, but against his enemy
Monsen. Consequently he invites Stensgaard to his great dinner-party,
and this invitation Stensgaard regards as a cowardly attempt at
conciliation. We clearly see a crisis looming ahead, when this
misunderstanding shall be cleared up; and we consequently look forward
with lively interest to the dinner-party of the second act--which ends,
as a matter of fact, in a brilliant scene of comedy.

The principle, to recapitulate, is simply this: a good first act should
never end in a blank wall. There should always be a window in it, with
at least a glimpse of something attractive beyond. In _Pillars of
Society_ there is a window, indeed; but it is of ground glass.

* * * * *

[Footnote 1: That great story-teller, Alexandra Dumas _pere,_ those a
straightforward way of carrying forward the interest at the end of the
first act of _Henri III et sa Cour._ The Due de Guise, insulted by
Saint-Megrin, beckons to his henchman and says, as the curtain falls,
_"Qu'on me cherche les memes hommes qui ont assassine Dugast!"_]

[Footnote 2: There are limits to the validity of this rule, as applied
to minor incidents. For example, it may sometimes be a point of art to
lead the audience to expect the appearance of one person, when in fact
another is about to enter. But it is exceedingly dangerous to baffle the
carefully fostered anticipation of an important scene. See Chapters
XVII and XXI.]

_BOOK III_

THE MIDDLE

_CHAPTER XI_

TENSION AND ITS SUSPENSION

In the days of the five-act dogma, each act was supposed to have its
special and pre-ordained function. Freytag assigns to the second act, as
a rule, the _Steigerung_ or heightening--the working-up, one might call
it--of the interest. But the second act, in modern plays, has often to
do all the work of the three middle acts under the older dispensation;
wherefore the theory of their special functions has more of a historical
than of a practical interest. For our present purposes, we may treat the
interior section of a play as a unit, whether it consist of one, two, or
three acts.

The first act may be regarded as the porch or vestibule through which we
pass into the main fabric--solemn or joyous, fantastic or austere--of
the actual drama. Sometimes, indeed, the vestibule is reduced to a mere
threshold which can be crossed in two strides; but normally the first
act, or at any rate the greater part of it, is of