The anonymous play, The Taming of a Shrew,[38] on which Shakespeare founded his farce-comedy of similar title, shows a good use of Prologue and Epilogue. By a practical joke, Christopher Sly the beggar is made to believe he is a Lord. As a part of the joke, the play is acted before him. Now and again, in the course of it, he comments on it. He and his group finish the performance in a sort of Epilogue. When Shakespeare uses Sly, only to let him shortly withdraw for good, the arrangement seems curiously incomplete and unsatisfactory. Romance, by Edward Sheldon, shows right use of so-called epilogue and prologue. As the curtain falls on the brief prologue, the aged Bishop is telling his grandson the story of his love for the Cavallini. Then the play, which is the Bishop’s story, unrolls itself for three acts. In turn they fade into the epilogue, in which the grandson, as the Bishop finishes his story, goes off in spite of it to marry the girl he loves. By means of the epilogue and prologue Mr. Sheldon gains irony and contrast, relates the main play to larger values, and answers the inevitable question of his audience at the end of his third act: What happened to them afterward? Not to have used the so-called epilogue and prologue here would have forced total reconstruction of the material and probably a clumsier result. Such setting of a long play within a very brief play is one of the conditions for the legitimate use of the so-called prologue and epilogue.

Another legitimate use, though perhaps not so clear-cut, is illustrated by the Prologue to A Celebrated Case.[39] The play might, perhaps, be written without it, but, if it were, the scene of Act I in which Adrienne recognizes the convict as her father, would be filled with much more exposition, and the present emphasis on the powerful emotions of the moment would be somewhat blurred by the emotions called up by exposition of the past. Clearly, the play gains rather than loses by the presence of the prologue. Obviously the latter stands somewhat apart from the three acts which follow, less definitely related to them than they are to one another. So it may, perhaps, better be called a prologue than an act.

Of course, the distinction between prologue and act is a matter of nomenclature, not of effectiveness in acting. Look at My Lady’s Dress, by Edward Knobloch. Scene 1, Act I, and Scene 3, Act III, have the same setting, a boudoir, and are more closely related to each other than to the rest of the play.[40] Indeed, what stands between are one-act plays making the dream of Anne. According to present usage, Mr. Knobloch could have called these scenes Prologue and Epilogue, and treated all that stands between as the play proper. That he did or didn’t makes no difference in the acting. The growing use of the two words, Prologue and Epilogue, merely marks an increasing sense of dramatic technique which tries by nomenclature to emphasize for a reader nice differences which the dramatist discerns in the inter-relations of his material.

To sum up, there is real significance, though present confusion, in recent use of the words, Prologue and Epilogue. The use rests on a fact: that sometimes a play is best proportioned, when it has at the beginning or end, or both, a brief division related to the story and essential to it, but not so closely related to any act as are the acts to one another. The names Prologue and Epilogue should not, however, be used interchangeably for acts. They should be kept for their historical use—verse or prose spoken in front of the curtain before or at an end of the play, in order to win or intensify sympathy for it. We should find different names for these divisions,—perhaps, Induction and Finale?

What should be the length of an act? There can be no rule as to this. Naturally, the work of the first and last acts differs somewhat from the intervening acts, whether one or three in number. While it is the chief business of the intervening acts to maintain and increase interest already created, the first act must obviously create that interest as swiftly as possible, and the last act bring that interest to a climactic close. The first act, because in it the characters must be introduced, necessary past history stated, and the story well started, is likely to be longer than the other acts. The last act, inasmuch as even at its beginning we are usually not distant from the climax of the play, is most often the shortest division, for as soon as the climax is reached, we should drop the curtain as quickly as possible. A glance at certain notable plays of different periods will show, however, that the length of an act most depends, not on any given rule, but on the skill of the dramatist in accomplishing what he has decided the particular act must do. In the Cambridge edition of Shakespeare’s Lear (printed in two columns of fine type) the acts run as follows:

Act I9½ pages
Act II7 pages
Act III6½ pages
Act IV6¼ pages
Act V5¼ pages

Kismet, a play modeled on the Elizabethan, shows this division:

Act I48 pages
Act II33 pages
Act III22½ pages

For three plays of Richard Steele it is possible to give the exact playing-time:[41]

The Funeral The Conscious Lovers The Tender Husband
Act I 30 min. Act I 33 min. Act I 25 min.
Act II 36 min. Act II 28 min. Act II 22 min.
Act III 20 min. Act III 24 min. Act III 14 min.
Act IV 20 min. Act IV 28 min. Act IV 15 min.
Act V 20 min. Act V 31 min. Act V 18 min.
Total, 2 hrs. 6 min. Total, 2 hrs. 24 min. Total, 1 hr. 34 min.