Moreover--this may seem a super-subtlety, but one has seen it
neglected with notably bad effect--a playwright should never let his
audience expect the fall of a curtain at a given point, and then balk
their expectancy, unless he is sure that he holds in reserve a more than
adequate compensation. There is nothing so dangerous as to let a play,
or an act, drag on when the audience feels in its heart that it is
really over, and that "the rest is silence"--or ought to be. The end of
Mr. Granville Barker's fine play, _The Voysey Inheritance_, was injured
by the fact that, several minutes before the curtain actually fell, he
had given what seemed an obvious "cue for curtain." I do not say that
what followed was superfluous; what I do say is that the author ought to
have been careful not to let us imagine that the colloquy between Edward
and Alice was over when in fact it had still some minutes to run. An
even more remarkable play, _The Madras House_, was ruined, on its first
night, by a long final anticlimax.
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