This is precisely what must be done at the very beginning of a playlet—­the friends, who are the author’s characters, must be introduced to his interested family, the audience, with every bit of information that is necessary to a clear understanding of the playlet’s situation.  These are the roots from which the playlet springs—­the premise of its problem.  Precisely as “The Lollard” declares in its opening speeches who Miss Carey is and who Angela Maxwell is, and that Angela is knocking at Miss Carey’s door at two o’clock in the morning because she has left Harry, her husband, after a quarrel the roots of which lie in the past, so every playlet must state in its very first speeches, the “whos” and “whys”—­the premises—­out of which the playlet logically develops.

The prologue of “The Villain Still Pursued Her” is an excellent illustration of this point.  When this very funny travesty was first produced, it did not have a prologue.  It began almost precisely as the full-stage scene begins now, and the audience did not know whether to take it seriously or not.  The instant he watched the audience at the first performance, the author sensed the problem he had to face.  He knew, then, that he would have to tell the next audience and every other that the playlet is a farce, a roaring travesty, to get the full value of laughter that lies in the situations.  He pondered the matter and saw that if the announcement in plain type on the billboards and in the program that his playlet was a travesty was not enough, he would have to tell the audience by a plain statement from the stage before his playlet began.  So he hit upon the prologue that stamps the act as a travesty in its very first lines, introduces the characters and exposes the roots out of which the action develops so clearly that there cannot possibly be any mistake.  And his reward was the making over of an indifferent success into one of the most successful travesties in vaudeville.

This conveying to the audience of the knowledge necessary to enable them to follow the plot is technically known as “exposition.”  It is one of the most important parts of the art of construction—­indeed, it is a sure test of a playwright’s dexterity.  While there are various ways of offering preliminary information in the long drama—­that is, it may be presented all at once in the opening scene of the first act, or homeopathically throughout the first act, or some minor bits of necessary information may be postponed even until the opening of the second act—­there is only one way of presenting the information necessary to the understanding of the playlet:  It must all be compressed into the very first speeches of the opening scene.