Curtain.
Obviously, though some slight suspense has been created as to the possible solution of Kitty’s difficulties, the proposed play goes all to pieces the moment Mrs. King enters with her news. When an audience knows that had the dramatist so willed, the fateful telegram might have arrived at any moment in the play other than the point chosen, it is likely to vote unanimously that the telegram should have been received before the curtain was ever rung up. Except in amateur performances arranged for admiring friends, there is no hope that such a fizzle can be covered by introducing dancers to make a pretty picture and a pseudo-climax.
Climax is, then, whatever in action, speech, pantomime, or thought (whether conveyed or suggested) will produce in an audience the strongest emotion of the scene, act, or play.
The means to climax range from mere action to quiet speech, from pure theatricality to lifelike subtlety. The poisoned cup, the fatal duel, indeed, the general slaughter at the end of Hamlet make a tremendous climax of action. Mere action, however, does not necessarily give climax. The writer of the scenario just quoted, missing a real climax, tried to offset this by the gay dance. Whether a dance, parade, or tableau is a genuine climax depends on whether it illustrates attainment of that in regard to which suspense has been created. No mere dance in costume, no spectacular parade or brilliant tableau is ever an adequate substitute for a climax which brings to the greatest intensity emotionalized interest already awakened in an audience. Such climax by action may, then, be as purely theatrical as in revues, much musical comedy, or pure melodrama, or as simple and true as in Heijermans’ The Good Hope. The women, Joe and Kneirtje, are left alone, wild with anxiety for their fisherman-lover and son. A storm rages outside.
Jo. (Beating her head on the table.) The wind! It drives me mad, mad!
Kneirtje. (Opens the prayerbook, touches Jo’s arm. Jo looks up, sobbing passionately, sees the prayerbook, shakes her head fiercely. Again wailing, drops to the floor, which she beats with her hands. Kneirtje’s trembling voice sounds.) O Merciful God! I trust! With a firm faith, I trust.
(The wind races with wild lashings about the house.)
Curtain.[47]
Climax may come through surprise, as the discussion of suspense shows (pp. 212-214). Such surprise may be theatrical, as in Home[48] where it is obviously an arranged effect, or genuinely dramatic because justified by the preceding characterization, as in The Clod.