" To engender, maintain, suspend, heighten and resolve a state
of tension--that is the main object of the dramatist's craft.
What do we mean by tension? Clearly a stretching out, a stretching
forward, of the mind. That is the characteristic mental attitude of the
theatrical audience. If the mind is not stretching forward, the body
will soon weary of its immobility and constraint. Attention may be
called the momentary correlative of tension. When we are intent on what
is to come, we are attentive to what is there and then happening. The
term tension is sometimes applied, not to the mental state of the
audience, but to the relation of the characters on the stage. "A scene
of high tension" is primarily one in which the actors undergo a great
emotional strain. But this is, after all, only a means towards
heightening of the mental tension of the audience. In such a scene the
mind stretches forward, no longer to something vague and distant, but to
something instant and imminent.
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