Alexandrian
precept, handed on by Horace, gave to the five act division a purely
arbitrary sanction, which induced playwrights to mask the natural rhythm
of their themes beneath this artificial one.[2] But in truth the
three-act division ought no more to be elevated into an absolute rule
than the five-act division. We have seen that a play consists, or ought
to consist, of a great crisis, worked out through a series of minor
crises. An act, then, ought to consist either of a minor crisis, carried
to its temporary solution, or of a well-marked group of such crises; and
there can be no rule as to the number of such crises which ought to
present themselves in the development of a given theme. On the modern
stage, five acts may be regarded as the maximum, simply by reason of the
time-limit imposed by social custom on a performance. But one frequently
sees a melodrama divided into "five acts and eight tableaux," or even
more; which practically means that the play is in eight, or nine, or ten
acts, but that there will be only the four conventional interacts in the
course of the evening.
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