comprehension of a play be said or done during the first ten minutes
after the rise of the curtain. Here, again, _A Doll's House_ may be
cited as a model, though Ibsen, certainly, had no thought of the British
dinner-hour in planning the play. The opening scene is just what the
ideal opening scene ought to be--invaluable, yet not indispensable. The
late-comer who misses it deprives himself of a preliminary glimpse into
the characters of Nora and Helmer and the relation between them; but he
misses nothing that is absolutely essential to his comprehension of the
play as a whole. This, then, would appear to be a sound maxim both of
art and prudence: let your first ten minutes by all means be crisp,
arresting, stimulating, but do not let them embody any absolutely vital
matter, ignorance of which would leave the spectator in the dark as to
the general design and purport of the play.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: See Chapter XXIII.]

[Footnote 2: Henri Becque's two best-known plays aptly exemplify the two
types of opening. In _Les Corbeaux_ we have almost an entire act of calm
domesticity in which the only hint of coming trouble is an allusion to
Vigneron's attacks of vertigo. In _La Parisienne_ Clotilde and Lafont
are in the thick of a vehement quarrel over a letter. It proceeds for
ten minutes or so, at the end of which Clotilde says, "Prenez garde,
voila mon mari!"--and we find that the two are not husband and wife, but
wife and lover.]

[Footnote 3: Mrs. Craigie ("John Oliver Hobbes") opened her very
successful play, _The Ambassador_, with a scene between Juliet
Desborough and her sister Alice, a nun, who apparently left her convent
specially to hear her sister's confession, and then returned to it for
ever. This was certainly not an economical form of exposition, but it
was not unsuited to the type of play.]

[Footnote 4: In that charming comedy, _Rosemary_, by Messrs. Parker and
Carson, there is a gap of fifty years between the last act and its
predecessor; but the so-called last act is only an "epi-monologue."]

[Footnote 5: Or at most two closely connected characters: for instance,
a husband and wife.]

_CHAPTER VIII_

THE FIRST ACT

Both in the theory and in practice, of late years, war has been declared
in certain quarters against the division of a play into acts. Students
of the Elizabethan stage have persuaded themselves, by what I believe to
be a complete misreading