at once
see two _scenes a faire_, and I know that they will be _faites_: the
scene between the son and the father whom he is to save, the scene
between Bernard and his half-brother Leopold, who are in love with
the same woman, the one dishonourably and the other secretly and
nobly. What will they say to each other? I have no idea. But it is
precisely this _expectation mingled with uncertainly_ that is one of
the charms of the theatre. I say to myself, "Ah, they will have an
encounter! What will come of it?" And that this is the state of mind
of the whole audience is proved by the fact that when the two
characters of the _scenes a faire_ stand face to face, a thrill of
anticipation runs round the whole theatre.

This, then, is the obligatory scene as Sarcey generally understands
it--a scene which, for one reason or another, an audience expects and
ardently desires. I have italicized the phrase "expectation mingled with
uncertainty" because it expresses in other terms the idea which I have
sought to convey in the formula "foreshadowing without forestalling."
But before we can judge of the merits of M. Sarcey's theory, we must
look into it a little more closely. I shall try, then, to state it in my
own words, in what I believe to be its most rational and
defensible form.

An obligatory scene is one which the audience (more or less clearly and
consciously) foresees and desires, and the absence of which it may with
reason resent. On a rough analysis, it will appear, I think, that there
are five ways in which a scene may become, in this sense, obligatory:

(1) It may be necessitated by the inherent logic of the theme.

(2) It may be demanded by the manifest exigencies of specifically
dramatic effect.

(3) The author himself may have rendered it obligatory by seeming
unmistakably to lead up to it.

(4) It may be required in order to justify some modification of
character or alteration of will, too important to be taken for granted.

(5) It may be imposed by history or legend.

These five classes of obligatory scenes may be docketed, respectively,
as the Logical, the Dramatic, the Structural, the Psychological, and the
Historic. M. Sarcey generally employed the term in one of the first
three senses, without clearly distinguishing between them. It is,
indeed, not always easy to determine whether the compulsion (assuming it
to exist at all) lies in the very essence of the theme or situation, or
onl