Fitch did not live to do full justice to his
remarkable talent.
One of the ablest of recent openings is that of Mr. Galsworthy's _Silver
Box_. The curtain rises upon a solid, dull, upper-middle-class
dining-room, empty and silent, the electric lights burning, the tray
with whiskey, siphon and cigarette-box marking the midnight hour. Then
we have the stumbling, fumbling entrance of Jack Barthwick, beatifically
drunk, his maudlin babble, and his ill-omened hospitality to the haggard
loafer who follows at his heels. Another example of a high-pitched
opening scene may be found in Mr. Perceval Landon's _The House
Opposite_. Here we have a midnight parting between a married woman and
her lover, in the middle of which the man, glancing at the lighted
window of the house opposite, sees a figure moving in such a way as to
suggest that a crime is being perpetrated. As a matter of fact, an old
man is murdered, and his housekeeper is accused of the crime. The hero,
if so he can be called, knows that it was a man, not a woman, who was in
the victim's room that night; and the problem is: how can he give his
evidence without betraying a woman's secret by admitting his presence in
her house at midnight? I neither praise nor blame this class of story; I
merely cite the play as one in which we plunge straight into the crisis,
without any introductory period of tranquillity.
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