The reason why the last act should offer special
difficulties is not far to seek. We have agreed to regard a play as
essentially a crisis in the lives of one or more persons; and we all
know that crises are much more apt to have a definite beginning than a
definite end. We can almost always put our finger upon the moment--not,
indeed, when the crisis began--but when we clearly realized its presence
or its imminence. A chance meeting, the receipt of a letter or a
telegram, a particular turn given to a certain conversation, even the
mere emergence into consciousness of a previously latent feeling or
thought, may mark quite definitely the moment of germination, so to
speak, of a given crisis; and it is comparatively easy to dramatize such
a moment. But how few crises come to a definite or dramatic conclusion!
Nine times out of ten they end in some petty compromise, or do not end
at all, but simply subside, like the waves of the sea when the storm has
blown itself out. It is the playwright's chief difficulty to find a
crisis with an ending which satisfies at once his artistic conscience
and the requirements of dramatic effect.
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