re economy of means.

Sometimes, however, Sir Arthur Pinero injudiciously emphasizes the
artifices employed to bring about an exposition. In _The Thunderbolt_,
for instance, in order that the Mortimores' family solicitor may without
reproach ask for information on matters with which a family solicitor
ought to be fully conversant, it has to be explained that the senior
partner of the firm, who had the Mortimore business specially in hand,
has been called away to London, and that a junior partner has taken his
place. Such a rubbing-in, as it were, of an obvious device ought at all
hazards to be avoided. If the information cannot be otherwise imparted
(as in this case it surely could), the solicitor had better be allowed
to ask one or two improbable questions--it is the lesser evil of
the two.

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 R