have been disproportionate and superfluous. It would have excited,
or tried to excite, our interest in something that was not the real
theme of the play, and in characters which were to drop out before the
real theme--the Aubrey-Paula marriage--was reached. Therefore the
author, in all probability, never thought of beginning at either of
these points. He passed instinctively to the point at which the two
lines of causation converged, and from which the action could be carried
continuously forward by one set of characters. He knew that we could
learn in retrospect all that it was necessary for us to know of the
first Mrs. Tanqueray, and that to introduce her in the flesh would be
merely to lead the interest of the audience into a blind alley, and to
break the back of his action. Again, in _His House in Order_ it may seem
that the intrigue between Maurewarde and the immaculate Annabel, with
its tragic conclusion, would have made a stirring introductory act. But
to have presented such an act would have been to destroy the unity of
the play, which centres in the character of Nina. Annabel is "another
story"; and to have told, or rather shown us, more of it than was
absolutely necessary, would have been to distract our attention from the
real theme of the play, while at the same time fatally curtailing the
all-too-brief time available for the working-out of that theme. There
are cases, no doubt, when verbal exposition may advantageously be
avoided by means of a dramatized "Prologue"--a single act, constituting
a little drama in itself, and generally separated by a considerable
space of time from the action proper. But this method is scarcely to be
commended, except, as aforesaid, for purposes of melodrama and romance.
A "Prologue" is for such plays as _The Prisoner of Zenda_ and _The Only
Way_, not for such plays as _His House in Order_.

The question whether a legato or a staccato opening be the more
desirable must be decided in accordance with the nature and
opportunities of each theme. The only rule that can be stated is that,
when the attention of the audience is required for an exposition of any
length, some attempt ought to be made to awaken in advance their general
interest in the theme and characters. It is dangerous to plunge straight
into narrative, or unemotional discussion, without having first made the
audience actively desire the information to be conveyed to them.
Especially is it essential that the audience should know clearly who are
the subjects of the discussion or narrative--that they should not be
mere names to them. It is a grave flaw in the construction of Mr.
Granville Barker's otherwise admirable play _Waste_, that it should open
with a long discussion, by people whom we scarcely know, of other people
whom we do not know at all, whose names we may or may not have noted on
the playbill.

Trebell, Lord Charles Cantelupe, and Blackborough ought certainly to
have been presented to us in the flesh, however briefly and summarily,
before we were asked to interest ourselves in their characters and the
political situation arising from them.

There is, however, one limitation to this principle. A great effect is
sometimes attained by retarding the entrance of a single leading figure
for a whole act, or even two, while he is so constantly talked about as
to beget in the audience a vivid desire to make his personal
acquaintance. Thus Moliиre's Tartufe does not come on the stage until
the third act of the comedy which bears his name. Ibsen's John Gabriel
Borkman is unseen until the second act, though (through his wife's ears)
we have already heard him pacing up and down his room like a wolf in his
cage. Dubedat, in _The Doctor's Dilemma_, is not revealed to us in the
flesh until the second act. But for this device to be successful, it is
essential that only one leading character[5] should remain unseen, on
whom the attention of the audience may, by that very fact, be riveted.
In _Waste_, for instance, all would have been well had it suited Mr.
Barker's purpose to leave Trebell invisible till the second act, while
all the characters in the first act, clearly presented to us, canvassed
him from their various points of view. Keen expectancy, in short, is the
most desirable frame of mind in which an audience can be placed, so long
as the expectancy be not ultimately disappointed. But there is no less
desirable mental attitude than that of straining after gleams of
guidance in an expository twilight.

The advantage of a staccato opening--or, to vary the metaphor, a brisk,
highly aerated introductory passage--is clearly exemplified in _A Doll's
House_. It would have been quite possible for Ibsen to have sent up his
curtain upon Nora and Mrs. Linden seated comfortably before the stove,
and exchanging confidences as to their respective careers. Nothing
indispensable would have been omitted; but how languid would have been
the interest of the audience! As it is, a brief, bright scene has
already introduced us, not only to Nora, but to Helmer, and aroused an
eager desire for further insight into the affairs of this--to all
appearance--radiantly happy household. Therefore, we settle down without
impatience to listen to the fireside gossip of the two old
school-fellows.

The problem of how to open a play is complicated in the English theatre
by considerations wholly foreign to art. Until quite recently, it used
to be held impossible for a playwright to raise his curtain upon his
leading character or characters, because the actor-manager would thus be
baulked of his carefully arranged "entrance" and "reception," and,
furthermore, because twenty-five per cent of the audience would probably
arrive about a quarter of an hour late, and would thus miss the opening
scene or scenes. It used at one time to be the fashion to add to the
advertisement of a play an entreaty that the audience should be
punctually in their seats, "as the interest began with the rise of the
curtain." One has seen this assertion made with regard to plays in
which, as a matter of fact, the interest had not begun at the fall of
the curtain. Nowadays, managers, and even leading ladies, are a good
deal less insistent on their "reception" than they used to be. They
realize that it may be a distinct advantage to hold the stage from the
very outset. There are few more effective openings than that of _The
Second Mrs. Tanqueray_, where we find Aubrey Tanqueray seated squarely
at his bachelor dinner-table with Misquith on his right and Jayne on his
left. It may even be taken as a principle that, where it is desired to
give to one character a special prominence and predominance, it ought,
if possible, to be the first figure on which the eye of the audience
falls. In a Sherlock Holmes play, for example, the curtain ought
assuredly to rise on the great Sherlock enthroned in Baker Street, with
Dr. Watson sitting at his feet. The solitary entrance of Richard III
throws his figure into a relief which could by no other means have been
attained. So, too, it would have been a mistake on Sophocles' part to
let any one but the protagonist open the _Oedipus Rex_.

