s against each other or against circumstances;
events are so tangled that they can be no further involved and something
must happen in the way of cutting the knot; the fates of the persons are
so implicated that their lives must be either saved or destroyed, in
order to break the deadlock. Thus along with the clash goes a crisis
presented in a breathless climactic effect which is the central and
imperative scene of the piece, the backbone of every good play.

If this obligatory scene be absent, you may at once suspect the
dramatist; whatever his other virtues (fine dialogue, excellent
characterization, or still other merits), it is probable he is not one
genuinely called to tell a story in the manner of drama within stage
limitations.

It is sometimes said that a play is written backward. The remark has in
mind this fundamental fact of the climax; all that goes before leads up
to it, is preparation for it, and might conceivably be written after the
obligatory scene has been conceived and shaped; all that comes after it
is an attempt to retire gracefully from the great moment, rounding it
out, showing its results, and conducting the spectator back to the
common light of day in such a way as not to be dull, or conventional or
anti-climactic. What follows this inevitable scene is (however
disguised) at bottom a sort of bridge conveying the auditor from the
supreme pleasure of the theater back to the rather humdrum experience of
actual life; it is an experiment in gradation. And the prepared
play-goer will deny the coveted award of _well done_ to any play, albeit
from famous hands and by no means wanting in good qualities, which
nevertheless fails in this prime requisite of good drama: the central,
dynamic scene illuminating all that goes before and follows after,
without which the play, after all, has no right to existence.

With the coming of the modern psychologic school of which Galsworthy,
Barker and Bennett are exemplars, there is a distinct tendency to
minimize or even to eliminate this obligatory scene; an effort which
should be carefully watched and remonstrated against; since it is the
laying of an axe at the roots of dramatic writing. It may be confessed
that in some instances the results of this violation of a cardinal
principle are so charming as to blind the onlooker perhaps to the
danger; as in the case of _Milestones_ by Messrs. Bennett and Knoblauch,
or _The Pigeon_ by Galsworthy, or Louis Parker's Georgi