(c) Scenes that Must be Shown.  From the first dawn of drama until today, when the motion pictures are facing the very same necessity, the problem that has vexed playwrights most is the selection of what scenes must be shown.  These all-important scenes are the incidents of the story or the interviews between characters that cannot be recounted by other characters.  Call them dramatic scenes, essential scenes, what you will, if they are not shown actually happening, but are described by dialogue—­the interest of the audience will lag and each person from the first seat in the orchestra to the last bench in the gallery will be disappointed and dissatisfied.  For instance: 

If, instead of Fred Saltus’ appearing before the audience and having his humorously thoughtless but nevertheless momentous talk with Angela in which Angela falls in love with him, the interview had been told the audience by Miss Carey, there would have been no playlet.  Nearly as important is the prologue of “The Villian Still Pursued Her”; Mr. Denvir found it absolutely necessary to show those characters to the audience, so that they might see them with their own eyes in their farcical relations to each other, before he secured the effect that made his playlet.  Turn to “The System” and try to find even one scene there shown that could be replaced by narrative dialogue and you will see once more how important are the “scenes that must be shown.”

One of the all-rules-in-one for writing drama that I have heard, though I cannot now recall what playwright told me, deals with precisely this point.  He expressed it this way:  “First tell your audience what you are going to do, then show it to them happening, and then tell ’em it has happened!” You will not make a mistake, of course, if you show the audience those events in which the dramatic conflict enters.  The soul of a playlet is the clash of the wills of the characters, from which fly the revealing flashes; a playlet, therefore, loses interest for the audience when the scenes in which those wills clash and flash revealingly are not shown.

It is out of such revealing scenes that the rising movement grows, as Freytag says, “with a progressive intensity of interest.”  But, not only must the events progress and the climax be brought nearer, but the scenes themselves must broaden with force and revealing power.  They must grow until there comes one big scene—­“big” in every way—­somewhere on the toes of the ending, a scene next to the last or the last itself.

(d) The Climax.  Here is where the decisive blow is struck in a moment when the action becomes throbbing and revealing in every word and movement.  In “The Lollard” it is when Fred makes his revealing dash through the room—­this is the dramatic blow which breaks Angela’s infatuation.  It is the crowning point of the crowning scene in which the forces of the playlet culminate, and the “heart wallop”—­as Tom Barry calls it [1]—­is delivered and the decision is won and made.