ly
rehearses in pantomime the action that is to follow. The introduction or
exposition belongs to the action itself; it is, as the Hindu critics
called it, the seed or circumstance from which the business arises.
Clearness being its primary requisite, many expedients have been at
various times adopted to secure this feature. Thus the Euripidean
prologue, though spoken by one of the characters of the play, took a
narrative form, more acceptable to the audience than to the critics, and
placed itself half without, half within, the action. The same purpose is
served by the separate "inductions" in many of the old English plays,
and by the preludes or prologues, or whatever name they may assume, in
numberless modern dramas of all kinds--from _Faust_ down to the
favourites of the Ambigu and the Adelphi. More facile is the orientation
supplied in French tragedy by the opening scenes between hero and
_confidant_, and in French comedy and its derivatives by those between
observant valet and knowing lady's-maid. But all such expedients may be
rendered unnecessary by the art of the dramatist, who is able outwardly
also to present the introduction of his action as an organic part of
that action itself; who seems to take the spectators _in medias res_,
while he is really building the foundations of his plot; who touches in
the opening of his action the chord which is to vibrate throughout its
course--"Down with the Capulets! down with the Montagues!"--"With the
Moor, sayest thou?"

Opening of movement.

Growth.

Height or climax.

The exposition, which may be short or long, but which should always
prepare and may even seem to necessitate the action, ends when the
movement of the action itself begins. This transition may occasionally
be marked with the utmost distinctness (as in the actual meeting between
the hero and the Ghost in _Hamlet_), while in other instances subsidiary
action or episode may judiciously intervene (as in _King Lear_, where
the subsidiary action of Gloster and his sons opportunely prevents too
abrupt a sequence of cause and effect). From this point the second stage
of the action--its "growth"--progresses to that third stage which is
called its "height" or "climax." All that has preceded the attainment of
this constitutes that half of the drama--usually its much larger
half--which Aristotle terms the [Greek: desis], or tying of the knot.
The varieties in the treatment of the growth or second stage of