f he had Shakespeare's genius, he would find it
difficult to produce a very profound effect in a crisis worked out from
first to last before the eyes of the audience.

Nevertheless, as before stated, such a crisis has a charm of its own.
There is a peculiar interest in watching the rise and development out of
nothing, as it were, of a dramatic complication. For this class of play
(despite the Shakespearean precedents) a quiet opening is often
advisable, rather than a strong _einleitende Akkord_. "From calm,
through storm, to calm," is its characteristic formula; whether the
concluding calm be one of life and serenity or of despair and death. To
my personal taste, one of the keenest forms of theatrical enjoyment is
that of seeing the curtain go up on a picture of perfect tranquillity,
wondering from what quarter the drama is going to arise, and then
watching it gather on the horizon like a cloud no bigger than a man's
hand. Of this type of opening, _An Enemy of the People_ provides us with
a classic example; and among English plays we may cite Mr. Shaw's
_Candida_, Mr. Barker's _Waste_, and Mr. Besier's _Don_, in which so
sudden and unlooked-for a cyclone swoops down upon the calm of an
English vicarage. An admirable instance of a fantastic type may be found
in _Prunella_, by Messrs. Barker and Housman.[2]

There is much to be said, however, in favour of the opening which does
not present an aspect of delusive calm, but shows the atmosphere already
charged with electricity. Compare, for instance, the opening of _The
Case of Rebellious Susan_, by Mr. Henry Arthur Jones, with that of a
French play of very similar theme--Dumas's _Francillon_. In the latter,
we see the storm-cloud slowly gathering up on the horizon; in the
former, it is already on the point of breaking, right overhead. Mr.
Jones places us at the beginning, where Dumas leaves us at the end, of
his first act. It is true that at the end of Mr. Jones's act he has not
advanced any further than Dumas. The French author shows his heroine
gradually working up to a nervous crisis, the English author introduces
his heroine already at the height of her paroxysm, and the act consists
of the unavailing efforts of her friends to smooth her down. The upshot
is the same; but in Mr. Jones's act we are, as the French say, "in full
drama" all the time, while in Dumas's we await the coming of the drama,
and only by exerting all his wit, not to say over-exerting it, does he
pre