The judicious
playwright will often ask himself, "Is it the actual substance of this
scene that I require, or only its repercussion?"
* * * * *
[Footnote 1: For example, in his criticism of Becque's _La Parisienne
(Quarante Ans de Theatre_, VI, p. 364), he tells how, at the end of the
second act, one of his neighbours said to him, "Eh! bien, vous voila
bien attrape! Ou est la _scene a faire_?" "I freely admit," he
continues, "that there is no _scene a faire_; if there had been no third
act I should not have been greatly astonished. When you make it your
business to recite on the stage articles from the _Vie Parisienne_, it
makes no difference whether you stop at the end of the second article or
at the end of the third." This clearly implies that a play in which
there is no _scene a faire_ is nothing but a series of newspaper
sketches. Becque, one fancies, might have replied that the scene between
Clotilde and Monsieur Simpson at the beginning of Act III was precisely
the _scene a faire_ demanded by the logic of his cynicism.
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