A
gentile audience, on the other hand, cannot possibly foresee how--
"Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels."
and, lacking that foreknowledge, it misses the specifically dramatic
effect of the scenes. The author invites it to play at blind-man's-buff
with the characters, instead of unsealing its eyes and enabling it to
watch the game from its Olympian coign of vantage.
Let the dramatist, then, never neglect to place the requisite
finger-posts on the road he would have us follow. It is not, of course,
necessary that we should be conscious of all the implications of any
given scene or incident, but we must know enough of them not only to
create the requisite tension, but to direct it towards the right quarter
of the compass. Retrospective elucidations are valueless and sometimes
irritating. It is in nowise to the author's interest that we should say,
"Ah, if we had only known this, or foreseen that, in time, the effect of
such-and-such a scene would have been entirely different!" We have no
use for finger-posts that point backwards.
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