In some modern plays a full close is achieved by the simple expedient of altogether omitting the last act, or last scene, and leaving the end of the play to the imagination.  This method is boldly and (I understand) successfully employed by Mr. Edward Sheldon in his powerful play, The Nigger.  Philip Morrow, the popular Governor of one of the Southern States, has learnt that his grandmother was a quadroon, and that consequently he has in him a much-attenuated strain of African blood.  In the Southern States, attenuation matters nothing:  if the remotest filament of a man’s ancestry runs back to Africa, he is “a nigger all right.”  Philip has just suppressed a race-riot in the city, and, from the balcony of the State Capitol, is to address the troops who have aided him, and the assembled multitude.  Having resolutely parted from the woman he adores, but can no longer marry, he steps out upon the balcony to announce that he is a negro, that he resigns the Governorship, and that henceforth he casts in his lot with his black brethren.  The stage-direction runs thus—­

The afternoon sun strikes his figure.  At his appearance a shout goes up—­long, steady, enthusiastic cheering; and, after a moment, the big regimental band begins playing, very slowly, “My Country, ’tis of Thee.” ...  All the people in the room are smiling and applauding enthusiastically; and—­as Phil in vain raises his hand for silence, and the band crashes through the National Anthem, and the roar of voices still rises from below—­

  THE CURTAIN FALLS.

One does not know whether to praise Mr. Sheldon for having adroitly avoided an anticlimax, or to reproach him with having unblushingly shirked a difficulty.  To my sense, the play has somewhat the air of a hexameter line with the spondee cut off.[5] One does want to see the peripety through.  But if the audience is content to imagine the sequel, Mr. Sheldon’s craftsmanship is justified, and there is no more to be said.  M. Brieux experienced some difficulty in bringing his early play, Blanchette, to a satisfactory close.  The third act which he originally wrote was found unendurably cynical; a more agreeable third act was condemned as an anticlimax; and for some time the play was presented with no third act at all.  It did not end, but simply left off.  No doubt it is better that a play should stop in the middle than that it should drag on tediously and ineffectually.  But it would be foolish to make a system of such an expedient.  It is, after all, an evasion, not a solution, of the artist’s problem.