produce an effect with one
skillful right-arm stroke which shall make the spectators a unit in the
feeling that the evening has been well spent and his drama is true to
the best tradition of the stage.

The stress has steadily increased to a degree at which it must be
relieved. The strain is at the breaking point. The clash of characters
or of circumstances operating upon characters is such that a crisis is
at hand. By some ingenious interplay of word, action and scene, by an
emotional crescendo crystallizing in a stage picture, by some unexpected
reversion of incident or of human psychology (known in stage technic as
peripety) or by an unforeseen accident in the fall of events, an
electric change is exhibited, with the emotions of the _dramatis
personae_ at white heat and the consequent enthraldom of the audience. Of
all the varied pleasures of the playhouse, this moment, scene, turn of
story, is that which appeals to the largest number and has made the
theater most distinctive. This is not to say that a profound revelation
of character, or a pungent reflection on life, made concrete in a
situation, may not be a finer thing to do. It is merely to recognize a
certain unique thing the stage can do in story telling, as against other
forms, and to confess its universal attraction. While there is much in
latter day play-making that seems to deaden the thrill of the obligatory
scene, a clear comprehension of its central importance is basal in
appreciation of the drama. A play may succeed without it, and a
temporary school of psychologues may even pretend to pooh-pooh it as an
outworn mode of cheap theatrics. The influence of Ibsen, and there is
none more potent, has been cited as against the _scene a faire_, in the
French sense; and it is true that his curtains are less obviously
stressed and appear to aim not so much at the palpably heightened
effects traditional of the development in French hands,--the most
skillful hands in the world. But it remains true that this central and
dominant scene is inherent in the very structure of dramatic writing. To
repeat what was said before, the play that abandons climax may be good
entertainment, but is by so much poorer drama. The best and most
successful dramaturgy of our day therefore will seek to preserve the
obligatory scene, but hide under more subtle technic the ways and means
by which it is secured. The ways of the past became so open in the
attempt to reach the result as to pr