There can be no doubt that the balance and proportion of the
play gained enormously by the transference.
After all, however, the essential question is not how much or how little
is conveyed to us in the first act, but whether our interest is
thoroughly aroused, and, what is of equal importance, skilfully carried
forward. Before going more at large into this very important detail of
the playwright's craft, it may be well to say something of the nature of
dramatic interest in general.
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: There are several cases in Greek drama in which a hero
leaves the stage to fight a battle and returns victorious in a few
minutes. See, for example, the _Supplices_ of Euripides.]
[Footnote 2: So far was Shakespeare from ignoring the act-division that
it is a question whether his art did not sometimes suffer from the
supposed necessity of letting a fourth act intervene between the
culmination in the third act and the catastrophe in the fifth.
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