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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: I take pleasure in calling the dramatic novel by that name, because
it enables me to point out by the way a strange and peculiarly
English misconception. It is sometimes supposed that the drama
consists of incident. It consists of passion, which gives the
actor his opportunity; and that passion must progressively
increase, or the actor, as the piece proceeded, would be unable to
carry the audience from a lower to a higher pitch of interest and
emotion. A good serious play must therefore be founded on one of
the passionate CRUCES of life, where duty and inclination come
nobly to the grapple; and the same is true of what I call, for that
reason, the dramatic novel. I will instance a few worthy
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