[Footnote 3:  A malicious anecdote to a similar effect was current in the early days of Sir Henry Irving’s career.  It was said that at Bristol one night, when Mr. Irving, as Hamlet, “took his call” after the first act, a man turned to his neighbour in the pit and said, “Can you tell me, sir, does that young man appear much in this play?” His neighbour informed him that Hamlet was rather largely concerned in the action, whereupon the inquirer remarked, “Oh!  Then I’m off!”]

[Footnote 4:  If it be well done, it may remain highly effective in spite of being discounted by previous knowledge.  For instance, the clock-trick in Raffles was none the less amusing because every one was on the look-out for it.]

[Footnote 5:  The question whether it is ever politic for a playwright to keep a secret from his audience is discussed elsewhere.  What I have here in mind is not an ordinary secret, but a more or less tricky effect of surprise.]

[Footnote 6:  The pleasure received from exceptionally good acting is, of course, a different matter.  I assume that the acting is merely competent enough to pass muster without irritating us, and so distracting our attention.]

[Footnote 7:  I myself expressed it in slightly different terms nearly ten years ago.  “Curiosity,” I said, “is the accidental relish of a single night; whereas the essential and abiding pleasure of the theatre lies in foreknowledge.  In relation to the characters in the drama, the audience are as gods looking before and after.  Sitting in the theatre, we taste, for a moment, the glory of omniscience.  With vision unsealed, we watch the gropings of purblind mortals after happiness, and smile at their stumblings, their blunders, their futile quests, their misplaced exultations, their groundless panics.  To keep a secret from us is to reduce us to their level, and deprive us of our clairvoyant aloofness.  There may be a pleasure in that too; we may join with zest in the game of blind-man’s-buff; but the theatre is in its essence a place where we are privileged to take off the bandage we wear in daily life, and to contemplate, with laughter or with tears, the blindfold gambols of our neighbours.”]

[Footnote 8:  Here an acute critic writes:  “On the whole I agree; but I do think there is dramatic interest to be had out of curiosity, through the identification, so to speak, of the audience with the discovering persons on the stage.  It is an interest of sympathy, not to be despised, rather than an interest of actual curiosity.”]

CHAPTER X

FORESHADOWING, NOT FORESTALLING

We return now to the point at which the foregoing disquisition—­it is not a digression—­became necessary.  We had arrived at the general principle that the playwright’s chief aim in his first act ought to be to arouse and carry forward the interest of the audience.  This may seem a tolerably obvious statement; but it is worth while to examine a little more closely into its implications.