other terms, we are conscious of no tension in
the earlier acts of this play, because we have not been permitted to see
the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of Hannah and David
Brandon. For lack of preparation, of pointing-forward, we feel none of
that god-like superiority to the people of the mimic world which we have
recognized as the characteristic privilege of the spectator. We know no
more than they do of the implications of their acts, and the network of
embarrassments in which they are involving themselves. Indeed, we know
less than they do: for Hannah, as a well brought-up Jewess, is no doubt
vaguely aware of the disabilities attaching to a divorced woman. A
gentile audience, on the other hand, cannot possibly foresee how--

"Some consequence yet hanging in the stars
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date
With this night's revels."

and, lacking that foreknowledge, it misses the specifically dramatic
effect of the scenes. The author invites it to play at blind-man's-buff
with the characters, instead of unsealing its eyes and enabling it to
watch the game from its Olympian coign of vantage.

Let the dramatist, then, never neglect to place the requisite
finger-posts on the road he would have us follow. It is not, of course,
necessary that we should be conscious of all the implications of any
given scene or incident, but we must know enough of them not only to
create the requisite tension, but to direct it towards the right quarter
of the compass. Retrospective elucidations are valueless and sometimes
irritating. It is in nowise to the author's interest that we should say,
"Ah, if we had only known this, or foreseen that, in time, the effect of
such-and-such a scene would have been entirely different!" We have no
use for finger-posts that point backwards.[3]

In the works of Sir Arthur Pinero I recall two cases in which the lack
of a finger-post impairs the desired effect: slightly, in the one
instance, in the other, very considerably. The third act of that
delightful comedy _The Princess and the Butterfly_ contains no
sufficient indication of Fay Zuliani's jealousy of the friendship
between Sir George Lamorant and the Princess Pannonia. We are rather at
a loss to account for the coldness of her attitude to the Princess, and
her perverse naughtiness in going off to the Opera Ball. This renders
the end of the act practically ineffective. We so little foresee what is
to come of Fay's midnight escapad