A
play with a well-marked, well-balanced act-structure is a higher
artistic organism than a play with no act-structure, just as a
vertebrate animal is higher than a mollusc. In every crisis of real life
(unless it be so short as to be a mere incident) there is a rhythm of
rise, progress, culmination and solution. We are not always, perhaps not
often, conscious of these stages; but that is only because we do not
reflect upon our experiences while they are passing, or map them out in
memory when they are past. We do, however, constantly apply to real-life
crises expressions borrowed more or less directly from the terminology
of the drama. We say, somewhat incorrectly, "Things have come to a
climax," meaning thereby a culmination; or we say, "The catastrophe is
at hand," or, again, "What a fortunate _denouement_!" Be this as it may,
it is the business of the dramatist to analyse the crises with which he
deals, and to present them to us in their rhythm of growth, culmination,
solution.
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