[6]
It is not sufficient, however, that a first act should fulfil Dumas's
requirement by placing the situation clearly before us: it ought also to
carry us some way towards the heart of the drama, or, at the very least,
to point distinctly towards that quarter of the horizon where the clouds
are gathering up. In a three-act play this is evidently demanded by the
most elementary principles of proportion. It would be absurd to make
one-third of the play merely introductory, and to compress the whole
action into the remaining two-thirds. But even in a four- or five-act
play, the interest of the audience ought to be strongly enlisted, and
its anticipation headed in a definite direction, before the curtain
falls for the first time. When we find a dramatist of repute neglecting
this principle, we may suspect some reason with which art has no
concern. Several of Sardou's social dramas begin with two acts of more
or less smart and entertaining satire or caricature, and only at the end
of the second or beginning of the third act (out of five) does the drama
proper set in.
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