At this point Facile is apt to pause and to take breath. Perhaps he will run over to Paris, or go to the seaside for a month, "to collect his thoughts." His thoughts collected, he will make a tremendous effort to begin the second act; but here all the difficulties that he experienced in beginning Act I. crops up again tenfold. We protest, from practical experience, that there is nothing in the dramatist's profession that presents so many distasteful difficulties as the commencing the second act of a three-act comedy. His first act is short, sharp, crisp, and to the point—"totus teres atque rotundus"—perfectly satisfactory in itself—artistically put together, and telling the audience all they require to know in order to understand what follows, and no more. The thread of interest is broken at an exciting point, and it has now to be taken up again, in such a way as not to anticipate secrets and "situations" that require time to develop. If, in commencing the first act, Facile was bothered by the choice of five hundred "openings," he is ten times as much bothered now from the fact that he has only two or three, and none of them likely to be effective when reduced to dialogue. However, a letter from the management probably wakes him up at this point. With a desperate effort he sets to work, writing detached scenes as before, and writing the opening dialogue last as before; and in process of time Act II. is completed. His work is now practically at an end. Act III. is a simple matter enough. He has laid the train in Acts I. and II., and all that remains is to bring about the catastrophe in the quickest possible manner consistent with the story he has
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