So long as the fashion of late dinners continues, however, it must
remain a measure of prudence to let nothing absolutely essential to the
comprehension of a play be said or done during the first ten minutes
after the rise of the curtain. Here, again, _A Doll's House_ may be
cited as a model, though Ibsen, certainly, had no thought of the British
dinner-hour in planning the play. The opening scene is just what the
ideal opening scene ought to be--invaluable, yet not indispensable. The
late-comer who misses it deprives himself of a preliminary glimpse into
the characters of Nora and Helmer and the relation between them; but he
misses nothing that is absolutely essential to his comprehension of the
play as a whole. This, then, would appear to be a sound maxim both of
art and prudence: let your first ten minutes by all means be crisp,
arresting, stimulating, but do not let them embody any absolutely vital
matter, ignorance of which would leave the spectator in the dark as to
the general design and purport of the play.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: See Chapter XXIII.]

[Footnote 2: Henri Becque's two best-known plays aptly exemplify the two
types of opening. In _Les Corbeaux_ we have almost an entire act of calm
domesticity in which the only hint of coming trouble is an allusion to
Vigneron's attacks of vertigo. In _La Parisienne_ Clotilde and Lafont
are in the thick of a vehement quarrel over a letter. It proceeds for
ten minutes or so, at the end of which Clotilde says, "Prenez garde,
voilа mon mari!"--and we find that the two are not husband and wife, but
wife and lover.]

[Footnote 3: Mrs. Craigie ("John Oliver Hobbes") opened her very
successful play, _The Ambassador_, with a scene between Juliet
Desborough and her sister Alice, a nun, who apparently left her convent
specially to hear her sister's confession, and then returned to it for
ever. This was certainly not an economical form of exposition, but it
was not unsuited to the type of play.]

[Footnote 4: In that charming comedy, _Rosemary_, by Messrs. Parker and
Carson, there is a gap of fifty years between the last act and its
predecessor; but the so-called last act is only an "epi-monologue."]

[Footnote 5: Or at most two closely connected characters: for instance,
a husband and wife.]




_CHAPTER VIII_

THE FIRST ACT


Both in the theory and in practice, of late years, war has been declared
in certain quarters against the division of a play into acts. Students
of the Elizabethan stage have persuaded themselves, by what I believe to
be a complete misreading of the evidence, that Shakespeare did not, as
it were, "think in acts," but conceived his plays as continuous series
of events, without any pause or intermission in their flow. It can, I
think, be proved beyond any shadow of doubt that they are wrong in this;
that the act division was perfectly familiar to Shakespeare, and was
used by him to give to the action of his plays a rhythm which ought not,
in representation, to be obscured or falsified. It is true that in the
Elizabethan theatre there was no need of long interacts for the change
of scenes, and that such interacts are an abuse that calls for remedy.
But we have abundant evidence that the act division was sometimes marked
on the Elizabethan stage, and have no reason to doubt that it was always
more or less recognized, and was present to Shakespeare's mind no less
than to Ibsen's or Pinero's.

Influenced in part, perhaps, by the Elizabethan theorists, but mainly by
the freakishness of his own genius, Mr. Bernard Shaw has taken to
writing plays in one continuous gush of dialogue, and has put forward,
more or less seriously, the claim that he is thereby reviving the
practice of the Greeks. In a prefatory note to _Getting Married_,
he says--

"There is a point of some technical interest to be noted in this
play. The customary division into acts and scenes has been disused,
and a return made to unity of time and place, as observed in the
ancient Greek drama. In the foregoing tragedy, _The Doctor's
Dilemma_, there are five acts; the place is altered five times; and
the time is spread over an undetermined period of more than a year.
No doubt the strain on the attention of the audience and on the
ingenuity of the playwright is much less; but I find in practice
that the Greek form is inevitable when the drama reaches a certain
point in poetic and intellectual evolution. Its adoption was not, on
my part, a deliberate display of virtuosity in form, but simply the
spontaneous falling of a play of ideas into the form most suitable
to it, which turned out to be the classical form."

It is hard to say whether Mr. Shaw is here writing seriously or in a
mood of solemn facetiousness. Perhaps he himself is not quite clear on
the point. There can be no harm, at any rate, in assuming that he
genuinely believes the unity of _Getting Married_ to be "a return to the
unity observed in," say, the _Oedipus Rex_, and examining a little into
so pleasant an illusion.

It is, if I may so phrase it, a double-barrelled illusion. _Getting
Married_ has not the unity of the Greek drama, and the Greek drama has
not the unity of _Getting Married_. Whatever "unity" is predicable of
either form of art is a wholly different thing from whatever "unity" is
predicable of the other. Mr. Shaw, in fact, is, consciously or
unconsciously, playing with words, very much as Lamb did when he said to
the sportsman, "Is that your own hare or a wig?" There are, roughly
speaking, three sorts of unity: the unity of a plum-pudding, the unity
of a string or chain, and,