" There can be no rules for
finding an interesting theme, any more than for catching the Blue Bird.
At a later stage we may perhaps attempt a summary enumeration of themes
which are not interesting, which have exhausted any interest they ever
possessed, and "repay careful avoidance." But such an enumeration would
be out of place here, where we are studying principles of form apart
from details of matter.
The arousing of interest, however, is one thing, the carrying-forward of
interest is another; and on the latter point there are one or two things
that may profitably be said. Each act, as we have seen, should consist
of, or at all events contain, a subordinate crisis, contributory to the
main crisis of the play: and the art of act-construction lies in giving
to each act an individuality and interest of its own, without so
rounding it off as to obscure even for a moment its subsidiary, and, in
the case of the first act, its introductory, relation to the whole. This
is a point which many dramatists ignore or undervalue.
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