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Updated: May 24, 2025
When, on the other hand, you have no story to tell, the act-division is manifestly superfluous; but it needs no "virtuosity" to dispense with it. It is a grave error, then, to suppose that the act is a mere division of convenience, imposed by the limited power of attention of the human mind, or by the need of the human body for occasional refreshment.
Let us apply this principle to a Shakespearean play for example, to Macbeth. The act headings might run somewhat as follows Can it be doubted that Shakespeare had in his mind the rhythm marked by this act-division?
A dramatist who can so develop his story as to bring it within the quasi-Aristotelean "unities" performs a curious but not particularly difficult or valuable feat; but this does not, or ought not to, imply the abandonment of the act-division, which is no mere convention, but a valuable means of marking the rhythm of the story.
The act-division positively enhances the amount of pleasurable emotion through which the audience passes. Each act ought to stimulate and temporarily satisfy an interest of its own, while definitely advancing the main action.
Be this as it may, it is the business of the dramatist to analyse the crises with which he deals, and to present them to us in their rhythm of growth, culmination, solution. To this end the act-division is not, perhaps, essential, since the rhythm may be marked even in a one-act play but certainly of enormous and invaluable convenience.
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