This one little touch is a masterpiece of craftsmanship.  It would have been the most natural thing in the world for either the sister or the brother-in-law, concerned about their own matrimonial difficulties, to let fall some passing allusion to Letchmere’s separation from his wife; but the author carefully avoided this, carefully allowed us to make our first acquaintance with Letty in ignorance of the irony of her position, and then allowed the truth to slip out just in time to let us feel the whole force of that irony during the last scene of the act and the greater part of the second act.  A finer instance of the delicate grading of tension it would be difficult to cite.

One thing is certain; namely, that if a secret is to be kept at all, it must be worth the keeping; if a riddle is propounded, its answer must be pleasing and ingenious, or the audience will resent having been led to cudgel its brains for nothing.  This is simply a part of the larger principle, before insisted on, that when a reasonable expectation is aroused, it can be baffled only at the author’s peril.  If the crux of a scene or of a whole play lie in the solution of some material difficulty or moral problem, it must on no account be solved by a mere trick or evasion.  The dramatist is very ill-advised who sets forth with pomp and circumstance to perform some intellectual or technical feat, and then merely skirts round it or runs away from it.  A fair proportion should always be observed between effort and effect, between promise and performance.

“But if the audience happens to misread the playwright’s design, and form exaggerated and irrational expectations?” That merely means that the playwright does not know his business, or, at any rate, does not know his audience.  It is his business to play upon the collective mind of his audience as upon a keyboard—­to arouse just the right order and measure of anticipation, and fulfil it, or outdo it, in just the right way at just the right time.  The skill of the dramatist, as distinct from his genius or inspiration, lies in the correctness of his insight into the mind of his audience.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1:  For instance:  “If you can get a word with him by pretending that you are his wife, tell him to hold his tongue until morning; that will give me all the start I need.”]

[Footnote 2:  In The Idyll, by Herr Egge, of which some account is given in Chapter X, the author certainly does right in not allowing the audience for a moment to share the hero’s doubts as to the heroine’s past.  It would have been very easy for him to have kept the secret; but he takes the earliest opportunity of assuring us that her relations with Ringve were quite innocent.]

BOOK IV

THE END

CHAPTER XVIII

CLIMAX AND ANTICLIMAX