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Updated: May 11, 2025
I recall one snowy January night when I was returning home. It was on a Saturday, and I had played a five-act play twice with but a sandwich for my dinner, the weather forbidding my going home after the matinee. So being without change to ride with, hungry and unutterably weary, I started, bag in hand, to walk up Sixth Avenue.
Having passed the ninth preparatory grade, under the direction of the indolent M. Tavernier, always busy polishing his nails, like a Chinese mandarin, the child had for a professor in the eighth grade Pere Montandeuil, a poor fellow stupefied by thirty years of teaching, who secretly employed all his spare hours in composing five-act tragedies, and who, by dint of carrying to and going for his manuscripts at the Odeon, ended by marrying the stagedoor-keeper's daughter.
"I made the alterations one afternoon, and wrote to Dumas, and what do you think, by return of post I had a letter from him saying he could not consent to the production of a one-act piece, signed by him, at the Variétés, because his son was then giving a five-act piece at the Gymnase." Then came a string of indecent witticisms by Suzanne Lagier and Dejazet.
My new drama was arranged for the stage by J.V. Arlington, the actor. It was a five-act play, without head or tail, and it made no difference at which act we commenced the performance. Before we had finished the season several newspaper critics, I have been told, went crazy in trying to follow the plot.
Lope de Vega, whom all the world swore by, and made a proverb of; who could make a five-act tragedy in almost as many hours; the greatest of all popularities past or present, and perhaps one of the greatest men that ever ranked among popularities: Lope himself, so radiant, far-shining, has not proved to be a sun or star of the firmament; but is as good as lost and gone out, or plays at best, in the eyes of some few, as a vague aurora-borealis, and brilliant ineffectuality.
And it is with a certain way of Reasoning, That he who serves me best, will serve the Town best; and he that serves the Town best, will serve the Country best." In the January and February of 1735 Fielding produced two more pieces at Drury Lane, a farce and a five-act comedy. The farce a lively trifle enough was An Old Man taught Wisdom, a title subsequently changed to the Virgin Unmasked.
In his embarrassment of riches he decided to give the preliminary picture the form of a dramatic prologue having but a loose connection with the play proper, which was still conceived as a five-act tragedy. During the winter of 1797-8 he worked as he could, steadily upborne by the friendly encouragement of Goethe.
Sometimes Jones would propose a half-price visit to Drury Lane or Covent Garden, to see two acts of a five-act play, and a new farce, perhaps, or a ballet, on which occasions the whole four of them went together: none of your hurrying and nonsense, but having their brandy-and-water first, comfortably, and ordering a steak and some oysters for their supper against they came back, and then walking coolly into the pit, when the ‘rush’ had gone in, as all sensible people do, and did when Mr.
Yet here, too, we might note how Aeschylus trod out of the narrow circumscribed round, notably in the Prometheus and the Persoe. Lastly, the Greek play is short when compared with a full-bodied five-act tragedy. It must be remembered, however, that very often these plays are only a third part of the real subject dealt with by the playwright.
Properly speaking, the entire 'Piccolomini' should constitute the first two acts of a five-act tragedy. It has no distinct unity of its own, but it takes an entire evening with what is properly the exposition and the entanglement of a play relating to Wallenstein's defection and death.
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