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 Moliere's Tartufe does not come on the stage until
the third act of the comedy which bears his name.
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