In light comedy and farce it is even more desirable than in serious
drama to avoid a tame and perfunctory last act. Very often a seemingly
trivial invention will work wonders in keeping the interest afoot. In
Mr. Anstey's delightful farce, _The Brass Bottle_, one looked forward
rather dolefully to a flat conclusion; but by the simple device of
letting the Jinny omit to include Pringle in his "act of oblivion," the
author is enabled to make his last scene quite as amusing as any of its
predecessors. Mr. Arnold Bennett, in _The Honeymoon_, had the audacity
to play a deliberate trick on the audience, in order to evade an
anticlimax. Seeing that his third act could not at best be very good, he
purposely put the audience on a false scent, made it expect an
absolutely commonplace ending (the marriage of Flora to Charles Haslam),
and then substituted one which, if not very brilliant, was at least
ingenious and unforeseen. Thus, by defeating the expectation of a
superlatively bad act, he made a positively insignificant act seem
comparatively good.
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