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CHAPTER LII 263 written. Hundreds of stories dealing with the confessional of the Church have been turned down as being likely to give some offense to the members of that communion. Here the problem attacked is that of a sect. Precisely the same problem exists in the medical profession, but here it is a question of ethics and not of religion. A priest may not reveal the secrets of the confessional without being forsworn. A physician commits a lesser offense in doing the same thing and a physician may be a Christian, an atheist or a Muslim. Here, too, the love interest may be introduced freely and without offense. 7. Conceive a situation in which a woman is accused of a mur- der. Her sweetheart is a physician. He is called upon to treat an- other woman for a .bullet wound; the bullet being of the same calibre that inflicted the death wound and circumstances make it probable that this woman was shot with her own weapon while struggling with her victim. His Hippocratic oath requires silence. His heart and his sense of justice require him to give the facts to the authori- ties. Here we have a true problem play and one that cannot give offense even to physicians themselves. Catholics will resent any at- tack upon the institutions of their Church, and very properly. Phy- sicians will welcome an intelligent discussion of a condition that many of them feel to be wrong. 8. To be popular, the problem play must follow the general trend of thought or else combat accepted belief so strikingly that the mat- ter is seen in an entirely new light. Since only th,e greatest think- ers are apt to hit upon a truth greater than that arrived at by the world as a whole, it is better to travel with rather than against the current. Follow accepted belief rather than seek to combat it, but if you can, inject an "if" or a "but," so much the better. 9. Next to the danger of selecting a theme dangerous in that it will antagonize the members of a sect or religious belief, the thing most to be feared is making the personages in j^our play of secondary im- portance to the problem it presents. This is a very common but none the less a grave error. A problem can possess only an academic interest. It must be made human by the personages whose adven- tures present the problem. In the presentation of your play you must first write your drama and then through our interest in these personages of the drama interest your spectators in the problem that their adventures present, but hold always to the problem. 10. In the physician quoted in the foregoing the interest does not come from the question of right or wrong, but from the application of the principle to the person in whom we have become interested. If the physician himself is the chief character, then the application of the principle to himself is the source of interest. If the woman whom he loves or the woman who is shot is the protagonist, then it is the effect of the problem upon her that gives it interest. The ques- tion should not be put "shall he free the woman he loves." or ''shall he hide his patient from justice," but "will he?" This will give the