effort" (whence at the same time comes our dread of the victor and our pity for the vanquished), we shall have to choose, at the rising of the curtain, between two beginnings; we must decide which of the two adversaries pre-exists. This leads us infallibly to make of the second the cause (innocent or responsible)