Beginning things right – the foundation and building blocks of drama

Aristotle required that a play should have a beginning, middle and end. A tendency exists to rebel against this requirement - as many plays do not end, but simply “leave off”, for example Ibsen’s “Ghosts”.

Each form has particular advantages. A retrospective play like “Rosmersholm” flows steady and full like a winding river. For light comedy and for romantic plays without in depth character-studies, it is undeniably attractive to have one brisk and continuous adventure, begun, developed, and ended before our eyes.

There have been trends through the years to work against the division of a play into acts. Shakespeare used acts to give a rhythm to the action of his plays, although some students of the Elizabethan stage speculate that he did not “think in acts,” but conceived his plays as continuous series of events, without any pause or intermission in their flow. In the Elizabethan theatre there was no need of long interacts for the change of scenes, but there is abundant evidence that the act division was sometimes marked on the Elizabethan stage, and that it was always more or less recognized, and was present to Shakespeare’s mind.

“One act, one scene” is a golden rule, since a change of scene in the middle of an act tends to impair the particular order of illusion at which the modern drama aims and is physically challenging to execute. An act can be defined as any part of a given crisis which works itself out at one time and in one place. It is a segment of the action during which the author desires to hold the attention of his audience unbroken and spellbound. Acts mark the time-stages in the development of a given crisis and each act aim to embody a minor crisis of its own, with a culmination and a temporary solution. Each act is a little drama in itself and leads forward to the next - and marks a distinct phase in the development of the crisis. The act-division certainly enhances the amount of pleasurable emotion through which the audience passes.

In the world of drama the aim is to study how to awaken and to sustain the keen interest, or curiosity, which can be felt only by those who see the play for the first time. The challenge is that popular plays are subject to media scrutiny and criticism, with the effect that few in the audience attend in an unbiased mindset and completely open minded. The first-night audience determines in great measure a play’s success or failure. Wisdom for the dramatist is to direct all thought and care towards conciliating and engaging an audience to which his theme is entirely unknown and so hopefully to succeed in the challenging first performance. Popular knowledge may impose new limitations on the playwright. In some cases he can rely on a general knowledge of the historic background of a given period, which may save him some exposition.

The dramatist’s chief aim in the first act should be to arouse and carry forward the interest of the audience, by using an interesting theme. Each act as we have seen, should contain a subordinate crisis that contributes to the main crisis of the play. Each act should have an individuality and interest of its own and the first act should be an introduction in relation to the whole play and provide at least a glimpse of something attractive beyond. The fostering of anticipation is very important to carry forward the interest. An interesting theme may be very helpful in this.