One day Bernard casually mentions to his mother that the house of Fourchambault is on the verge of bankruptcy; nothing less than a quarter of a million francs will enable it to tide over the crisis.  Mme. Bernard, to her son’s astonishment, begs him to lend the tottering firm the sum required.  He objects that, unless the business is better managed, the loan will only postpone the inevitable disaster.  “Well, then, my son,” she replied, “you must go into partnership with M. Fourchambault.”  “I! with that imbecile!” he exclaims.  “My son,” she says gravely, and emphatically, “you must—­it is your duty—­I demand it of you!” “Ah!” cries Bernard.  “I understand—­he is my father!”

After ecstatically lauding this situation and the scenes which have led up to it, M. Sarcey continues—­

When the curtain falls upon the words “He is my father,” I at once see two scenes a faire, and I know that they will be faites:  the scene between the son and the father whom he is to save, the scene between Bernard and his half-brother Leopold, who are in love with the same woman, the one dishonourably and the other secretly and nobly.  What will they say to each other?  I have no idea.  But it is precisely this expectation mingled with uncertainly that is one of the charms of the theatre.  I say to myself, “Ah, they will have an encounter!  What will come of it?” And that this is the state of mind of the whole audience is proved by the fact that when the two characters of the scenes a faire stand face to face, a thrill of anticipation runs round the whole theatre.

This, then, is the obligatory scene as Sarcey generally understands it—­a scene which, for one reason or another, an audience expects and ardently desires.  I have italicized the phrase “expectation mingled with uncertainty” because it expresses in other terms the idea which I have sought to convey in the formula “foreshadowing without forestalling.”  But before we can judge of the merits of M. Sarcey’s theory, we must look into it a little more closely.  I shall try, then, to state it in my own words, in what I believe to be its most rational and defensible form.

An obligatory scene is one which the audience (more or less clearly and consciously) foresees and desires, and the absence of which it may with reason resent.  On a rough analysis, it will appear, I think, that there are five ways in which a scene may become, in this sense, obligatory: 

(1) It may be necessitated by the inherent logic of the theme.

(2) It may be demanded by the manifest exigencies of specifically dramatic effect.

(3) The author himself may have rendered it obligatory by seeming unmistakably to lead up to it.

(4) It may be required in order to justify some modification of character or alteration of will, too important to be taken for granted.

(5) It may be imposed by history or legend.