_Johannisfeuer_, Sudermann keeps the tension at
its height up to the fall of the curtain. Sir Arthur Pinero's _Iris_ is
a case in point; so are Mr. Shaw's _Candida_ and _The Devil's Disciple_;
so is Mr. Galsworthy's _Strife_. Other instances will no doubt occur to
the reader; yet he will probably be surprised to find that it is not
very easy to recall them.

For this is not, in fact, the typical modern formula. In plays which do
not end in death, it will generally be found that the culminating scene
occurs in the penultimate act, and that, if anticlimax is avoided, it is
not by the maintenance of an unbroken tension, by its skilful renewal
and reinforcement in the last act. This is a resource which the
playwright will do well to bear in mind. Where he cannot place his
"great scene" in his last act, he should always consider whether it be
not possible to hold some development in reserve whereby the tension may
be screwed up again--if unexpectedly, so much the better. Some of the
most successful plays within my recollection have been those in which
the last act came upon us as a pleasant surprise. An anticlimax had
seemed inevitable; and behold! the author had found a way out of it.

_An Enemy of the People_ may perhaps be placed in this class, though, as
before remarked, the last act is almost an independent comedy. Had the
play ended with the fourth act, no one would have felt that anything was
lacking; so that in his fifth act, Ibsen was not so much grappling with
an urgent technical problem, as amusing himself by wringing the last
drop of humour out of the given situation. A more strictly apposite
example may be found in Sir Arthur Pinero's play, _His House in Order_.
Here the action undoubtedly culminates in the great scene between Nina
and Hilary Jesson in the third act; yet we await with eager anticipation
the discomfiture of the Ridgeley family; and when we realize that it is
to be brought about by the disclosure to Filmer of Annabel's secret, the
manifest rightness of the proceeding gives us a little shock of
pleasure. Mr. Somerset Maugham, again, in the last act of _Grace_,
employs an ingenious device to keep the tension at a high pitch. The
matter of the act consists mainly of a debate as to whether Grace Insole
ought, or ought not, to make a certain painful avowal to her husband. As
the negative opinion was to carry the day, Mr. Maugham saw that there
was grave danger that the final scene might appear an almos