The playwright should not let himself be
constrained by custom to force his theme into the arbitrary mould of a
stated number of acts. Three acts is a good number, four acts is a good
number,[3] there is no positive objection to five acts. Should he find
himself hankering after more acts, he will do well to consider whether
he be not, at one point or another, failing in the art of condensation
and trespassing on the domain of the novelist.
There is undoubted convenience in the rule of the modern stage: "One
act, one scene." A change of scene in the middle of an act is not only
materially difficult, but tends to impair the particular order of
illusion at which the modern drama aims.[4] Roughly, indeed, an act may
be defined as any part of a given crisis which works itself out at one
time and in one place; but more fundamentally it is a segment of the
action during which the author desires to hold the attention of his
audience unbroken and unrelaxed. It is no mere convention, however,
which decrees that the flight of time is best indicated by an interact.
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