As to arousing the interest of the audience, it is clear that very little specific advice can be given.  One can only say, “Find an interesting theme, state its preliminaries clearly and crisply, and let issue be joined without too much delay.”  There can be no rules for finding an interesting theme, any more than for catching the Blue Bird.  At a later stage we may perhaps attempt a summary enumeration of themes which are not interesting, which have exhausted any interest they ever possessed, and “repay careful avoidance.”  But such an enumeration would be out of place here, where we are studying principles of form apart from details of matter.

The arousing of interest, however, is one thing, the carrying-forward of interest is another; and on the latter point there are one or two things that may profitably be said.  Each act, as we have seen, should consist of, or at all events contain, a subordinate crisis, contributory to the main crisis of the play:  and the art of act-construction lies in giving to each act an individuality and interest of its own, without so rounding it off as to obscure even for a moment its subsidiary, and, in the case of the first act, its introductory, relation to the whole.  This is a point which many dramatists ignore or undervalue.  Very often, when the curtain falls on a first or a second act, one says, “This is a fairly good act in itself; but whither does it lead? what is to come of it all?” It awakens no definite anticipation, and for two pins one would take up one’s hat and go home.  The author has neglected the art of carrying-forward the interest.

It is curious to note that in the most unsophisticated forms of melodrama this art is deliberately ignored.  In plays of the type of The Worst Woman in London, it appears to be an absolute canon of art that every act must have a “happy ending”—­that the curtain must always fall on the hero, or, preferably, the comic man, in an attitude of triumph, while the villain and villainess cower before him in baffled impotence.  We have perfect faith, of course, that the villain will come up smiling in the next act, and proceed with his nefarious practices; but, for the moment, virtue has it all its own way.  This, however, is a very artless formula which has somehow developed of recent years; and it is doubtful whether even the audiences to which these plays appeal would not in reality prefer something a little less inept in the matter of construction.  As soon as we get above this level, at all events, the fostering of anticipation becomes a matter of the first importance.  The problem is, not to cut short the spectator’s interest, or to leave it fluttering at a loose end, but to provide it either with a clearly-foreseen point in the next act towards which it can reach onwards, or with a definite enigma, the solution of which is impatiently awaited.  In general terms, a bridge should be provided between one act and another, along which the spectator’s mind cannot but travel with eager anticipation.  And this is particularly important, or particularly apt to be neglected, at the end of the first act.  At a later point, if the interest does not naturally and inevitably carry itself forward, the case is hopeless indeed.