undoubtedly culminates in the great scene between Nina and Hilary Jesson in the third act; yet we await with eager anticipation the discomfiture of the Ridgeley family; and when we realize that it is to be brought about by the disclosure to Filmer of Annabel’s secret, the manifest rightness of the proceeding gives us a little shock of pleasure.  Mr. Somerset Maugham, again, in the last act of Grace, employs an ingenious device to keep the tension at a high pitch.  The matter of the act consists mainly of a debate as to whether Grace Insole ought, or ought not, to make a certain painful avowal to her husband.  As the negative opinion was to carry the day, Mr. Maugham saw that there was grave danger that the final scene might appear an almost ludicrous anticlimax.  To obviate this, he made Grace, at the beginning of the act, write a letter of confession, and address it to Claude; so that all through the discussion we had at the back of our mind the question “Will the letter reach his hands?  Will the sword of Damocles fall?” This may seem like a leaf from the book of Sardou; but in reality it was a perfectly natural and justified expedient.  It kept the tension alive throughout a scene of ethical discussion, interesting in itself, but pretty clearly destined to lead up to the undramatic alternative—­a policy of silence and inaction.  Mr. Clyde Fitch, in the last act of The Truth, made an elaborate and daring endeavour to relieve the mawkishness of the clearly-foreseen reconciliation between Warder and Becky.  He let Becky fall in with her father’s mad idea of working upon Warder’s compassion by pretending that she had tried to kill herself.  Only at the last moment did she abandon the sordid comedy, and so prove herself (as we are asked to suppose) cured for ever of the habit of fibbing.  Mr. Fitch here showed good technical insight marred by over-hasty execution.  That Becky should be tempted to employ her old methods, and should overcome the temptation, was entirely right; but the actual deception attempted was so crude and hopeless that there was no plausibility in her consenting to it, and no merit in her desisting from it.

In light comedy and farce it is even more desirable than in serious drama to avoid a tame and perfunctory last act.  Very often a seemingly trivial invention will work wonders in keeping the interest afoot.  In Mr. Anstey’s delightful farce, The Brass Bottle, one looked forward rather dolefully to a flat conclusion; but by the simple device of letting the Jinny omit to include Pringle in his “act of oblivion,” the author is enabled to make his last scene quite as amusing as any of its predecessors.  Mr. Arnold Bennett, in The Honeymoon, had the audacity to play a deliberate trick on the audience, in order to evade an anticlimax.  Seeing that his third act could not at best be very good, he purposely put the audience on a false scent, made it expect an absolutely commonplace ending (the marriage of Flora to Charles Haslam), and then substituted one which, if not very brilliant, was at least ingenious and unforeseen.  Thus, by defeating the expectation of a superlatively bad act, he made a positively insignificant act seem comparatively good.  Such feats of craftsmanship are entertaining, but too dangerous to be commended for imitation.