THE STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS OF TWO-ACT MATERIAL
It is very likely that in your study of "The German Senator" and "The Art of Flirtation," there has crossed your mind this thought: Both the monologue and the two-act are composed of points and gags. The only difference—besides the merely physical difference of two persons delivering the gags and the greater amount of business used to "get them over" [1]—lies in the way the gags are constructed. The very same gags—twisted just a little differently—would do equally well for either the monologue or the two-act.
[1] To get over a vaudeville line or the entire act, means to make it a success—to make it get over the foot-lights so that the audience may see and appreciate it, or "get" it.
I. THE INDIVIDUAL TWIST OF THE TWO-ACT
There is just enough truth in this to make it seem an illuminating fact. For instance, take the "janitor point" in "The German Senator." We may imagine the characters of a two-act working up through a routine, and then one saying to the other:
A child can go to school for nothing, and when he grows up to be a man and he is thoroughly educated he can go into the public school and be a teacher and get fifty dollars a month.
The other swiftly saying:
And the janitor gets ninety-five.
There would be a big laugh in this arrangement of this particular gag, without a doubt. But only a few points of "The German Senator" could be used for a two-act, with nearly as much effect as in the monologue form. For instance, take the introduction. Of course, that is part and parcel of the monologue form, and therefore seems hardly a fair example, yet it is particularly suggestive of the unique character of much monologic material.
But take the series of points in "The German Senator," beginning: "We were better off years ago than we are now." Picture the effect if one character said: