The advantage of a staccato opening—­or, to vary the metaphor, a brisk, highly aerated introductory passage—­is clearly exemplified in A Doll’s House.  It would have been quite possible for Ibsen to have sent up his curtain upon Nora and Mrs. Linden seated comfortably before the stove, and exchanging confidences as to their respective careers.  Nothing indispensable would have been omitted; but how languid would have been the interest of the audience!  As it is, a brief, bright scene has already introduced us, not only to Nora, but to Helmer, and aroused an eager desire for further insight into the affairs of this—­to all appearance—­radiantly happy household.  Therefore, we settle down without impatience to listen to the fireside gossip of the two old school-fellows.

The problem of how to open a play is complicated in the English theatre by considerations wholly foreign to art.  Until quite recently, it used to be held impossible for a playwright to raise his curtain upon his leading character or characters, because the actor-manager would thus be baulked of his carefully arranged “entrance” and “reception,” and, furthermore, because twenty-five per cent of the audience would probably arrive about a quarter of an hour late, and would thus miss the opening scene or scenes.  It used at one time to be the fashion to add to the advertisement of a play an entreaty that the audience should be punctually in their seats, “as the interest began with the rise of the curtain.”  One has seen this assertion made with regard to plays in which, as a matter of fact, the interest had not begun at the fall of the curtain.  Nowadays, managers, and even leading ladies, are a good deal less insistent on their “reception” than they used to be.  They realize that it may be a distinct advantage to hold the stage from the very outset.  There are few more effective openings than that of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray, where we find Aubrey Tanqueray seated squarely at his bachelor dinner-table with Misquith on his right and Jayne on his left.  It may even be taken as a principle that, where it is desired to give to one character a special prominence and predominance, it ought, if possible, to be the first figure on which the eye of the audience falls.  In a Sherlock Holmes play, for example, the curtain ought assuredly to rise on the great Sherlock enthroned in Baker Street, with Dr. Watson sitting at his feet.  The solitary entrance of Richard III throws his figure into a relief which could by no other means have been attained.  So, too, it would have been a mistake on Sophocles’ part to let any one but the protagonist open the Oedipus Rex.