presentation, is there any means of determining how much should be left
for retrospect, and at what point the curtain ought to be raised? The
principle would seem to be that slow and gradual processes, and
especially separate lines of causation, should be left outside the frame
of the picture, and that the curtain should be raised at the point where
separate lines have converged, and where the crisis begins to move
towards its solution with more or less rapidity and continuity
When the whole of a given subject cannot be got within the limits of
presentation, is there any means of determining how much should be left
for retrospect, and at what point the curtain ought to be raised? The
principle would seem to be that slow and gradual processes, and
especially separate lines of causation, should be left outside the frame
of the picture, and that the curtain should be raised at the point where
separate lines have converged, and where the crisis begins to move
towards its solution with more or less rapidity and continuity. The
ideas of rapidity and continuity may be conveniently summed up in the
hackneyed and often misapplied term, unity of action. Though the unities
of time and place are long ago exploded as binding principles--indeed,
they never had any authority in English drama--yet it is true that a
broken-backed action, whether in time or space, ought, so far as
possible, to be avoided. An action with a gap of twenty years in it may
be all very well in melodrama or romance, but scarcely in higher and
more serious types of drama.[4] Especially is it to be desired that
interest should be concentrated on one set of characters, and should not
be frittered away on subsidiary or preliminary personages. Take, for
instance, the case of _The Second Mrs. Tanqueray_. It would have been
theoretically possible for Sir Arthur Pinero to have given us either (or
both) of two preliminary scenes: he might have shown us the first Mrs.
Tanqueray at home, and at the same time have introduced us more at large
to the characters of Aubrey and Ellean; or he might have depicted for us
one of the previous associations of Paula Ray--might perhaps have let us
see her 'keeping house' with Hugh Ardale. But either of these openings
would have been disproportionate and superfluous. It would have excited,
or tried to excite, our interest in something that was not the real
theme of the play, and in characters which were to drop out before the
real theme--the Aubrey-Paula marriage--was reached. Therefore the
author, in all probability, never thought of beginning at either of
these points. He passed instinctively to the point at which the two
lines of causation converged, and from which the action could be carried
continuously forward by one set of characters. He knew that we could
learn in retrospect all that it was necessary for us to know of the
first Mrs. Tanqueray, and that to introduce her in the flesh would be
merely to lead the interest of the audience into a blind alley, and to
break the back of his action. Again, in _His House in Order_ it may seem
that the intrigue between Maurewarde and the immaculate Annabel, with
its tragic conclusion, would have made a stirring introductory act. But
to have presented such an act would have been to destroy the unity of
the play, which centres in the character of Nina. Annabel is 'another
story'; and to have told, or rather shown us, more of it than was
absolutely necessary, would have been to distract our attention from the
real theme of the play, while at the same time fatally curtailing the
all-too-brief time available for the working-out of that theme. There
are cases, no doubt, when verbal exposition may advantageously be
avoided by means of a dramatized 'Prologue'--a single act, constituting
a little drama in itself, and generally separated by a considerable
space of time from the action proper. But this method is scarcely to be
commended, except, as aforesaid, for purposes of melodrama and romance.
A 'Prologue' is for such plays as _The Prisoner of Zenda_ and _The Only
Way_, not for such plays as _His House in Order_.
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