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Updated: May 8, 2025
Go-as-you-please composition may be possible for the novelist, perhaps even for the writer of a one-act play, a mere piece of dialogue; but in a dramatic structure of any considerable extent, proportion, balance, and the interconnection of parts are so essential that a scenario is almost as indispensable to a dramatist as a set of plans to an architect.
Only a few years ago, Mme. Charlotte Wiehe acted in New York a one-act play, entitled La Main, which held the attention enthralled for forty-five minutes during which no word was spoken.
I think I may say that it was the finest and most artistic one-act play that I have ever seen and I've seen a few in my day. It aroused a matinée audience, on a warm afternoon, to an ecstasy of enthusiastic approval, because it appealed directly to the artistic fiber. It was not a case for cold analytic judgment.
If I were lucky enough to get anything written, it would have perforce to be here where it was quiet. It was no longer the allegory that occupied me; I had got a new idea, a perfectly splendid plot; I would compose a one-act drama "The Sign of the Cross." Subject taken from the Middle Ages.
Before the performance of the "Family Party," we were to have a little one-act piece called "a day in Madrid," written by myself the principal characters being expressly composed for "Miss Ersler and Mr. Lorrequer."
'Abu Hassan, a one-act comic opera, which was produced in 1811, at Munich, was his first real success. Slight as the story is, it is by no means unamusing, and the music, which is a piece of the daintiest filagree-work imaginable, has helped to keep the little work alive to the present day.
All I know of the domestic affairs of the great French opera-writer Grétry is that he left three daughters, one of whom, Lucille, had a one-act opera successfully produced when she was only thirteen years old, and who was precocious enough to make an unhappy marriage and end it in death by the time she was twenty-three.
Upon the Signer's writing-desk was a package addressed collectively to "The Ballins," and in one corner was written, "Blood will tell." The package, on being opened, proved to contain nothing more substantial than ashes. And by the donor thereof there was never given any further sign. A little one-act play, sufficiently dramatic, is revived from time to time among the Latin races for long runs.
One of our playwrights of whom I always expected a great play was Mrs. A little one-act play of hers, "Journeys End in Lovers' Meeting" in which I first acted with Johnston Forbes-Robertson and Terriss at a special matinée in 1894 brought about a friendship between us which lasted until her death. Of her it could indeed be said with poignant truth, "She should have died hereafter."
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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