One principle, however, may be emphasized as almost universally valid, and that is that the end of an act should never leave the action just where it stood at the beginning.  An audience has an instinctive sense of, and desire for, progress.  It does not like to realize that things have been merely marking time.  Even if it has been thoroughly entertained, from moment to moment, during the progress of an act, it does not like to feel at the end that nothing has really happened.  The fall of the curtain gives time for reflection, and for the ordering of impressions which, while the action was afoot, were more or less vague and confused.  It is therefore of great importance that each act should, to put it briefly, bear looking back upon—­that it should appear to stand in due proportion to the general design of the play, and should not be felt to have been empty, or irrelevant, or disappointing.  This is, indeed, a plain corollary from the principle of tension.  Suspended it may be, sometimes with positive advantage; but it must not be suspended too long; and suspension for a whole act is equivalent to relaxation.

To sum up:  when once a play has begun to move, its movement ought to proceed continuously, and with gathering momentum; or, if it stands still for a space, the stoppage ought to be deliberate and purposeful.  It is fatal when the author thinks it is moving, while in fact it is only revolving on its own axis.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1:  This method of heightening the tension would have been somewhat analogous to that employed by Oscar Wilde in Lady Windermere’s instructions to her butler, cited on p. 115.]

[Footnote 2:  Dryden (Of Dramatic Poesy, p. 56, ed.  Arnold, 1903) says:  “Our plays, besides the main design, have underplots or by-concernments, of less considerable persons and intrigues, which are carried on with the motion of the main plot; as they say the orb of the fixed stars, and those of the planets, though they have motions of their own, are whirled about by the motion of the primum mobile, in which they are contained.”  This is an admirable description of the ideal underplot, as conceived by our forefathers; but we find that two lines of tension jar with and weaken each other.]

CHAPTER XII

PREPARATION:  THE FINGER-POST

We shall find, on looking into it, that most of the technical maxims that have any validity may be traced back, directly or indirectly, to the great principle of tension.  The art of construction is summed up, first, in giving the mind of an audience something to which to stretch forward, and, secondly, in not letting it feel that it has stretched forward in vain.  “You will find it infinitely pleasing,” says Dryden,[1] “to be led in a labyrinth of design, where you see some of your way before you, yet discern not the end till you arrive at it.”  Or, he might have added, “if you foresee the end, but not the means by which it is to be reached.”  In drama, as in all art, the “how” is often more important than the “what.”