Erlynne upon his wife, and risking a violent scandal in order to
postpone an explanation which he must know to be ultimately inevitable.
Though one had not as yet learnt the precise facts of the case, one felt
pretty confident that his lordship's conduct would scarcely justify
itself. But interest is largely independent of critical judgment, and,
for my own part, I can aver that, when the curtain fell on the first
act, a five-pound note would not have bribed me to leave the theatre
without assisting at Lady Windermere's reception in the second act. That
is the frame of mind which the author should try to beget in his
audience; and Oscar Wilde, then almost a novice, had, in this one little
passage between Lady Windermere and the butler, shown himself a master
of the art of dramatic story-telling. The dramatist has higher functions
than mere story-telling; but this is fundamental, and the true artist is
the last to despise it.[1]
For another example of a first act brought to what one may call a
judiciously tantalizing conclusion, I turn to Mr.
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